The Conquest of Plassans (Classic Reprint)

  Madame de Condamin smiled. She professed to understand nothing about politics. She made good her escape, while the priest walked to the end of the arbour with the president and in a low voice went on talking to him. When they came slowly back, Monsieur Rastoil was answering:

  ‘You are right; he would be a suitable candidate; he does not belong to any faction and it would be possible to unite under his name… I don’t like the Empire any more than you do, as you know. But in the end it is puerile to send to the Chamber of Deputies people whose only mandate is to annoy the government. Plassans is suffering; we need someone with a head for business, somebody from the town who is capable of protecting our interests.’

  ‘It’s burning, it’s burning!’ came the reedy voice of Aurélie.

  Abbé Surin, who was leading the group, went through the arbour, searching this way and that.

  ‘In the water, in the water!’ the girl repeated, delighted at their vain attempts to find it.

  But one of the Maffre boys, lifting up a flower pot, discovered the handkerchief folded in four.

  ‘That great beanpole of a girl should have stuffed it in her mouth,’ said Madame Paloque. ‘There’s room enough and nobody would have found it there.’

  Her husband silenced her with a furious look. He wouldn’t put up with her sour remarks any more. Afraid that Monsieur de Condamin might have heard, he muttered:

  ‘What delightful youngsters!’

  ‘My dear sir,’ the forestry commissioner was remarking to Monsieur de Bourdeu, ‘your success is certain. Only be very careful when you are in Paris. I have it on good authority that the government is intending to act with force if the opposition thwarts them too often.’

  The former prefect glanced at him very nervously, wondering if he was pulling his leg. Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies only smiled and stroked his whiskers. Then the conversation reverted to general topics, and it seemed to Monsieur de Bourdeu that everybody was congratulating him on his forthcoming triumph, with tact and discretion. He enjoyed an hour of exquisite popularity.

  ‘It’s surprising how the grapes ripen more quickly in the sun,’ observed Abbé Bourrette, who had not moved from where he sat, looking up at the arbour.

  ‘In the north,’ explained Doctor Porquier, ‘they often only reach maturity if you pick off the surrounding leaves.’

  They were just beginning to discuss this subject when it was Séverin’s turn to cry:

  ‘It’s burning, it’s burning!’

  But he had hung the handkerchief in such an obvious place behind the garden gate that Abbé Surin found it straight away. When the latter had hidden it, the group searched in vain throughout the garden for nearly half an hour. They had to give up, whereupon the priest pointed it out right in the middle of a flower bed, so artfully disguised that it resembled a white stone. It was the best trick of the afternoon.

  The news that the government was not going to put up a candidate ran quickly through the town, and caused some consternation. This withdrawal inevitably resulted in making the different political factions nervous. Their own hopes of winning relied on the diversion that would be caused by an official candidate. It was looking as if the Marquis of Lagrifoul, Monsieur de Bourdeu, and Maurin the hatmaker would divide the vote in three roughly equal parts. There would certainly be a second round, and who knew what name would emerge at that point! In truth they were talking about a fourth candidate whose name nobody precisely knew, a tactful man who would be able to unite the parties. The electors of Plassans, apprehensive now they had been given a free hand, only wanted unity, and to choose one of their citizens who would please all the factions.

  ‘The government is wrong to treat us like naughty children,’ the shrewd politicians of the Chamber of Commerce protested, rather piqued. ‘You’d think the town was a hotbed of revolution! If the administration had had the good sense to sponsor a possible candidate, we should all have voted for him… The sub-prefect talked about teaching us a lesson. Well, we won’t be taught that lesson. We’ll find our own candidate, and show them that Plassans is a town of common sense and true liberty.’

  And they searched. But the names put forward by friends or interested parties only added to the confusion. In one week Plassans had more than twenty candidates. Madame Rougon was worried and, not understanding the situation and furious with the sub-prefect, went to see Abbé Faujas. Péqueur, she said, was an ass, a fop, a puppet, only good for flaunting himself round the official salons. He had already allowed the government to be defeated, and now would end up compromising it by his stupid apathy.

  ‘Calm down,’ said the priest, smiling. ‘This time, Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies is happy to obey… Victory is certain.’

