And with this little joke, she sat down, smiling.
‘Octavie,’ murmured the sub-prefect when they were alone. ‘Don’t make fun of me. You weren’t very religious yourself in Paris in the Rue du Helder.* And you know it’s all I can do not to laugh out loud when you take the holy wafer in Saint-Saturnin.’
‘You are not being serious, darling,’ she answered in the same tone. ‘It will come back to bite you. To be quite honest, you worry me, I thought you more intelligent. Are you so blind that you cannot see you are in an insecure position? You must realize that if they haven’t sacked you by now it’s because they don’t wish to stir up the Plassans Legitimists. The day they see another sub-prefect arrive they will be mistrustful. Whereas with you they can take it easy, they believe they are certain of victory at the next election. It’s not flattering, I know, especially since I’m absolutely sure they are acting without you… Do you understand? My dear man, you are lost if you don’t begin to realize what’s going on.’
He looked at her truly appalled.
‘Has “the great man”* written to you?’ he asked, alluding to someone they called by that name between themselves.
‘No, he’s broken off relations with me completely. I’m not a fool, I was the first one to realize that it was necessary. Moreover, I haven’t got cause for complaint. He found me a husband, and gave me excellent counsel, which has been beneficial for me… But I have kept my friends in Paris. Believe me, you are only just hanging on by the skin of your teeth. Stop making out that you are irreligious, go and shake hands with Abbé Faujas without delay… You will understand why later, even if you can’t guess the reason now.’
Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies stood there with his head bowed, rather ashamed of being taught a lesson. He was very conceited, and flashing his white teeth, attempted to escape from her teasing by whispering tenderly:
‘If you had said the word, Octavie, we could have governed Plassans between us. I offered to make life easy for you again…’
‘You are so conceited,’ she interrupted crossly. ‘You irritate me with your “Octavie”. I am Madame de Condamin to everyone, my dear man… Don’t you understand anything? I have an income of thirty thousand francs. I rule over the whole sub-prefecture. I move in all kinds of society, I am respected, acknowledged, loved by everybody. If people got wind of my past they would like me even more… What should I do with you, for heaven’s sake? You would only get in my way. I am a respectable lady, my dear.’
She had risen from her chair. She went over to Doctor Porquier, who was accustomed to come after his visits and spend an hour in the garden of the sub-prefecture to cultivate his female clients.
‘Oh, Doctor, I have such a migraine!’ she said, with a winning smile. ‘It has struck me here, on the left eyebrow.’
‘The side where the heart is, Madame,’ the doctor replied gallantly.
Madame de Condamin smiled, and did not insist on proceeding with the consultation. Madame Paloque leaned over to her husband, whom she brought along every day so that she could commend him to the influence of the sub-prefect, and whispered in his ear:
‘That’s the only way he cures them.’
In the meantime Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies had rejoined Monsieur de Condamin and Monsieur Delangre and was skilfully manoeuvring them in the direction of the porte cochère. When he was only a few steps away from it he halted, as though his attention was caught by the shuttlecock game still going on in the Impasse. Abbé Surin, with his windswept hair and the sleeves of his soutane rolled up, revealing his thin, white, feminine wrists, had moved right back, positioning Mademoiselle Aurélie twenty feet away. He played better than ever when he felt he had an audience. Mademoiselle Aurélie was also having one of her good days, playing against such a master of the game. The shuttlecock, played from the wrist, described a gentle, very elongated curve. And it happened with such regularity that it seemed to fall on the rackets of its own accord, flying from one to the other in the same elegant movement without the players moving from their positions. Abbé Surin, bending back a little, was showing off his graceful torso.
‘Well played, well played!’ cried the sub-prefect in delight. ‘Oh, Monsieur l’Abbé, I do congratulate you.’
Then, turning to Madame de Condamin, Doctor Porquier, and the Paloques:
‘Come and look, I’ve never seen anything more accomplished… Will you allow us to admire you, Monsieur l’Abbé?’
