'You want to strip me of everything, eh? to leave your children with nothing but straw for a bed? You won't even leave us a loaf of bread? Well! well! clear out everything, and send for Rose to fill her apron! There's the key!'
He threw the key at Marthe and she placed it under her pillow. She was quite pale after this quarrel, the first violent quarrel that she had ever had with her husband. She got into bed, but Mouret passed the night in an easy-chair. Towards morning Marthe heard him sobbing. She would then have given him back the key, if he had not wildly rushed into the garden, though it was still pitch dark.
Peace again seemed to be re-established between them. The key of the desk remained hanging upon a nail near the mirror. Marthe, who was quite unaccustomed to the sight of large sums, felt a sort of fear of the money. She was very bashful and shamefaced at first whenever she went to open the drawer in which Mouret always kept some ten thousand francs in cash to pay for his purchases of wine. She strictly confined herself to taking only what was necessary. Olympe, too, gave her the most excellent advice, and told her that now she had the key she ought to be careful and economical; and, indeed, seeing the trembling nervousness which she exhibited at the sight of the hoard of money, she ceased for some time to speak to her of the Besançon debts.
Mouret meantime relapsed into his former moody silence. Serge's admission to the Seminary had been another severe blow to him. His friends of the Cours Sauvaire, the retired traders who promenaded there regularly between four o'clock and six, began to feel very uneasy about him, when they saw him arrive with his arms swaying about and his face wearing a stupefied expression. He hardly made any reply to their remarks and seemed a prey to some incurable disease.
'He's breaking up; he's breaking up,' they murmured to each other; 'and he's only forty-four; it's scarcely credible. He will end by having softening of the brain.'
Mouret no longer seemed to hear the malicious allusions which were made before him. If he was questioned directly about Abbé Faujas, he coloured slightly as he replied that the priest was an excellent tenant and paid his rent with great punctuality. When his back was turned, the retired shopkeepers grinned as they sat and basked in the sun on one of the seats on the Cours.
'Well, after all, he is only getting what he deserves,' said a retired almond-dealer. 'You remember how hotly he stood up for the priest, how he sang his praises in the four corners of Plassans; but when one talks to him on that subject now rather an odd expression comes over his face.'
These worthy gentlemen then regaled themselves with certain scandalous stories which they whispered into each other's ears, passing them on in this way from one end of the bench to the other.
'Well,' said a master-tanner in a half whisper, 'there isn't much pluck about Mouret; if I were in his place I would soon show the priest the door.'
Thereupon they all repeated that Mouret was certainly a very timid fellow, he who had formerly jeered so much at those husbands who allowed their wives to lead them by the nose.