'It must be very unpleasant for you, living in such a house. I should go somewhere else, if I were in your place. It would make me quite ill to be mixed up with such horrors every night.'
'But what would become of the poor woman? She is so refined and gentle! We stay on for her sake—five sous, isn't it, this pound of cherries?'
'Yes; five sous. Well, it's very good of you; you show a kind heart.'
This story of a husband who waited till midnight to fall upon his wife with a bludgeon excited the greatest interest amongst the gossips of the market-place. There were further terrible details every day. One pious woman asserted that Mouret was possessed by an evil spirit, and that he seized his wife by the neck with his teeth with such violence that Abbé Faujas was obliged to make the sign of the cross three times in the air with his left thumb before the monster could be made to let go his hold. Then, she added, Mouret fell to the ground like a great lump, and a huge black rat leapt out of his mouth and vanished, though not the slightest hole could be discovered in the flooring. The tripe-seller at the corner of the Rue Taravelle terrified the neighbourhood by promulgating the theory that 'the scoundrel had perhaps been bitten by a mad dog.'
The story, however, was not credited among the higher classes of the inhabitants of Plassans. When it was mooted about the Cours Sauvaire it afforded the retired traders much amusement, as they sat on the benches there, basking in the warm May sun.
'Mouret is quite incapable of beating his wife,' said the retired almond-dealers; 'he looks as though he had had a whipping himself, and he no longer even comes out for a turn on the promenade. His wife must be keeping him on dry bread.'
'One can never tell,' said a retired captain. 'I knew an officer in my regiment whose wife used to box his ears for a mere yes or no. That went on for ten years. Then one day she took it into her head to kick him; but that made him quite furious and he nearly strangled her. Perhaps Mouret has the same dislike to being kicked as my friend had.'
'He probably has a yet greater dislike to priests,' said another of the company with a sneer.
For some time Madame Rougon appeared quite unconscious of the scandal which was occupying the attention of the town. She preserved a smiling face and ignored the allusions which were made before her. One day, however, after a long visit from Monsieur Delangre, she arrived at her daughter's house looking greatly distressed, her eyes filled with tears.
'Ah, my dear!' she cried, clasping Marthe in her arms, 'what is this that I have just heard? Can your husband really have so far forgotten himself so as to have raised his hand against you? It is all a pack of falsehoods, isn't it? I have given it the strongest denial. I know Mouret. He has been badly brought up, but he is not a wicked man.'