All the company from the sub-prefecture then formed a group at the bottom of the Impasse. Abbé Faujas had not moved. He responded to the greetings of Monsieur Delangre and Monsieur de Condamin with a slight inclination of his head. He was still keeping the score. When Aurélie missed a stroke he said pleasantly:
‘That gives you three hundred and ten points, since you changed the distance. Your sister has only forty-seven.’
While still seeming to follow the shuttlecock with great interest, he was darting rapid glances at the gate to the Rastoils’ garden which had remained wide open. Monsieur Maffre was the only one to have appeared there till that moment. Someone called to him from inside the garden.
‘Why are they laughing so loudly?’ Monsieur Rastoil asked, chatting to Monsieur de Bourdeu in front of the garden table.
‘It’s Monsignor’s secretary playing,’ answered Monsieur Maffre. ‘He’s astonishing, the whole neighbourhood’s watching him… Monsieur le Curé is there and he is amazed.’
Monsieur de Bourdeu took a large pinch of snuff and murmured:
‘Oh, is Abbé Faujas there?’
He met Monsieur Rastoil’s eyes. Both appeared to be embarrassed.
‘I hear’, ventured the president, ‘that the priest has come back into favour with Monsignor.’
‘Yes, this very morning,’ said Monsieur Maffre. ‘Oh, it was a total reconciliation. I had very moving details. Monsignor wept… It’s true Abbé Fenil did some things that were wrong.’
‘I thought the assistant bishop was a close friend of yours,’ Monsieur de Bourdeu remarked.
‘So he is, but I am also the friend of Monsieur le Curé,’ the justice of the peace replied quickly. ‘Thank God, he is of a piety which defies all the calumny. Didn’t they go as far as to attack his morality? How shameful!’
The former prefect looked at the president again with a strange expression.
‘And didn’t they try and compromise Monsieur le Curé in the matter of his politics,’ Monsieur Maffre continued. ‘They were saying he had upset the apple cart here, bestowing positions left and right, engineering it so that the clique from Paris came out on top. They couldn’t have been more damning if he were a robber chief… All a pack of lies!’
Monsieur de Bourdeu was drawing a face on the sandy path with the end of his walking stick.
‘Yes, I heard them saying those things,’ he said nonchalantly. ‘One can’t really believe that a minister of religion would accept such a role… In any case, to do justice to Plassans, I should say he would fail lamentably. Nobody here can be bought.’
‘Tittle-tattle!’ cried the president, with a shrug. ‘Can you change a town like an old coat? Paris can send us as many spies as it likes, Plassans will remain Legitimist. Take young Péqueur. We’ve made short work of him… People must be really stupid! Do we really imagine that mysterious characters are roaming the provinces offering people posts? I tell you I should be very interested to see one of these gentlemen.’
He was getting cross. Monsieur Maffre felt uneasy, and that he ought to stand up for himself:
‘Allow me,’ he broke in. ‘I never said that Abbé Faujas was a Bonapartist agent. On the contrary, I thought the accusation absurd.’
‘Oh, it’s not a question of Abbé Faujas; I’m speaking in general terms. One can’t be bought just like that, for heaven’s sake!… Abbé Faujas is completely above suspicion.’
There was a silence. Monsieur de Bourdeu finished off his face in the sand with a long, pointed beard.
‘Abbé
Faujas doesn’t have political opinions,’ he said drily.
‘Of course not,’ went on Monsieur Rastoil; ‘we were blaming him for being indifferent. But nowadays I approve of him. With all this gossiping, religion would be compromised… You know as well as I do, Bourdeu, that you can’t accuse him of acting in any underhand fashion. No one has ever seen him in the sub-prefecture, have they? He has remained in his own place in a dignified manner… If he were Bonapartist he would not be able to hide it, my word no!’
‘That’s true.’
‘And let’s not forget that he leads an exemplary life. My wife and my son told me things about him which I found extremely affecting.’
At that moment the laughter got louder than ever in the Impasse. Abbé Faujas’s voice was raised, complimenting Mademoiselle Aurélie on a truly remarkable stroke. Monsieur Rastoil, who had paused, went on with a smile:
‘Did you hear that? They must be having a wonderful time! It makes one long to be young again.’
