'Listen to what I say. If ever you do anything to hamper me, I swear to you that I will send you away to starve in a garret on the straw.'
Then he went back into the house, leaving them under the arbour. From that time the Trouches went down into the garden almost every day, but they conducted themselves with considerable discretion, and refrained from going there at the times when the priest was talking with the guests from the neighbouring gardens.
The following week Olympe complained so much of the room she was occupying that Marthe kindly offered her Serge's, which was now at liberty. The Trouches then kept both rooms. They slept in the young man's old bedchamber, from which not a single article of furniture had been removed, and turned the other apartment into a sort of drawing-room, for which Rose found them some old velvet-covered furniture in the lumber-room. Olympe, in great delight, ordered a rose-coloured dressing-gown from the best maker in Plassans.
Mouret, who had forgotten that Marthe had asked his permission to let the Trouches have Serge's room, was quite surprised to find them there one evening. He had gone up to look for a knife which he thought his son must have left in one of the drawers, and, as he entered the room, he saw Trouche trimming with this very knife a switch which he had just cut from one of the pear-trees in the garden. Thereupon he apologised and went downstairs.
[XIV]
During the public procession on the Feast of Corpus Christi, when Monseigneur Rousselot came down the steps of the magnificent altar, set up through the generosity of Madame de Condamin on the Place of the Sub-Prefecture, close to the very door of the small house she occupied, it was noticed with much surprise by the spectators that the Bishop abruptly turned his back upon Abbé Faujas.
'Ah! has there been some disagreement between them!' exclaimed Madame Rougon, who was looking out of her drawing-room window.
'Didn't you know about it?' asked Madame Paloque, who was leaning over by the old lady's side. 'It has been the talk of the town since yesterday. Abbé Fenil has been restored to favour.'