'Oh, the monster! He is killing me; he is killing me!'
Madame Faujas was obliged to console and soothe her. Rose ran to the foot of the stairs and called out at the top of her voice, so that Mouret might hear her through the closed door:
'You are a monster, sir! Madame is quite right to call you a monster!'
Some of their quarrels were particularly violent. Marthe, whose reason was on the verge of giving way, had got it into her head that her husband wished to beat her. It was a fixed idea of hers. She asserted that he was only waiting and watching for an opportunity. He had not dared to do it yet, she said, because he had never found her alone, and in the night-time he was afraid lest she should cry out for assistance. Rose on her side swore that she had seen her master hiding a thick stick in his office. Madame Faujas and Olympe showed no hesitation in believing these stories, expressed the greatest pity for their landlady, and constituted themselves her protectors. 'That brute,' as they now called Mouret, would not venture, they said, to ill-treat her in their presence; and they told her to come for them at night if he should show the least sign of violence. The house was now in a constant state of alarm.
'He is capable of any wickedness,' exclaimed the cook.
That year Marthe observed all the religious ceremonies of Passion Week with the greatest fervour. On Good Friday she knelt in agony in the black-draped church, while the candles were extinguished, one by one, midst the mournful swell of voices rising through the gloomy nave. It seemed to her as though her own breath were dying away with the light of the candles. When the last one went out, and the darkness in front of her seemed implacable and repelling, she fainted away, remaining for an hour bent in an attitude of prayer without the women around her being aware of her condition. When she came to herself, the church was deserted. She imagined that she was being scourged with rods and that blood was streaming from her limbs; she experienced too such excruciating pains in her head that she raised her hands to it, as if to pull out thorns whose points she seemed to feel piercing her skull. She was in a strange condition at dinner that evening. She was still suffering from nervous shock; when she closed her eyes, she saw the souls of the expiring candles flitting away through the darkness, and she mechanically examined her hands for the wounds whence her blood had streamed. All the Passion bled within her.
Madame Faujas, seeing her so unwell, persuaded her to go to rest early, accompanied her to her room and put her to bed. Mouret, who had a key of the bedroom, had already retired to his office, where he spent his evenings. When Marthe, covered up to her chin with the blankets, said that she was quite warm and felt better, Madame Faujas went to blow out the candle that she might be better able to sleep; but at this Marthe sprang up in fear and cried out beseechingly:
'No! no! don't put out the light! Put it on the drawers so that I can see it. I should die if I were left in the dark.'
Then, with staring eyes, trembling as though at the recollection of some dreadful tragedy, she murmured in tones of terrified pity: 'Oh, it is horrible! it is horrible!'
She fell back upon the pillow and seemed to drop asleep, and Madame Faujas then silently left the room. That evening the whole house was in bed by ten o'clock. As Rose went upstairs, she noticed that Mouret was still in his office. She peeped through the key-hole and saw him asleep there with his head on the table, and a kitchen-candle smoking dismally by his side.