Then he left the room, biting the end off a cigar.
Madame de Condamin was well aware that he had a flame for a young girl in the neighbourhood of Saint-Eutrope; but she was very tolerant and had even saved him twice from the consequences of scandalous intrigues. On his side, he felt very easy about his wife; he knew that she was much too prudent to give cause for scandal at Plassans.
'You would never guess how Mouret spends his time in that room where he shuts himself up!' the conservator of rivers and forests said the next morning when he called at the Sub-Prefecture. 'He is counting all the s's in the Bible. He is afraid of making any mistake about the matter, and he has already recommenced counting them for the third time. Ah! you were quite right; he is cracked from top to bottom!'
From this time forward Monsieur de Condamin was very hard upon Mouret. He even exaggerated matters and used all his skill to invent absurd stories to scare the Rastoils; but it was Monsieur Maffre whom he made his special victim. He told him one day that he had seen Mouret standing at one of the windows overlooking the street in a state of complete nudity, having only a woman's cap on his head and bowing to the empty air. Another day he asserted with amazing assurance that he had seen Mouret dancing like a savage in a little wood three leagues away; and when the magistrate seemed to doubt this story, he appeared to be vexed and declared that Mouret might very easily have got down out of his house by the water-spout without being noticed. The frequenters of the Sub-Prefecture smiled, but the next morning the Rastoils' cook spread these extraordinary stories about the town, where the legend of the man who beat his wife was assuming extraordinary proportions.
One afternoon Aurélie, the elder of Monsieur Rastoil's two daughters, related with a blushing face how on the previous night, having gone to look out of her window about midnight, she had seen their neighbour promenading about his garden, carrying a big altar candle. Monsieur de Condamin thought the girl was making fun of him, but she gave the most minute details.
'He held the candle in his left hand; and he knelt down on the ground and dragged himself along on his knees, sobbing as he did so.'
'Can it be possible that he has committed a murder and has buried the body of his victim in his garden?' exclaimed Monsieur Maffre, who had turned quite pale.
Then the two sets of guests agreed to watch some evening till midnight if necessary, to clear the matter up. The following night, indeed, they kept on the alert, in both gardens, but Mouret did not appear. Three nights were wasted in the same way. The Sub-Prefecture party was going to abandon the watch, and Madame de Condamin declared that she could not stay any longer under the chestnut trees, where it was so dreadfully dark, when all at once a light was seen flickering through the inky blackness of the ground floor of Mouret's house. When Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies' attention was drawn to this, he slipped into the Impasse des Chevillottes to invite the Rastoils to come on to his terrace, which overlooked the neighbouring garden. The presiding judge, who was on the watch with his daughters behind the cascade, hesitated for a moment, reflecting whether he might not compromise himself politically by going to the sub-prefect's in this way, but as the night was very black, and his daughter Aurélie was most anxious to have the truth of her report manifested, he followed Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies with stealthy steps through the darkness. It was in this manner that a representative of Legitimacy at Plassans for the first time entered the grounds of a Bonapartist official.
'Don't make a noise,' whispered the sub-prefect. 'Lean over the terrace.'
There Monsieur Rastoil and his daughters found Doctor Porquier and Madame de Condamin and her husband. The darkness was so dense that they exchanged salutations without being able to see one another. Then they all held their breath. Mouret had just appeared upon the steps, with a candle, which was stuck in a great kitchen candlestick.