'Don't you think,' Mouret continued, 'that we really ought to ask the Faujases to come and spend the evenings here? They would at any rate be warm for two or three hours; and they would be company for us, too, and make us feel more lively. Ask them, and I don't think they'll refuse.'
The next day Marthe met Madame Faujas in the hall and gave the invitation, which the old lady at once accepted, both for herself and her son.
'I'm surprised she didn't make some little demur about coming,' said Mouret. 'I fancied that they would have required more pressing. But the Abbé is beginning to understand that he does wrong in living like a wild beast.'
In the evening Mouret took care that the table was cleared in good time, and he set out a bottle of sweet wine and a plateful of little cakes. Although he was not given to being lavish, he was anxious to show that the Rougons were not the only people who knew how things ought to be done. The tenants of the second floor came downstairs about eight o'clock. Abbé Faujas was wearing a new cassock, at the sight of which Mouret was so much surprised that he could only stammer a few words in answer to the priest's courtesies.
'Indeed, Monsieur l'Abbé, all the honour is for us. Come, children, put some chairs here.'
They all took their seats round the table. The room was uncomfortably warm, for Mouret had crammed the stove as full as possible in order to let his guests see that he made no account of a log more or less. Abbé Faujas made himself very pleasant, fondling Désirée and questioning the two lads about their studies. Marthe, who was knitting some stockings, raised her eyes every now and then in surprise at the flexible tones of that strange voice which she was not accustomed to hear sounding in the monotonous quietness of the dining-room. She looked at the priest's powerful face and square-cut features, and then bent her head again, without trying to hide the interest she took in this man who was so strong and kindly and whom she knew to be so poor. As for Mouret, he uncouthly stared at the new cassock, and could not restrain himself from saying, with a sly smile:
'You needn't have troubled to dress to come here, Monsieur l'Abbé. We don't go in for ceremony, as you know very well.'
Marthe blushed, while the priest gaily related that he had bought the cassock that very day. He had kept it on, he said, to please his mother, who thought that he looked finer than a king in it.
'Don't you, mother?' he asked the old lady.
Madame Faujas nodded without taking her eyes off her son. She was sitting opposite to him, gazing at him in the bright lamplight with an air of ecstasy.