The Conquest of Plassans (Les Rougon-Macquart Book 4) by Émile Zola Read Free Book Online Page A

shadow, was an elderly woman who bore a surprising resemblance to him, but she was smaller and her appearance was more uncouth. Seeing the table set for supper, they both hesitated: they took a discreet step back, but did not retire completely. The tall black figure of the priest made a sombre mark on the bright whitewashed wall.
    ‘Forgive us for intruding,’ he said to Mouret. ‘We have just come from Abbé Bourrette’s; he must have told you…’
    ‘No, he didn’t!’ Mouret exclaimed. ‘That’s typical of him! He always seems to have descended from another planet. This very morning he told me categorically that you wouldn’t be here for another two days… Well, we’ll have to move you in all the same.’
    Abbé Faujas apologized. He had a deep voice and its cadences were very melodious. He was truly sorry they had arrived at such an inopportune moment. Having conveyed his apologies in a few well-chosen words, he turned to pay the porter who had brought his trunk. With large, muscular hands he pulled from a pocket in his cassock a purse with just the steel rings visible. Head bent, he rummaged round in it tentatively for a minute or two, feeling the coins with the tips of his fingers. Then, without anyone seeing the coin, the porter went away. Faujas said again, politely:
    ‘Do carry on with your meal, Monsieur, I beg you… Your servant will show us the rooms. She will help me carry this upstairs.’
    He was already bending down to take one of the handles of the trunk. It was a small wooden box reinforced with strips of tin round the middle and at the corners. It looked to have been repaired on one of its sides with a pine cross-piece. Mouret was surprised. He glanced around for the rest of the priest’s luggage, but could see nothing except a large basket which the old lady, tired though she was, held on to with both hands placed in front of her skirts, doggedly unwilling to put it down. Amongst the packets of linen, the corner ofa comb wrapped in paper and the neck of a badly corked litre bottle protruded from under the raised cover.
    ‘No, no, leave it,’ Mouret said, tapping the trunk lightly with his foot. ‘It can’t be very heavy. Rose will manage on her own.’
    He was no doubt unaware of the covert scorn in his words. The old lady fixed her beady black eyes on him. Then she went back into the dining room, which she had been studying ever since she arrived, with its table laid for supper; tight-lipped, she surveyed one thing after another. Abbé Faujas meanwhile had agreed to leave the trunk there. In the yellow dusty sunlight coming in through the garden door, his shabby cassock looked all red; the edges were adorned with patches; it was extremely clean, but so pathetically worn that Marthe, who had thus far remained in her chair with a kind of worried reserve, also rose. The abbé, who, after only a cursory glance at her, had immediately glanced away, saw her get up, while not appearing to look at her at all.
    ‘I beg you,’ he repeated, ‘do not disturb yourselves. We should be very sorry to interrupt your dinner.’
    ‘Well, all right!’ said Mouret, who was hungry. ‘Rose will take you up. Ask her if you need anything… Make yourselves comfortable.’
    Abbé Faujas, having said goodnight, was on his way to the bottom of the stairs, when Marthe went over to her husband and said softly:
    ‘But you have forgotten, my dear…’
    ‘What?’ he asked, seeing her hesitate.
    ‘You know… the fruit?’
    ‘Oh, you’re right, there’s the wretched fruit!’ he exclaimed in consternation. And as Abbé Faujas came back with a questioning look: ‘I am really very annoyed, Monsieur,’ he said. ‘Father Bourrette is surely a good man, but it is vexing that you entrusted him with this matter… His head is not worth two sous… * If we had known, we should have had everything ready. Instead of that, we have to move things around. We were using the rooms, you see. Our entire harvest of figs,