Complete Works of Emile Zola (349 page)

Old Madame Rougon often thought it was her duty to intervene between the Abbé and her daughter, as she had formerly done between the latter and Mouret. Marthe having told her of her troubles, she spoke to the priest like a mother-in-law desiring the happiness of her children and doing her best to restore peace in their home.

‘Well,’ she said to him with a smile, ‘can’t you manage to live in peace? Marthe is constantly complaining and you seem to be perpetually grieving her. I know very well that women are exacting, but you must confess that you are a little wanting in consideration. I am extremely distressed by what occurs; it would be so easy for you to arrange matters pleasantly! Do, I beg of you, my dear Abbé, be a little more gentle with her.’

She also scolded him in a friendly fashion for his slovenly appearance. She could see, with her shrewd feminine intelli­gence, that he was abusing his victory. Then she began to make excuses for her daughter. The dear child, she said, had suffered a great deal, and her nervous sensitiveness required most careful treatment; but she had an excellent disposition and an affectionate nature which a clever man might mould after his own wishes. One day, however, when she was thus showing him how he might make Marthe what he liked, Abbé Faujas grew weary of her perpetual advice.

‘No, no!’ he cried, ‘your daughter is mad; she bores me to death. I won’t have anything more to do with her. I would pay the fellow well who would free me of her.’

Madame Rougon looked him keenly in the face and tightly pressed her lips.

‘Listen to me, my friend,’ she said after a short silence; ‘you are wanting in tact, and that will prove your ruin. Overthrow yourself, if you like; I wash my hands of you. I assisted you, not for your own sake, but to please our friends in Paris. They wrote to me and asked me to pilot you, and I did so. But understand this, I will never allow you to come the master over me. It’s all very well for little Péqueur, and simple Rastoil, but we are not at all afraid of you, and we mean to remain the masters. My husband conquered Plassans before you did, and I warn you that we shall keep our con­quest.’

From that day forward there was great coldness between the Rougons and Abbé Faujas. When Marthe again came to complain to her mother, the latter said to her very plainly:

‘Your Abbé is only making a fool of you. If I were in your place I shouldn’t hesitate to tell him a few plain truths. To begin with, he has been disgustingly dirty for a long time past, and I can’t understand how you can bear to take your meals at the same table with him.’

Madame Rougon had, in truth, hinted at a very ingenious plan to her husband, by which the Abbé should be ousted, and they themselves should reap the reward of his success. Now that the town voted properly, Rougon, who had not cared to risk the conduct of the campaign, was quite able to keep it in the proper path. The green drawing-room would become all the more influential, and Félicité began to await developments with that crafty patience to which she owed her fortune.

On the day when her mother told her that the Abbé was only making a fool of her, Marthe again repaired to Saint-Saturnin’s resolved upon a last supreme appeal. She remained in the deserted church for two hours, pouring out her soul in prayer, waiting longingly for the ecstasy that came not, and torturing herself with her search for consolation. Impulses of deep humility stretched her prostrate upon the flag-stones, momentary thrills of rebellion made her start up again with her teeth clenched, while her whole being, wildly racked and strained, broke down at not being able to grasp or kiss aught save the aching void of her own passion. When she rose and left the church the sky seemed black to her; she was not conscious of the pavement beneath her feet; the narrow streets left upon her the impression of some immense lonely wilderness. She threw her hat and shawl upon the dining-room table and went straight upstairs to Abbé Faujas’s room.

The Abbé sat buried in thought, at his little table. His pen had fallen from his fingers. He opened the door, still full of his thoughts, but when he saw Marthe standing before him, very pale, and with the light of deep resolution burning in her eyes, he made a gesture of anger.

‘What do you want?’ he asked. ‘Why have you come upstairs? Go down again and wait for me, if you have any­thing to say to me.’

She pushed him aside and entered the room without speaking a word.

The priest hesitated for a moment, struggling against the influence which was prompting him to raise his hand against her. He remained standing in front of her, without closing the door that was wide open.

‘What do you want?’ he repeated. ‘I am busy.’

Then Marthe closed the door, and having done so, drew nearer to the Abbé and said to him:

‘I want to speak to you.’

