That same night Mouret, who was still awake when his wife returned home, plied her with questions in his desire to find out what had taken place at Madame Rougon\'s. She told him that everything had gone off as usual, and that she had noticed nothing out of the common. She just added that Abbé Faujas had walked home with her, but had merely spoken of commonplace matters. Mouret was very much vexed at what he called his wife\'s indolence.

\'If anyone had committed suicide at your mother\'s,\' he growled, as he angrily buried his head in his pillow, \'you would know nothing about it!\'

When he came home to dinner the next day, he called to Marthe as soon as he caught sight of her:

\'I was sure of it! I knew you had never troubled yourself to use your eyes! It\'s just like you! Sitting the whole evening in a room and never having the faintest notion of what was being said or done around you! Why, the whole town is talking about it! The whole town, do you hear? I couldn\'t go anywhere without somebody speaking to me about——\'

\'About what, my dear?\' asked Marthe, in astonishment.

\'About the fine success of Abbé Faujas, forsooth! He was turned out of the green drawing-room!\'

\'Indeed he wasn\'t! I saw nothing of the kind.\'

[Pg 69]

\'Haven\'t I told you that you never see anything? Do you know what the Abbé did at Besan?on? He either murdered a priest or committed forgery! They are not quite certain which it was. However, they seem to have given him a nice reception! He turned quite green. Well, it\'s all up with him now!\'

Marthe bent her head and allowed her husband to revel in the priest\'s discomfiture. Mouret was delighted.

\'I still stick to my first idea,\' he said; \'your mother and he have got some underhand plot together. I hear that she showed him the greatest civility. It was she, wasn\'t it, who asked him to accompany you home? Why didn\'t you tell me so?\'

Marthe shrugged her shoulders without replying.

\'You are the most provoking woman in the world!\' her husband cried. \'All these little details are of the greatest importance. Madame Paloque, whom I have just met, told me that she and several other ladies had lingered behind to see how the Abbé would effect his departure, and that your mother availed herself of you to cover the parson\'s retreat. Just try to remember, now, what he said to you as he walked home with you.\'

He sat down by his wife\'s side with his keen, questioning little eyes fixed upon her.

\'Really,\' said she quietly, \'he only talked to me about the trifling commonplace matters such as anyone might have talked of. He spoke about the cold, which was very sharp, and about the quietness of the town at night-time, and I think he mentioned the pleasant evening he had passed.\'

\'Ah, the hypocrite! Didn\'t he ask you any questions about your mother or her guests?\'

\'No. The Rue de la Banne is only a very short distance, you know, and it didn\'t take us three minutes. He walked by my side without offering me his arm, and he took such long strides that I was almost obliged to run. I don\'t know why folks should all be so bitter against him. He doesn\'t seem very well off, and he was shivering, poor man, in that threadbare old cassock of his.\'

Mouret was not without pity and sympathy.

\'Ah! he must have done,\' he said; \'he can\'t feel very warm now that the frost has come.\'

\'I\'m sure we have nothing to complain of in his conduct,\' Marthe continued. \'He is very punctual in his payments,[Pg 70] and he makes no noise and gives no trouble. Where could you find a more desirable tenant?\'

\'Nowhere, I grant you. What I was saying just now was to show you what little attention you pay, wherever you go, to what takes place around you. I know the set your mother receives too well to attach much weight to anything that happens in the green drawing-room: it\'s a perpetual source of lies and the most ridiculous stories. I don\'t suppose for a moment that the Abbé ever murdered anyone any more than that he was ever a bankrupt; and I told Madame Paloque that people ought to see that their own linen was clean before they found fault with that of others. I hope she took the hint to herself.\'

This was a fib on Mouret\'s part, for he had said nothing of the kind to Madame Paloque; but Marthe\'s pity had made him feel rather ashamed of the delight which he had manifested at the Abbé\'s troubles. On the following days he went entirely over to the priest\'s side, and whenever he happened to meet any people whom he detested, Monsieur de Bourdeu, Monsieur Delangre, and Doctor Porquier, he launched out into warm praises of the Abbé just for the pleasure of astonishing and annoying them. The Abbé, said he, was a man of great courage and perfect guilelessness, but extremely poor, and some very base-minded person must have originated the calumnies about him. Then he went on to have a rap at the Rougons\' guests, whom he called hypocrites, canting humbugs and stuck-up idiots, who were afraid of a man of real virtue. In a short time he had quite made the Abbé\'s quarrel his own, and availed himself of it to attack both the Rastoil gang and the gang of the Sub-Prefecture as well.

