'Don't trouble yourself to look for anyone,' he said, 'I dare say I can find you a fit person. Give me two or three days.'
For some time past he had been frequently receiving letters bearing the Besançon postmark, They were all in the same handwriting, a large, ugly hand. Rose, who took them up to him, remarked that he seemed vexed at the mere sight of the envelopes.
'He looks quite put out,' she said. 'You may depend upon it that it's no great favourite of his who writes to him so often.'
Mouret's old curiosity was roused by this correspondence. One day he took up one of the letters himself with a pleasant smile, telling the Abbé, as an excuse for his own appearance, that Rose was not in the house. The Abbé probably saw through Mouret's cunning, for he assumed an expression of great pleasure, as though he had been impatiently expecting the letter. But Mouret did not allow himself to be deceived by this piece of acting, he stayed outside the door on the landing and glued his ear to the key-hole.
'From your sister again, isn't it?' asked Madame Faujas, in her hard voice. 'Why does she worry you in that way?'
There was a short silence, after which came a sound of paper being roughly crumpled, and the Abbé said, with evident displeasure:
'It's always the same old story. She wants to come to us and bring her husband with her, so that we may get him a situation somewhere. She seems to think that we are wallowing in gold. I'm afraid they will be doing something rash—perhaps taking us by surprise some fine morning.'
'No, no! we can't do with them here, Ovide!' his mother replied. 'They have never liked you; they have always been jealous of you. Trouche is a scamp and Olympe is quite heartless. They would want everything for themselves, and they would compromise you and interfere with your work.'
Mouret was too much excited by the meanness of the act he was committing to be able to hear well, and, besides, he thought that one of them was coming to the door, so he hurried away. He took care not to mention what he had done. A few days later Abbé Faujas, in his presence, while they were all out on the terrace, gave Marthe a definite reply respecting the Secretaryship at the Home.
'I think I can recommend you a suitable person,' he said, in his calm way. 'It is a connection of my own, my brother-in-law, who is coming here from Besançon in a few days.'