Then, in a more serious voice:
‘Yes, my wife and son have won me round to Abbé Faujas. We are really sorry that his discretion prevents him from being one of us.’
Monsieur de Bourdeu nodded, as a burst of clapping rose from the Impasse. There was a commotion of feet, laughing, shouting, an outburst of jollity like schoolchildren at recreation. Monsieur Rastoil got up off his rustic bench.
‘My word,’ he said merrily, ‘let’s go and have a look. I’ve got itchy feet!’
The other two followed. All three stayed behind the little gate. It was the first time the president and the former prefect had ventured that far. When they saw the group from the sub-prefecture at the bottom of the Impasse, their expressions grew serious. Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies, on his side, pulled himself up to his full height and adopted an official attitude; while Madame de Condamin, laughing a great deal, floated along the wall, the rustling of her pink skirts filling the whole Impasse. The two groups cast sideways glances at each other, neither willing to give way to the other; and between them, Abbé Faujas, still at the Mourets’ gate, holding his breviary under his arm, was enjoying it all in his own unflustered way, without in the least seeming to understand the delicate nature of the situation.
In the meantime everyone there was holding their breath. Abbé Surin, seeing his audience swell, tried to raise applause with one last show of skill. He engineered situations, invented difficult positions for himself, turning round and playing without seeing where the shuttlecock was coming from, sometimes guessing at it, sending it back over his head to Mademoiselle Aurélie with mathematical precision. He was very red, sweating, dishevelled. His rabat, which had turned completely inside out, was hanging now off his right shoulder. But he remained a champion, cheerful, always charming. The two groups forgot themselves in their admiration of him. Madame de Condamin shushed them when they shouted encouragement too early by waving her lace handkerchief. At that, the young priest, in a further refinement, began to skip around to his right and left, judging his steps in such a way as to receive the shuttlecock in a new position. It was the grand final exercise. He moved ever more quickly until the moment his foot slipped and he almost fell on to Madame de Condamin’s bosom; she held her arms out with a little cry. The assembled company, thinking he was hurt, rushed forward. But, staggering, and falling on hands and knees, he pulled himself up again with one supreme jump, caught the shuttlecock and sent it back to Mademoiselle Aurélie before it could hit the ground. And he held his racket high, in triumph.
‘Bravo, bravo!’ Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies cried, going over to him.
‘Bravo! What a superb shot!’ echoed Monsieur Rastoil who also went over.
The game was halted. The two groups had invaded the Impasse; they mingled, surrounding Abbé Surin, who, panting, was leaning against the wall next to Abbé Faujas. Everyone talked at once.
‘I thought he’d fractured his skull,’ said Doctor Porquier to Monsieur Maffre in a voice that shook with emotion.
‘It must be said that all these games end badly,’ muttered Monsieur de Bourdeu, addressing himself to Monsieur Delangre and the Paloques, and simultaneously accepting the hand held out to him by Monsieur de Condamin, whom he usually avoided in the street so that he wouldn’t have to speak to him.
Madame de Condamin went from sub-prefect to president, placing them face to face with one another and repeating:
‘My goodness! I am in a worse state than he is, I thought we were both going to fall over. Did you see what a big stone that was?’
‘Indeed it was,’ said Monsieur Rastoil; ‘his heel must have caught against it.’
‘Do you think it was this one?’ asked Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies, picking up the stone.
They had never spoken before, apart from at official ceremonies. Both men proceeded to examine the stone. They passed it to one another, remarking that it was sharp and could have cut into the priest’s shoe. Madame de Condamin between them smiled and assured them she was beginning to recover.
‘Monsieur l’Abbé is not well!’ cried the Rastoil girls.
Abbé Surin had certainly gone very pale when he learned of the danger he had run. He was on the point of collapse when Abbé Faujas, who had stood aside, gathered him up in his powerful arms and carried him into the Mourets’ garden, where he put him on a chair. Both groups invaded the arbour. At that point the young priest passed out.
‘Rose, bring water and vinegar!’ shouted Abbé Faujas, hurrying towards the steps.