  ‘But you have no candidate!’ she exclaimed. ‘Where is your candidate?’

  So he expounded his plan. Being an intelligent woman, she approved of it. But she was astonished when he confided the name to her.

  ‘What!’ she said. ‘You’ve chosen him?… Nobody’s ever thought of him, I assure you.’

  ‘So I should hope,’ the priest replied, smiling again. ‘We need a candidate nobody has thought of, so that everyone can accept him without feeling compromised.’

  Then, with the recklessness of a powerful man who agrees to explain why he has behaved in that way:

  ‘I have a lot to thank you for,’ he continued. ‘You have prevented me from making many mistakes. My eyes were fixed on the goal, but I did not see the snares that perhaps would have been enough to cause my downfall… Thank God all this petty, childish war is over. I shall be able to move around more easily… As for my choice, it’s a good one, be assured. The very next day after my arrival in Plassans I looked for a man and I found him. He is adaptable, very capable, very energetic. He’s not quarrelled with anyone up till now, and that’s not the characteristic of a vulgar or ambitious man. I know he is not on especially good terms with you. That’s really the reason I didn’t take you into my confidence. But you are wrong, you will see what progress he makes once he is launched. He will die a senator… Well, what decided me in the end were the stories people told me about his wealth. He’s taken his wife back three times, after having been given one hundred thousand francs by his worthy father-in-law each time after she was discovered in flagrante. If he has really made his fortune like that, he’s a fellow who will be very useful in Paris for certain jobs… Oh, you may search for another, but apart from him there are only fools in Plassans.’

  ‘So you are making the government a present!’ Félicité said with a laugh.

  She allowed herself to be persuaded. And the next day the name of Delangre went flying from one end of town to the other. Friends, they said, had insisted on him accepting the nomination. He had refused for some time, believing himself not good enough for the job, repeating that he wasn’t a politician, that Messieurs Lagrifoul and de Bourdeu on the other hand had long experience of public affairs. Then, as people swore that Plassans needed a representative who didn’t come from inside the parties, he had allowed himself to be swayed, but at the same time expressly saying what he would and wouldn’t do. It was to be quite understood that he would not go to the Chamber of Deputies either to annoy or to uncritically support the government and that he would think of himself only as the representative of the citizens of the town. That, moreover, he would always vote for liberty in order, and for order in liberty. Finally that he would remain mayor of Plassans so that he might make the wholly conciliatory and administrative nature of the role which he was taking on, obvious. These words seemed particularly wise. The shrewd politicians of the Chamber of Commerce vied with one another in repeating that very evening:

  ‘I told you so, Delangre is the man we need… I am curious to know what the sub-prefect will say when the name of the mayor comes out at the ballot-box. Perhaps they won’t accuse us of voting like sulky schoolchildren any more than they will blame us for crawling to the government… If the Empire was taught a few lessons like that, the world
would be a better place.’

  This was a trail of gunpowder. The fuse was lit and a spark sufficed. From all parts at once, from the three separate quarters of the town, in each house, in each family, the name of Monsieur Delangre rose amid a chorus of praise. He turned into the long-awaited Messiah, the unknown saviour revealed in the morning and adored in the evening.

  From sacristy and confessional the name of Monsieur Delangre was whispered; it echoed through the nave, fell from the pulpits of the surrounding districts, was whispered from ear to ear like a sacrament; it spread as far as the furthermost godly households. Priests carried his name in the folds of their soutanes; Abbé Bourrette bestowed respectability upon it with his large belly; Abbé Surin bestowed the grace of his smile, Monsignor Rousselot the feminine charms of his pastoral blessing. The society ladies never ceased talking about Monsieur Delangre. Such a nice character, such a fine and intelligent face. Madame Rastoil did not stop blushing. Madame Paloque waxed so enthusiastic, she was almost pretty. As for Madame de Condamin, she would have wielded her fan on his behalf. She won hearts by the way she squeezed the hands of the voters who promised to vote for him. Finally Monsieur Delangre enthused the Youth Club. Séverin had made him into his hero, while Guillaume and the Maffre boys had managed to win over the sympathies of the less salubrious quarters of the town. And even the young girls in the Work of the Virgin, who played shove ha’penny with the apprentice tanners of the area at the end of the deserted streets by the ramparts, sang the praises of Monsieur Delangre.