She sat down and looked about the room, at the narrow bed, the shabby chest of drawers, and at the big black wooden crucifix, the sight of which, as it stood out conspicuously on the bare wall, gave her a passing thrill. A freezing silence seemed to fall from the ceiling. The grate was quite empty; there was not even a pinch of ashes in it.

‘You will take cold,’ said the priest in a calmer voice. ‘Let us go downstairs, I beg you.’

‘No; I want to speak to you,’ said Marthe again.

Then, clasping her hands together like a penitent making her confession, she continued:

‘I owe you much. Before you came, I was without a soul. It was you who willed that I should be saved. It is through you that I have known the only joys of my life. You are my saviour and my father. For these last five years I have only lived through you and for you.’

Her voice broke down and she almost slipped upon her knees. The priest stopped her with a gesture.

‘And now, to-day,’ she cried, ‘I am suffering and have need of your help. Listen to me, father. Do not withdraw from me. You cannot abandon me thus. I tell you that God does not listen to me any longer. I do not feel His presence any longer. Have pity upon me, I beseech you. Advise me, lead me to those divine graces whose first joys you made me know; teach me what I should do to cure myself, and ever advance in the love of God.’

‘You must pray,’ said the priest gravely.

‘I have prayed; I have prayed for hours with my head buried in my hands, trying to lose myself in every word of adoration, and yet I have not received consolation. I have not felt the presence of God.’

‘You must pray and pray again, pray continually, pray until God is moved by your prayers and descends to you.’

She looked at him in anguish.

‘Then there is nothing but prayer?’ she asked. ‘You cannot give me any help?’

‘No; none at all,’ he replied roughly.

She threw up her trembling hands in a burst of despera­tion, her breast heaving with anger. But she restrained herself, and she stammered:

‘Your heaven is fast closed. You have led me on so far only to crush me against a wall. I was very peaceful, you will remember, when you came. I was living quietly at home here, without a single desire or curiosity. It was you who awoke me with words that stirred and roused my heart. It was you who made me enter upon a fresh youth. Oh! you cannot tell what joys you brought me at first! It was like sweet soft warmth thrilling my whole being. My heart woke up within me. I was filled with mighty hopes. Sometimes, when I reflected that I was forty years old, it all seemed foolish to me, and I smiled, and then I defended myself, for I felt so happy in it all. Now I want the promised happiness. I am growing weary of the desire for it, a desire that burns me and tortures me. I have no time to lose, now that my health has broken down, and I don’t want to find myself deceived and duped. There must be something more; tell me that there is something more.’

Abbé Faujas stood quite impassive, letting this flood of words pass without reply.

‘Ah! So there is nothing else! there is nothing else!’ she continued, in a burst of indignation; ‘then you have deceived me! Down there on the terrace, on those star-lit evenings, you promised me heaven, and I believed your promises. I sold myself, and gave myself up. I was quite mad during those first transports of prayer. To-day the bargain holds no longer. I shall return to my old ways, and resume my old peaceful quiet. I will turn everybody out of the house, and make it as it used to be; I will again sit in my old corner on the terrace, and mend the linen. Needlework never wearies me. And I will have Désirée back to sit beside me on her little stool. She used to sit there, the dear innocent, and laugh and make dolls — ‘

Then she burst into a fit of sobbing:

‘I want my children! They were my safeguard. Since they left I have lost my head, I have done things that I ought not to have done. Why did you take them from me? They went away from me one by one, and the house became like a strange house to me. My heart was no longer wrapped up in it, I was glad when I left it for an afternoon; and when I came back in the evening, I seemed to have fallen amongst strangers. The very furniture seemed cold and unfriendly. I quite hated the house. But I will go and fetch them again, the poor darlings. Everything will become as it used to be directly they return. Oh! if I could only sink down again into my old sleepy quiet!’

She was growing more and more excited. The priest tried to calm her by a method which he had often before found efficacious.

‘Be calm, my dear lady, be calm,’ he said, trying to take her hands, and hold them between his own.

‘Don’t touch me!’ she cried, recoiling from him. ‘I don’t want you to do so. When you hold me I am as weak as a child. The warmth of your hands takes all my resolution and strength away. The trouble would only begin again to-morrow; for I cannot go on living like this, and you only assuage me for an hour.’

