Marthe blushed. She was overcome by that embarrassment and shame which she experienced every time this subject was alluded to in her presence.
'Ah! madame will never complain!' cried Rose with her customary boldness. 'I should have come and informed you a long time ago if I had not been afraid of madame being angry with me.'
The old lady let her hands fall with an expression of extreme grief and surprise.
'It is really true, then,' she exclaimed, 'that he beats you! Oh, the wretch! the wretch!'
Thereupon she began to weep.
'For me to have lived to my age to see such things! A man whom we have overwhelmed with kindnesses ever since his father's death, when he was only a little clerk with us! It was Rougon who desired your marriage. I told him more than once that Mouret looked like a scoundrel. He has never treated us well; and he only came to live at Plassans for the sake of setting us at defiance with the few sous he has got together. Thank heaven, we stand in no need of him; we are richer than he is, and it is that which annoys him. He is very mean-spirited, and so jealous that he has always refused to set foot in my drawing-room. He knows he would burst with envy there. But I won't leave you in the power of such a monster, my dear. There are laws, happily.'
'Oh don't be uneasy! There has been much exaggeration, I assure you,' said Marthe, who was growing more and more ill at ease.
'You see that she is trying to defend him!' cried the cook.
At this moment, Abbé Faujas and Trouche, who had been conferring together at the bottom of the garden, came up, attracted by the sound of the conversation.
'I am a most unhappy mother, your reverence,' said Madame Rougon piteously. 'I have only one daughter near me now, and I hear she is weeping her eyes out from ill-treatment. But you live in the same house, and I beg you to protect and console her.'