'Well, of course, you understand I wasn't silly enough to begin to question her. She would have gone straight off if I had. Without seeming to intend anything, I suggested things to her which I thought might set her talking. The Curé[3] of Saint-Saturnin's, that worthy Monsieur Compan, happened to pass by, and I told her he was very ill and wasn't long for this world, and that there would be great difficulty in filling his place at the cathedral. She was all ears at once, I can tell you. She even asked me what was the matter with Monsieur Compan. Then, going on from one thing to another, I gradually got talking about our bishop. Monseigneur Rousselot was a most excellent and worthy man, I told her. She did not know his age, so I told her that he was sixty, very delicate also, and that he let himself be led by the nose. There is a good deal of talk about the vicar-general, Monsieur Fenil, who is all powerful with the bishop. The old lady was quite interested in that, and she would have stayed out in the street all night, listening.'
An expression of desperation passed over Mouret's face. 'But what you're telling me is what you said yourself,' he cried. 'What was it that she said? That's what I want to hear.'
'Wait a little and let me finish,' Rose replied very calmly. 'I was gradually gaining my purpose. To win her confidence, I ended by talking to her about ourselves. I told her that you were Monsieur François Mouret, a retired merchant from Marseilles, and that you had managed in fifteen years to make a fortune out of wines and oils and almonds. I added that you had preferred to come and settle down and live on your means in Plassans, a quiet town, where your wife's relations lived. I even contrived to let her know, too, that madame was your cousin, that you were forty years old and that she was thirty-seven, and that you lived very happily together; in fact, I told her all about you. She seemed to be very much interested, and kept saying, "Yes, yes," in her deliberate way; and, when I stopped for a moment, she nodded her head as though to tell me she was listening and that I might go on. So we went on talking in this way, with our backs against the wall, like a couple of old friends, till it was quite dark.'
Mouret bounced from his chair in angry indignation.
'What!' he cried, 'is that all? She led you on to gossip to her for an hour, and she herself told you nothing!'
'When it got dark, she said to me: "The air is becoming quite chilly." And then she took up her pail and went back upstairs.'
'You are nothing but an idiot! That old woman up there is more than a match for half a score such as you. Ah! they'll be laughing finely now that they have wormed out of you all that they wanted to know about us. Do you hear me, Rose? I tell you that you are nothing but an idiot!'
The old cook waxed very indignant, and began to bounce excitedly up and down the kitchen, knocking the pots and pans about noisily, and crumpling up the dusters and flinging them down.
'It was scarcely worth your while, sir,' she hissed, 'to come into my kitchen to call me insulting names. You had better take yourself off. What I did, I did to please you. If madame finds us here together talking about those people, she will be angry with me, and quite rightly, because it is wrong for us to be doing so. And after all, I couldn't drag words from the old lady's lips if she wasn't willing to talk. I did as any one else would have done under the same circumstances. I talked and told her about your affairs, and it was no fault of mine that she didn't tell me about hers. Go and ask her about them yourself, since you are anxious to know about them. Perhaps you won't make such an idiot of yourself as I have done.'
She had raised her voice, and was talking so loudly that Mouret thought it would be more prudent to retire, and he did so, closing the kitchen door after him, in order to prevent his wife from hearing the servant. But Rose immediately pulled it open again, and cried after him down the passage: