Marthe often returned home in a condition of complete prostration. Religion seemed to break her down. Rose had become all-powerful in the house. She scolded Mouret, found fault with him because he dirtied too much linen, and let him have his dinner at her own hours. She even tried to convert him.
'Madame does quite right to live a Christian life,' said she. 'You will be damned, sir, you will, and it will only be right, for you are not a good man at heart, no, you are not! You ought to go with your wife to mass next Sunday morning.'
Mouret shrugged his shoulders. He let things take their own course, and sometimes even did a bit of house-work himself, taking a turn or two with the broom when he thought that the dining-room looked particularly dusty. The children gave him most trouble. It was vacation-time, and, as their mother was scarcely ever at home, Désirée and Octave—who had again failed in his examination for his degree—turned the place upside down. Serge was poorly, kept his bed, and spent whole days in reading in his room. He had become Abbé Faujas's favourite, and the priest lent him books. Mouret thus spent two dreadful months, at his wits' end how to manage his young folks. Octave was a special trouble to him, and as he did not feel inclined to keep him at home till the end of the vacation, he determined that he should not again return to college, but should be sent to some business-house at Marseilles.
'Since you won't look after them at all,' he said to Marthe, 'I must find some place or other to put them in. I am quite worn out with them all, and I won't have them at home any longer. It's your own fault if it causes you any grief. Octave is quite unbearable. He will never pass his examination, and it will be much better to teach him at once how to gain his own living instead of letting him idle his time away with a lot of good-for-nothings. One meets him roaming all over the town.'
Marthe was very much distressed. She seemed to awake from a dream on hearing that one of her children was about to leave her. She succeeded in getting the departure postponed for a week, during which she remained more at home, and resumed her active life. But she quickly dropped back again into her previous state of listless languor; and on the day that Octave came to kiss her, telling her that he was to leave for Marseilles in the evening, she had lost all strength and energy, and contented herself with giving him some good advice.
Mouret came back from the railway station with a very heavy heart. He looked about him for his wife, and found her in the garden, crying under the arbour. Then he gave vent to his feelings.
'There! that's one the less!' he exclaimed. 'You ought to feel glad of it. You will be able to go prowling about the church now as much as you like. Make your mind easy, the other two won't be here long. I shall keep Serge with me as he is a very quiet lad and is rather young as yet to go and read for the bar; but if he's at all in your way, just let me know, and I will free you of him at once. As for Désirée, I shall send her to her nurse.'
Marthe went on weeping in silence.
'But what would you have?' he continued. 'You can't be both in and out. Since you have taken to keeping away from home, your children have become indifferent to you. That's logic, isn't it? Besides it is necessary to find room for all the people who are now living in our house. It isn't nearly big enough, and we shall be lucky if we don't get turned out of doors ourselves.'