\'Isn\'t it pitiable?\' he sometimes said to his wife, forgetting that she had heard him tell a very different story, \'isn\'t it pitiable to see a lot of people who stole their money no one knows where, leaguing so bitterly against a poor man just because he hasn\'t got twenty francs to spare to buy a cart-load of firewood? Such conduct quite disgusts me! I\'m quite willing to be surety for him. I ought to know what he does and what sort of a man he is, since he lives in my house; and so I\'m not slack in telling them the truth, I give them all they deserve when I meet them. And I won\'t content myself with that, either. I want the Abbé to be my friend, and I mean to walk out with him arm-in-arm along the promenade to let people know that I\'m not afraid of being seen with him,[Pg 71] rich and well thought of as I am! I hope, too, that you will show all the kindness and consideration to these poor people that you can.\'

Marthe smiled quietly. She was delighted at the friendly disposition her husband was now manifesting towards their lodgers. Rose was ordered to show them every civility; she was even told that she might volunteer to do Madame Faujas\' shopping for her on wet mornings. The latter, however, always declined the cook\'s services, though she no longer manifested that silent stiffness of demeanour which she had shown during the earlier days of her residence in the house. One morning, as she met Marthe, who was coming down from an attic which was used as a store-room for the fruit, she stopped and talked to her for a moment, and even unbent so far as to accept a couple of magnificent pears. Those pears were the beginning of a closer intimacy between them.

Abbé Faujas, too, did not now glide so hurriedly up and down the stairs as he had been wont to do. Almost every day, when Mouret heard the rustling of the priest\'s cassock as he came down, he hastened to the foot of the staircase and told the Abbé that it would give him great pleasure to walk part of the way with him. He had also thanked him for the little service he had done his wife, skilfully questioning him at the time to find out if he intended again calling on the Rougons. The Abbé had smiled and freely confessed that he was not fitted for society. This had delighted Mouret, who felt quite certain that he had had some influence in bringing about his lodger\'s decision. He even began to dream of preventing all future intercourse with the green drawing-room and of keeping him altogether to himself. So, when Marthe told him one evening that Madame Faujas had accepted a couple of pears, he looked upon this as a fortunate circumstance which would facilitate the execution of his designs.

\'Haven\'t they really got a fire on the second floor this bitterly cold weather?\' he asked, in Rose\'s presence.

\'No, indeed, sir,\' replied the cook, who understood that the question was meant for herself; \'they couldn\'t very well have one, for I\'ve never seen the least bit of wood taken upstairs, unless indeed they\'re burning their four chairs or Madame Faujas manages to carry up the wood in her basket.\'

\'It is not right of you to talk in that way, Rose,\' said Marthe. \'The poor things must be shivering with cold in those big rooms.\'

[Pg 72]

\'I should think so, indeed,\' exclaimed Mouret; \'there were several degrees of frost last night and there was considerable fear felt about the olive-trees. The water in our jug upstairs was frozen. This room of ours here is a small one, however, and very warm.\'

The doors and windows of the dining-room were provided with pads, so that no draught could find its way through any crevice, and a big earthenware stove made the place as warm as a bakehouse. During the winter evenings the young people read or played round the table, while Mouret made his wife play piquet till bed-time, which, by the way, was perfect torture to her. For a long time she had refused to touch the cards, saying that she did not know a single game, but at last he had taught her piquet, and she had then been forced to resign herself to her fate.

\'Don\'t you think,\' Mouret continued, \'that we really ought to ask the Faujases to come and spend the evenings here? They would at any rate be warm for two or three hours; and they would be company for us, too, and make us feel more lively. Ask them, and I don\'t think they\'ll refuse.\'

The next day Marthe met Madame Faujas in the hall and gave the invitation, which the old lady at once accepted, both for herself and her son.

\'I\'m surprised she didn\'t make some little demur about coming,\' said Mouret. \'I fancied that they would have required more pressing. But the Abbé is beginning to understand that he does wrong in living like a wild beast.\'

In the evening Mouret took care that the table was cleared in good time, and he set out a bottle of sweet wine and a plateful of little cakes. Although he was not given to being lavish, he was anxious to show that the Rougons were not the only people who knew how things ought to be done. The tenants of the second floor came downstairs about eight o\'clock. Abbé Faujas was wearing a new cassock, at the sight of which Mouret was so much surprised that he could only stammer a few words in answer to the priest\'s courtesies.

\'Indeed, Monsieur l\'Abbé, all the honour is for us. Come, children, put some chairs here.\'

They all took their seats round the table. The room was uncomfortably warm, for Mouret had crammed the stove as full as possible in order to let his guests see that he made no account of a log more or less. Abbé Faujas made himself very pleasant, fondling Désirée and questioning the two lads[Pg 73] about their studies. Marthe, who was knitting some stockings, raised her eyes every now and then in surprise at the flexible tones of that strange voice which she was not accustomed to hear sounding in the monotonous quietness of the dining-room. She looked at the priest\'s powerful face and square-cut features, and then bent her head again, without trying to hide the interest she took in this man who was so strong and kindly and whom she knew to be so poor. As for Mouret, he uncouthly stared at the new cassock, and could not restrain himself from saying, with a sly smile:

\'You needn\'t have troubled to dress to come here, Monsieur l\'Abbé. We don\'t go in for ceremony, as you know very well.\'

Marthe blushed, while the priest gaily related that he had bought the cassock that very day. He had kept it on, he said, to please his mother, who thought that he looked finer than a king in it.