Mouret, who was in the dining room, appeared at the window; but when he saw everybody at the bottom of his garden, he drew back as if terrified. He hid, and was no longer to be seen. Meanwhile Rose arrived with a whole array of medicines. She bustled up, grumbling the while:
‘If only Madame were there; she’s in the seminary with the boy… I’m on my own, I can only do my best, can’t I?… Well, Monsieur’s not going to move, is he? You’d be on your last legs and he wouldn’t care. He’s skulking in the dining room. He wouldn’t give you so much as a glass of water; he’d leave you to die, he would.’
As she muttered these words she had reached the unconscious Abbé Surin.
‘Oh, poor little soul!’ she exclaimed in her tender-hearted, motherly way.
Abbé Surin, with eyes closed, resembled one of those appealing martyrs you see swooning in holy pictures. The oldest of the Rastoil girls was holding his head, which was lolling back, exposing his white, delicate neck. Everyone rushed forward. Madame de Condamin dabbed at his temples with a piece of cloth soaked in vinegar and water. The two groups waited anxiously. Finally he opened his eyes, only to close them again. He twice more lost consciousness.
‘You really gave me a shock!’ Doctor Porquier, who had kept hold of his hand, told him kindly.
The priest remained sitting, embarrassed, thanking everybody, assuring them it was of no importance. Then he saw they had unbuttoned his soutane and that his neck was bare; he smiled; he put his rabat on again. And as they advised him not to move, he determined to prove his strength. He returned to the Impasse with the Rastoil girls to finish the game.
‘You are well lodged in this house,’ said Monsieur Rastoil to Abbé Faujas, whose side he had not left.
‘The air on this hill is excellent,’ added Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies in his charming manner.
The two groups looked with interest at the Mourets’ house.
‘If you ladies and gentlemen would like to stop here in the garden for a while…,’ said Rose, ‘Monsieur le Curé is at home here. Wait, I’ll go and fetch some chairs.’ And she made three trips in spite of their protests. So after a brief exchange of looks, the two groups sat down out of politeness. The sub-prefect had placed himself on the right of Abbé Faujas while the president sat on his left. The conversation was very amicable.
‘You are not a noisy neighbour, Monsieur le Curé,’ Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies said again graciously. ‘You wouldn’t believe how delighted I am to see you at the
same time every day in this little corner of paradise. It gives me some respite from my worries.’
‘Such a rare thing, a good neighbour!’ agreed Monsieur Rastoil.
‘No doubt about it,’ Monsieur de Bourdeu broke in. ‘Monsieur le Curé has brought the blessed tranquillity of the cloisters with him.’
While Abbé Faujas smilingly acknowledged all this, Monsieur de Condamin, who had not sat down, leaned over to Monsieur Delangre and whispered in his ear:
‘There’s Rastoil dreaming of a prosecutor’s place for his great gangling lad!’
Monsieur Delangre flashed him a terrifying look, agitated by the idea that this incorrigible chatterbox could ruin everything; which didn’t prevent the forestry commissioner from adding:
‘And look at Bourdeu, he thinks he has got his prefecture back already!’
But Madame de Condamin had just caused a sensation by proclaiming pointedly:
‘What I love about this garden is its charming intimacy—to me it is a little spot shut away from all the miseries of the world. Cain and Abel* would have been reconciled here.’
And she had added emphasis to her words by flicking her eyelids to left and right at the neighbouring gardens. Monsieur Maffre and Doctor Porquier nodded their heads in approval, while the Paloques looked at each other uncomprehendingly, fearing to compromise themselves with one side or the other were they to open their mouths.
After a quarter of an hour, Monsieur Rastoil got up.
‘My wife will wonder where we’ve got to,’ he murmured.
Everyone had stood up, not quite knowing how to take their leave. But Abbé Faujas held out his hands:
‘My paradise remains open,’ he said with his sunniest air.
Then the president promised to call on Monsieur le Curé from time to time. The sub-prefect did the same, more enthusiastically still. And the two groups stayed there for a good five minutes more, paying compliments to one another, while in the Impasse the laughter of the Rastoil girls and Abbé Surin rang out again. The game had regained its passion. The shuttlecock flew back and forth in a regular flight, above the wall.