  On voting day he had a crushing majority. The whole town played its part. The Marquis of Lagrifoul and then Monsieur de Bourdeu, both of them enraged, said there had been some dirty work, and had withdrawn. Monsieur Delangre remained therefore on his own against the hatmaker Maurin. The latter obtained the vote of fifteen hundred staunch republicans in the town. The mayor won the countryside, the Bonapartist crowd, the bourgeois supporters of the clergy in the new town, the timid little shopkeepers from the old quarter, and even a few naïve royalists of the Saint-Marc district, where the nobility abstained. In this way he amassed thirty-three thousand votes. The whole affair was conducted with such competence, the success so convincing, that Plassans was taken by surprise on the evening of the election at such a unanimous expression of their will. The town thought it had just dreamed a dream of heroes, that an omnipotent hand must have struck the earth in order to produce thirty-three thousand voters, a rather frightening army of people whose power nobody had suspected until then. The politicians in the Chamber of Commerce looked at each other perplexed, like men dumbfounded by the victory.

  In the evening the friends of Monsieur Rastoil joined with the friends of Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies for a quiet celebration in a small salon in the sub-prefecture which looked out on to the gardens. Tea was drunk. The day’s great triumph completed the fusion of the two groups. All the usual suspects were present.

  ‘I’ve never systematically opposed any government,’ Monsieur Rastoil declared, accepting some petits fours passed round by Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies. ‘The judiciary must not get involved in political wrangling. I readily admit that the Empire has already accomplished great things and is called to realize even greater things if it persists on the path of justice and liberty.’

  The sub-prefect assented as if the praise was addressed to him personally. The day before, Monsieur Rastoil had read in the Moniteur the order appointing his son Séverin deputy attorney in Faverolles. There was also much talk of a wedding between Lucien Delangre and the oldest of the Rastoil girls.

  ‘Yes, it’s all arranged,’ whispered Monsieur de Condamin to Madame Paloque, who had just been quizzing him about it. ‘He has chosen Angéline. I think he would have preferred Aurélie, but he’s been made to realize that the younger one couldn’t in all decency marry before the older.’

  ‘Angéline, are you sure?’ Madame Paloque murmured slyly. ‘I thought Angéline bore some resemblance…’

  The forestry commissioner put his finger to his lips, and smiled.

  ‘Oh well now, it’s the luck of the draw, isn’t it?’ she continued. ‘The bonds between the two families will be even stronger… We are all friends now. Paloque is expecting his honour. I think everything has turned out very satisfactorily.’

  Monsieur Delangre didn’t arrive until very late. He was given a veritable ovation. Madame de Condamin had just informed Doctor Porquier that his son Guillaume had been appointed manager of the post office. She delivered good news, said that Abbé Bourrette would be Monsignor’s assistant bishop the following year, gave Abbé Surin a bishopric before he was forty, and announced an honour for Monsieur Maffre.

  ‘Poor Bourdeu!’ said Monsieur Rastoil with lingering regret.

  ‘Oh, don’t pity him!’ she cried gaily. ‘I will be responsible for consoling him. The Chamber of Deputies would not have suited him. He needs a prefecture… Tell him that in the end we’ll find him a prefecture.’

  The laughter grew louder. The gaiety of beautiful Octavie, her constant concern to please everyone, enchanted the company. She really was doing the honours for the prefecture. She was queen. And it was she who jokingly gave Monsieur Delangre the most practical advice about the position he should occupy on the legislative body. She took him on one side and offered to introduce him to some important people, an offer he gratefully accepted. At around eleven o’clock Monsieur de Condamin talked of illuminating the garden. But she quashed the gentlemen’s enthusiasm, saying that it would not be seemly, that one mustn’t look as if one were making a mockery of the town.

  ‘And Abbé Fenil?’ she asked Abbé Faujas abruptly, bearing him off into a window recess. ‘I have been thinking about him… Has he not shifted his position then?’