\'Don\'t you, mother?\' he asked the old lady.

Madame Faujas nodded without taking her eyes off her son. She was sitting opposite to him, gazing at him in the bright lamplight with an air of ecstasy.

They began to talk of various matters, and Abbé Faujas seemed to throw off his gloomy coldness. He still remained grave, but it was with a pleasant, good-natured gravity. He listened attentively to Mouret, replied to his most insignificant remarks, and seemed to take an interest in his gossip. His landlord explained to him the manner in which the family lived, and finished his account by saying:

\'We spend our evenings in the way you see, always as quietly as this. We never invite anyone, as we are always more comfortable by ourselves. Every evening I have a game at piquet with my wife. It is a very old habit of ours, and I could scarcely go to sleep without it.\'

\'Pray don\'t let us interfere with it!\' cried Abbé Faujas. \'I beg that you won\'t in any way depart from your usual habits on our account.\'

\'Oh dear no! I am not a monomaniac about it, and it won\'t kill me to go without it for once.\'

The priest insisted for a time, but, when he saw that Marthe declined to play with even greater determination than her husband, he turned towards his mother, who had been sitting silent with her hands folded in front of her, and said:

\'Mother, you have a game with Monsieur Mouret.\'

[Pg 74]

She looked keenly into her son\'s eyes, while Mouret still continued to refuse, and declared that he did not want to break up the party. However, when the priest told him that his mother was a good player he gave way.

\'Is she, indeed?\' he said. \'Then, if madame really wishes it, and no one objects——\'

\'Come along, mother, and have a game!\' said Abbé Faujas in a more decided tone.

\'Certainly,\' she replied, \'I shall be delighted; but I shall have to change my place.\'

\'Oh! there will be no difficulty about that,\' said Mouret, who was quite charmed. \'You had better take your son\'s seat, and perhaps Monsieur l\'Abbé will be good enough to sit next to my wife. Madame can sit next to me. There! that will do capitally.\'

The priest, who had at first been opposite to Marthe on the other side of the table, was thus placed next to her. They sat quite apart by themselves, the two players having drawn their chairs close together to engage in their struggle. Octave and Serge had just gone up to their room. Désirée was sleeping with her head on the table after her usual custom. When ten o\'clock struck, Mouret, who had lost the first game, did not feel inclined to go to bed but asked for his revenge. Madame Faujas consulted her son with a glance, and then in her tranquil fashion began to shuffle the cards. The Abbé had merely exchanged a few words with Marthe. On this the first evening that he spent in the dining-room he only spoke of commonplace topics; the household, the price of victuals at Plassans, and the anxieties which children caused. Marthe replied with a show of interest, looking up every now and then with her bright glance, and importing into the conversation some of her own sedate good sense.

It was nearly eleven o\'clock when Mouret threw down the cards with some slight irritation.

\'I have lost again!\' he said. \'I haven\'t had a single good card all the evening. Perhaps I shall have better luck to-morrow. We shall see you again, I hope, madame?\'

And when Abbé Faujas began to protest that they could not think of abusing the Mourets\' kindness by disturbing them in this way every evening, he continued:

\'But you are not disturbing us at all, you are giving us pleasure. Besides, I have been defeated, and I\'m sure that madame can\'t refuse me another game.\'

[Pg 75]

When the priest and his mother had accepted the invitation and had gone upstairs again, Mouret showed some ill-temper and began to excuse himself for having lost. He seemed quite annoyed about it.

\'The old woman isn\'t as good a player as I am, I\'m sure,\' he said to his wife; \'but she has got such eyes! I could really almost fancy she was cheating, upon my word I could! Well! we shall see what happens to-morrow.\'

From that time the Faujases came down regularly every day to spend the evening with the Mourets. There were tremendous battles between the old lady and her landlord. She seemed to play with him, to let him win just frequently enough to prevent him from being altogether discouraged, and this made him fume with suppressed anger, for he prided himself on his skill at piquet. He used to indulge in dreams of beating her night after night for weeks in succession without ever letting her win a single game; while she ever preserved wonderful coolness, her square peasant-like face remaining quite expressionless as with her big hands she threw down the cards with all the regularity of a machine. From eight o\'clock till bed-time they would............