Trouche himself had tried to win over 'the little dears,' as he called the girls; but the priest, distrusting him, had forbidden him to set foot in the playground; and so he now confined himself to throwing sugar-plums there, when the Sisters' backs were turned.
The Abbé's day's work did not end at the Home of the Virgin. From there he started on a series of short visits to the fashionable ladies of Plassans. Madame Rastoil and Madame Delangre welcomed him with delight, and repeated his slightest words everywhere. But his great friend was Madame de Condamin. She maintained an air of easy familiarity towards him betokening the superiority of a beautiful woman who is conscious that she is all-powerful. She spoke now and again in low tones, and with meaning smiles and glances, which seemed to indicate that there was some secret understanding between them. When the priest came to see her, she dismissed her husband. 'The government was going to hold a cabinet-council,' so the conservator of rivers and forests playfully said, as he philosophically went off to mount his horse.
It was Madame Rougon who had brought Madame de Condamin to the priest's notice.
'She has not yet absolutely established her position here,' the old lady explained to Abbé Faujas. 'But there is a good deal of cleverness under those pretty, coquettish airs of hers. You can take her into your confidence, and she will see in your triumph a means of making her own success and power more complete. She will be of great use to you if you should find it necessary to give away places or crosses. She has retained an influential friend in Paris, who sends her as many red ribbons as she asks for.'
As Madame Rougon kept herself aloof from reasons of diplomacy, the fair Octavie thus became Abbé Faujas's most active ally. She won over to his side both her friends and her friends' friends. She resumed her campaign afresh every morning and exerted an astonishing amount of influence merely by the pleasant little waves of her delicately gloved fingers. She had particular success with the bourgeoises, and increased tenfold that feminine influence of which the priest had felt the absolute necessity as soon as he began to thread the narrow world of Plassans. She succeeded, too, in closing the mouths of the Paloques—who were growing very rabid about the state of affairs at the Mourets' house—by throwing a honied cake to the two monsters.
'What! do you still bear us a grudge, my dear lady?' she said one day, as she met the judge's wife. 'It is very wrong of you. Your friends have not forgotten you; they are thinking about you and are preparing a surprise for you.'
'A fine surprise, I'll be bound!' cried Madame Paloque, bitterly. 'No, we are not going to allow ourselves to be laughed at again. I have firmly made up my mind to keep to my own affairs.'
Madame de Condamin smiled.
'What would you say,' she asked, 'if Monsieur Paloque were to be decorated?'
The judge's wife stared in silence. A rush of blood to her face turned it quite blue, and made her terrible to behold.