A deep shadow passed over her face as she continued:

‘No! I am damned now! I shall never love my home again. And if the children come, they would ask for their father — Oh! it is that which is killing me! I shall never be forgiven till I have confessed my crime to a priest.’

Then she fell upon her knees.

‘I am a guilty woman. That is why God turns His face from me.’

Abbé Faujas tried to make her rise from her knees.

‘Be silent!’ he cried loudly. ‘I cannot hear your con­fession here. Come to Saint-Saturnin’s to-morrow.’

‘Father,’ she said entreatingly, ‘have pity upon me. To-morrow I shall not have the strength for it.’

‘I forbid you to speak,’ he cried more violently than before. ‘I won’t listen to anything; I shall turn my head away and close my ears.’

He stepped backward and crossed his arms, trying to check the confession that was on Marthe’s lips. They looked at each other for a moment in silence, with the lurking anger that came from their conscious complicity.

‘It is not a priest who listens to you,’ said the Abbé in a huskier voice. ‘Here there is only a man to judge and condemn you.’

At this she rose from her knees, and continued feverishly: ‘A man! I prefer it, for I am not confessing; I am simply telling you of my wrong-doing. After the children had gone, I allowed their father to be put away too. He had never struck me, the unhappy man. It was I myself who was mad.... Oh, you cannot guess what frightful nightmares overwhelmed me and made me hurl myself upon the floor.

All hell seemed to be racking my brain with its torments. He, poor man, with his chattering teeth, excited my pity. It was he who was afraid of me. When you had left the room he dared not venture near me; he passed the night on a chair.’

Again did Abbé Faujas try to stop her.

‘You are killing yourself,’ he exclaimed. ‘Don’t stir up these recollections. God will take count of your sufferings.’

‘It was I who sent him to Les Tulettes,’ she continued, silencing the priest with an energetic gesture. ‘You all told me that he was mad. Oh, the unendurable life I have led! I have always been terrified by the thought of madness. When I was quite young, I used to feel as though my skull were being opened and my head were being emptied. I seemed to have a block of ice within my brow. Ah! I felt that awful coldness again, and I was perpetually in fear of going mad. They took my husband away. I let them take him. I didn’t know what I was doing. But, ever since that day, I have been unable to close my eyes without seeing him over yonder. It is that which makes me behave so strangely, which roots me for hours to the same spot, with my eyes wide open. I know the place; I can see it. My uncle Macquart showed it to me. It is as gloomy as a prison, with its black windows.’

She seemed to be choking. She raised her handkerchief to her lips, and when she took it away again it was spotted with blood. The priest, with his arms rigidly crossed in front of him, waited till the attack was over.

‘You know it all, don’t you?’ she resumed, in stammer­ing accents. ‘I am a miserable guilty woman, I sinned for you. But give me life, give me happiness, I entreat you!’

‘You lie,’ said the priest slowly. ‘I know nothing; I was ignorant that you were guilty of that wickedness.’

She recoiled, clasping her hands, stammering, and gazing at him with a look of terror. And at last, utterly unable to restrain herself, she broke out wildly and recklessly:

‘Hear me, Ovide, I love you, and you know that I do, do you not? I have loved you, Ovide, since the first day you came here. I refrained from telling you so, for I saw it dis­pleased you; but I knew quite well that you were gaining my whole heart. Then it was that I emptied the house for your sake. I dragged myself on my knees, and became your slave. You surely cannot go on being cruel for ever. Now that I am ill and abandoned, and my heart is broken and my head seems empty, you surely cannot reject me. It is true that we have said nothing openly before; but surely my love spoke to you, and your silence made answer. Oh! I love you, Ovide, I love you, and it is killing me.’

She burst into another fit of sobbing. Abbé Faujas had braced himself up to his full height. He stepped towards Marthe and poured out upon her all his scorn of woman.

‘Oh, miserable creature!’ he said. ‘I hoped that you would be reasonable, and that you would never lower yourself to the shame of uttering all that vileness. Ah! it is the eternal struggle of evil against will. You are the temptation from below that leads men to base back-sliding and final overthrow. The priest has no worse enemy than such as you; you ought to be driven from the churches as impure and accursed!’