The Conquest of Plassans (La Conquête de Plassans). Emile ZolaЧитать онлайн книгу.
lying in the corner. The chest of drawers, stowed away at the other end of the room, a little table in the middle, and two chairs, one before each window, completed the furniture. There was not a single paper on the table, not an article of any kind on the chest of drawers, not a garment hanging against the walls. Everything was perfectly bare except that over the chest of drawers there was suspended a big black wooden crucifix, looking like a dark splotch amidst the bare greyness of the room.
'Come this way, sir, will you?' said the Abbé. 'It is in this corner that the ceiling is stained.'
But Mouret did not hurry, he was enjoying himself. Although he saw none of the extraordinary things that he had vaguely expected to see, there seemed to him to be a peculiar odour about the room. It smelt of a priest, he thought; of a man with different ways from other men. But it vexed him that he could see nothing on which he might base some hypothesis carelessly left on any of the pieces of furniture or in any corner of the apartment. The room was just like its provoking occupant, silent, cold, and inscrutable. He was extremely surprised, too, not to find any appearance of poverty as he had expected. On the contrary, the room produced upon him much the same impression as he had felt when he had once entered the richly furnished drawing-room of the prefect of Marseilles. The big crucifix seemed to fill it with its black arms.
Mouret felt, however, that he must go and look at the corner which Abbé Faujas was inviting him to inspect.
'You see the stain, don't you?' asked the priest. 'It has faded a little since yesterday.'
Mouret rose upon tip-toes and strained his eyes, but at first he could see nothing. When the Abbé had drawn back the curtains, he was able to distinguish a slight damp-stain.
'It's nothing very serious,' he said.
'Oh, no! but I thought it would be better to tell you of it. The wet must have soaked through near the edge of the roof.'
'Yes, you are right; near the edge of the roof.'
Mouret made no further remark; he was again examining the room, now clear and distinct in the full daylight. It looked less solemn than before, but it remained as taciturn as ever. There was not even a speck of dust lying about to tell aught of the Abbé's life.
'Perhaps,' continued the priest, 'we may be able to discover the place from the window. Just wait a moment.'
He proceeded to open the window, but Mouret protested against him troubling himself any further, saying that the workmen would easily be able to find the leak.
'It is no trouble at all, I assure you,' replied the Abbé with polite insistence. 'I know that landlords like to know how matters are going on. Inspect everything, I beg of you. The house is yours.'
As he spoke these last words he smiled, a thing he did but rarely; and then as Mouret and himself leaned over the rail that crossed the window, and turned their eyes towards the guttering, he launched out into various technical details, trying to account for the appearance of the stain.
'I think there has been a slight depression of the tiles, perhaps even a breakage; unless, indeed, that crack which you can see up there in the cornice extends into the retaining-wall.'
'Yes, yes, that is very possible,' Mouret replied; 'but I must confess, Monsieur l'Abbé, that I really don't understand anything about these matters. However, the masons will see to it.'
The priest said nothing further on the subject, but quietly remained where he was, gazing out upon the garden beneath him. Mouret, who was leaning by his side, thought it would be impolite to hurry away. He was quite won over when his tenant, after an interval of silence, said to him in his soft voice:
'You have a very pretty garden, sir.'
'Oh! it's nothing out of the common,' replied Mouret. 'There used to be some fine trees which I was obliged to cut down, for nothing would grow in their shade, and we have to pay attention to utility, you know. This plot is quite large enough for us and keeps us in vegetables all through the season.'
The Abbé seemed surprised, and asked Mouret for details. The garden was an old-fashioned country garden, surrounded with arbours, and divided into four regular square plots by tall borders of box. In the middle was a shallow basin, but there was no fountain. Only one of the squares was devoted to flowers. In the other three, which were planted at their edges with fruit-trees, one saw some magnificent cabbages, lettuces, and other vegetables. The paths of yellow gravel were kept extremely neat.
'It is a little paradise,' said Abbé Faujas.
'There are several disadvantages, all the same,' replied Mouret, who felt extremely delighted at hearing his ground so highly praised. 'You will have noticed, for instance, that we are on a slope, and that the gardens hereabouts are on different levels. Monsieur Rastoil's is lower than mine, which, again, is lower than that of the Sub-Prefecture. The consequence is that the rain often does a great deal of damage. Then, too, a still greater disadvantage is that the people in the Sub-Prefecture overlook me, and the more so now that they have made that terrace which commands my wall. It is true that I overlook Monsieur Rastoil's garden, but that is very poor compensation I can assure you, for a man who never troubles himself about his neighbour's doings.'
The priest seemed to be listening out of mere complaisance, just nodding his head occasionally but making no remarks. He followed with his eyes the motions of his landlord's hand.
'And there is still another inconvenience,' continued Mouret, pointing to a path that skirted the bottom of the garden. 'You see that little lane between the two walls? It is called the Impasse des Chevillottes, and leads to a cart-entrance to the grounds of the Sub-Prefecture. Well, all the neighbouring properties have little doors giving access to the lane, and there are all sorts of mysterious comings and goings. For my part, being a family man with children, I fastened my door up with a couple of stout nails.'
He looked at the Abbé and winked, hoping that the priest would question him about the mysterious comings and goings to which he had just alluded. But Abbé Faujas seemed quite unconcerned; he merely glanced at the alley without showing any curiosity on the subject. Then he again gazed placidly upon the Mourets' garden. Marthe was in her customary place near the edge of the terrace, hemming napkins. She had raised her head on first hearing voices, and then had resumed her work again, full of surprise at seeing her husband at one of the second-floor windows in the company of the priest. She now appeared to be quite unconscious of their presence. Mouret, however, had raised his voice from a sort of instinctive braggartism, proud of being able to show his wife that he had at last made his way into that room which had so persistently been kept private. The Abbé, on his side, every now and then let his calm eyes rest upon the woman, though all that he could see of her was the back of her bent neck and her black coil of hair.
They were both silent again, and Abbé Faujas still seemed disinclined to leave the window. He now appeared to be examining their neighbour's flower beds. Monsieur Rastoil's garden was arranged in the English fashion, with little walks and grass plots broken by small flower-beds. At the bottom there was a circular cluster of trees, underneath which a table and some rustic chairs were set.
'Monsieur Rastoil is very wealthy,' resumed Mouret, who had followed the direction of the Abbé's eyes. 'His garden costs him a large sum of money. The waterfall—you can't see it from here, it is behind those trees—ran away with more than three hundred francs. There isn't a vegetable about the place, nothing but flowers. At one time the ladies even talked of cutting down the fruit-trees; but that would have really been wicked, for the pear-trees are magnificent specimens. Well, I suppose a man has a right to lay out his ground so as to please his own fancy, if he can afford to do so.'
Then, as the Abbé still continued silent, he continued: 'You know Monsieur Rastoil, don't you? Every morning, from eight o'clock till nine, he walks about under his trees. He is a heavy man, rather short, bald, and clean shaven, with a head as round as a ball. He completed his sixtieth year at the beginning of last August, I believe. He has been president of our civil tribunal for nearly twenty years. Folks say he is a very good fellow, but I see very little of him. "Good-morning," and "Good-evening," that's about all that ever passes