'It is very wrong of you to interfere in Abbé Faujas's affairs,' the judge replied to his wife. 'I have been spoken to about him. He is a man with whom we must keep on good terms, and you will prevent us from doing so; you are too spiteful.'
'Stuff!' she retorted angrily; 'they have trampled me under foot and I will let them know who I am! Your Abbé Faujas is a big imbecile! Don't you suppose that Abbé Fenil would be very grateful to me if I could catch the vicar and his sweetheart? Ah! he would give a great deal to have a scandal like that! Just you leave me alone; you don't understand anything about such matters.'
A fortnight later, Madame Paloque watched Marthe go out on the Saturday. She was standing ready dressed, hiding her hideous face behind her curtains, but keeping watch over the street through a hole in the muslin. When the two women disappeared round the corner of the Rue Taravelle, she sniggered, and leisurely drawing on her gloves went quietly on to the Place of the Sub-Prefecture, and walked slowly round it. As she passed in front of Madame de Condamin's little house, she thought for a moment of going in and taking her with her, but she reflected that the other might, perhaps, have some scruples. And, all considered, it was better she should be without witnesses, and manage the business by herself.
'I have given them time,' she thought, after a quarter of an hour's promenade. 'I think I may present myself now.'
Thereupon she quickened her pace. She frequently went to the Home of the Virgin to discuss the accounts with Trouche, but that day, instead of repairing to the secretary's office, she went straight along the corridor towards the oratory. Madame Faujas was quietly knitting on a chair in front of the door.
The judge's wife had foreseen that obstacle, and went straight on to the door with the hasty manner of a person who has important business on hand. But before she could reach out her hand to turn the handle the old lady had risen from her chair and pushed her aside with extraordinary energy.
'Where are you going?' she asked in her blunt peasant-woman's tones.
'I am going where I have business,' Madame Paloque replied, her arm smarting and her face convulsed with anger. 'You are an insolent, brutish woman! Let me pass! I am the treasurer of the Home of the Virgin, and I have a right to go anywhere here I want.'
Madame Faujas, who stood leaning against the door, straightened her spectacles upon her nose, and with unruffled tranquillity resumed her knitting.
'Well,' she said bluntly, 'you can't go in there.'