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

apples, grapes is up there on the floor…’
    The priest was listening with a surprise that his extreme politeness could not conceal.
    ‘Oh, it won’t take us long,’ Mouret went on. ‘In ten minutes if you won’t mind waiting, Rose will clear your rooms.’
    The worried look on the abbé’s pale face became more marked.
    ‘The rooms are furnished, are they not?’ he asked.
    ‘Not at all. There’s not one stick of furniture. We’ve never lived in them.’
    At that the priest became agitated. His grey eyes flashed. He exclaimed, barely suppressing his anger:
    ‘What! But I specifically asked him in my letter if we could rent furnished rooms. Obviously I couldn’t bring any furniture in my trunk.’
    ‘What did I tell you?’ Mouret’s voice grew louder. ‘That Bourrette is unbelievable… He came round here, Monsieur, and for certain he saw the apples, because he even picked one up, declaring that he had rarely seen such a beautiful apple. He said that everything seemed fine and that it was just right and that he would rent the rooms.’
    But Abbé Faujas was no longer listening; his cheeks were flushed with anger. He turned, and in an anxious and stuttering voice he said:
    ‘Mother, do you hear that? There isn’t any furniture.’
    The old lady, her thin black shawl wrapped tightly around her and not letting go of her basket, had just been creeping around inspecting the ground floor. She had got as far as the kitchen door and inspected its four corners; then, coming back to the steps, had slowly taken in the view of the garden. But it was the dining room that interested her most. There she stood as before opposite the laden table, her eyes on the steaming soup, when her son again said:
    ‘Do you hear that, Mother? We shall have to go to the hotel.’
    Without answering, she looked up. Her whole face indicated a refusal to leave this house whose every nook and cranny she was already familiar with.
    She gave a small, almost imperceptible shrug, her eyes wandering from the kitchen to the garden and from garden to dining room.
    Mouret meanwhile was becoming impatient. Seeing that neither mother nor son seemed about to go away, he went on:
    ‘Unfortunately we don’t have any beds… Well, in the attic we have a sort of truckle bed which might be all right at a pinch for Madame, but I don’t know what Monsieur l’Abbé could sleep on.’
    Then Madame Faujas finally opened her mouth. She said in a clipped, rather hoarse voice:
    ‘My son can have the truckle bed… I only need a mattress on the floor in a corner.’
    The abbé gave an approving nod to this arrangement. Mouret started to protest, to try and think of some other arrangement. Butconfronted by the satisfied expression of his new tenants, said nothing, but made do with exchanging a look of astonishment with his wife.
    ‘Tomorrow is another day,’ he said with his bourgeois dryness. ‘You will be able to get what furniture you need. Rose will go up and take away the fruit and make the beds. Would you wait a moment on the terrace?… Come children, get two chairs.’
    Ever since the priest and his mother had arrived, the children had been sitting quietly at the table. They studied the visitors curiously. The priest had seemed not to notice them; but Madame Faujas had stopped for a moment by each of them, as though she wished from the outset to get inside their young heads. At their father’s words all three jumped up from their chairs.
    The old lady did not sit down. As Mouret was turning round to see where she was, he saw her standing in front of one of the half-open windows in the sitting room. She was craning her neck, quietly finishing her inspection, like someone visiting a property for sale. The moment Rose lifted the small trunk she came back into the hall, saying simply:
    ‘I’ll go and help her.’
    And she climbed the stairs after the servant. The priest did not even turn his head. He was smiling at the three children standing before