  ‘Abbé Fenil is a man of sense,’ replied the priest with a thin smile. ‘He has been made to realize that he shouldn’t meddle with politics in future.’

  Abbé Faujas, in the midst of this triumph, remained solemn. To him it was no cause for celebration. Madame de Condamin’s incessant prattling wore him out. The satisfaction of these vulgar ambitious people filled him with disdain. He appeared to be in a daze as he stood there leaning against the mantelpiece, a far-off look in his eyes. He was the master now and no longer needed to act contrary to his instincts; he could stretch out his hand, take hold of the town, and make it tremble. His gaunt dark figure filled the drawing room. Gradually the armchairs had been pulled closer together, forming a circle around him. The men expected him to express his satisfaction. The women implored him with their looks, like subservient slaves. But he, cruelly breaking up the party, was the first to go, taking his leave with a curt word or two.

  When he got back to the Mourets through the Impasse des Chevillottes and the garden, he found Marthe alone in the dining room, on a chair against the wall with a faraway look in her eyes; she was very pale and was staring vaguely at the lamp with its charred wick. Upstairs Trouche was receiving visitors and singing bawdy songs, accompanied by Olympe and the rest who were tapping their glasses with the handles of their knives.

  CHAPTER 20

  ABBÉ FAUJAS put his hand on Marthe’s shoulder.

  ‘What are you doing there?’ he asked. ‘Why have you not gone to bed?… I forbade you to wait up for me.’

  She came to with a start.

  ‘I thought you would come back earlier,’ she stammered, ‘and I must have fallen asleep… I think Rose has made some tea.’

  But the priest, calling to the cook, scolded her for not sending her mistress to bed. He talked to her in a voice that betokened he was master and would brook no argument.

  ‘Rose, give Monsieur le Curé some tea,’ said Marthe.

  ‘I don’t need tea!’ he cried, getting cross. ‘Go to bed straight away. Don’t be silly, I know what I want… Rose, light my way upstairs.’

  The cook accompanied him to the foot of the stairs.

  ‘Monsieur le Curé knows perfectly well it’s not my fault,’ she said. ‘Madame??
?s behaving very oddly, she can’t rest in her room an hour, though she is so poorly. She has to come out and go back in again, puffing and panting, wandering here, there, and everywhere for no reason… I’m the one who has to bear the brunt, she’s always getting under my feet and in my way… Then when she drops into a chair she just stays there. She stays there, frightened, and stares straight ahead as if she were seeing the most horrible things… This evening I told her a dozen times you would be cross if she didn’t go up. She didn’t even seem to hear what I said.’

  The priest took hold of the banisters and did not answer. When he reached the landing outside the Trouches’ bedroom, he raised his fist as though to bang on the door. But the songs had ceased. He realized from the scraping of chairs that the visitors were leaving. He hurriedly went into his room. Trouche did indeed then go down almost at once with two friends that he had picked up in some seedy café; he was shouting from the stairs that he knew how to enjoy himself and was going to take them home. Olympe was leaning over the banisters.

  ‘You can bolt the door,’ she said to Rose. ‘He won’t be back before tomorrow morning.’

  Rose, from whom she had not managed to hide her husband’s behaviour, felt very sorry for her. She shot the bolt, grumbling:

  ‘Huh, husbands! They either beat you or chase other women… Oh, I’d far rather be as I am.’

  When she returned, she found her mistress sitting down once more, having sunk into a kind of melancholy stupor, staring at the lamp. She hustled her off to bed. Marthe had become very nervous. In the night, she said, she saw bright lights on the walls of her room, she heard violent knocking noises next to her bed. Rose now slept near her in an adjoining room, and from there, at the slightest whimper, she rushed to her bedside. That night she was still getting undressed when she heard her moan. She found her surrounded by blankets which she had flung aside, her eyes wide with a wordless terror, her fists stuffed in her mouth to prevent her screaming. She had to talk to her as if she were a child, drawing back the curtains, looking under the furniture, swearing that she was mistaken, there was no one there. These fears ended with her having a cataleptic fit, which put her into a death-like trance, her head on the pillows and her eyelids open.