THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ÉMILE ZOLA. Эмиль Золя
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of a great door. Clairon stood before them in the road.
Sauvaire and Clairon joked in a low voice while awaiting the abbé.
“Pooh! He will not care for me,” said Clairon. “He will cast me off at the first change of horses.”
“Who knows?”
“He’s very nice. I was afraid he would be old.”
“But, I say, you seem in love with the abbé. Oh! I’m not jealous. Only if you’re going off so willingly with him, you might return me the thousand francs I gave you to persuade you to assist us.”
“The thousand francs! Oh! indeed, and if he suddenly leaves me, must not I pay for my journey back?”
“I was joking, my dear, I don’t take back what I have given. Besides, I’m having my money’s worth of laughter.”
Marius intervened, repeating his instructions to Clairon.
“Do exactly as I told you,” he said. “Try to arrange so that he does not discover the trick until he is some leagues from Marseille. Do not speak, play your part with art. When he has discovered everything, act firmly, tell him I have his note and am determined to take it to the bishop, if you suffer the least harm, or if he shows himself again here. Advise him to go and seek fortune elsewhere.”
“Can I return at once to Marseille?” inquired Clairon.
“Certainly. I only want to drive him from the city by making him ridiculous for ever. I could have had him expelled from the church by his superiors, but I prefer annihilating him by mockery.”
Sauvaire was splitting with laughter at the thought of the scene between Abbé Donadéi and Clairon.
“Eh! my dear,” he continued, “tell him you are married and that your husband will no doubt be seeking you everywhere to prosecute you for your misconduct. Shall I run after you, and put your ravisher in a horrible fright?”
The idea of this joke so amused Sauvaire that he very nearly choked with hilarity. In the meanwhile Marius had noticed a dark form advancing rapidly towards them.
“Silence!” he exclaimed. “Here, I think, is our man. Attend to your part, Clairon. Place yourself in front of the carriage door.”
Sauvaire and Marius secreted themselves more closely in their hiding-place, and Clairon, with her face thickly veiled and dressed all in black, stood in the shadow thrown by the post-chaise. It was Donadéi, quite out of breath. He had thrown off the cowl and looked very smart in ordinary mufti.
“Dear, dear Claire,” he murmured with emotion, kissing Clairon’s hand, “how good of you to have come!”
“Claire, Clairon,” muttered Sauvaire, “it’s all the same.”
“Ah! Providence must have advised you,” continued the priest, pushing the girl gently into the carriage and then following her. “We are off to Paradise,” he added.
The postillion cracked his whip and the post-chaise started away with a frightful rumbling noise. Sauvaire and Marius then showed themselves, laughing until they almost cried.
“Eh! the abbé is eloping with the sister soul to his own,” said Marius.
“A pleasant journey, abbé,” cried Sauvaire.
When the chaise had disappeared in the night, bearing away Donadéi and Clairon, the master-stevedore and young clerk sauntered down the Boulevard de la Corderie, chatting about the adventure and giving way to sudden displays of gaiety, at the thought of the priest travelling alone with this creature.
“Can you fancy the face he’ll make presently,” said Sauvaire, “when he raises Clairon’s veil? Between you and me and the lamppost, you know, Clairon is ugly. She is at least forty.”
The master-stevedore willingly acknowledged Clairon’s age and ugliness, since the girl’s forty summers and faded countenance made the joke he was playing the more amusing.
He was splitting with laughter and anxious to reach the Cannebière to tell his friends the story. Marius, who was more serious, was thinking he had given the priest the company he deserved. He left the master-stevedore at about eleven o’clock at night and went home.
At midnight everyone at Marseille who had not then retired to rest, knew that Abbé Donadéi had just eloped in a post-chaise, with a girl who had been wallowing in all the debauchery of the city for the previous fifteen years. Sauvaire had been shouting out the news in the cafés, and had related the adventure with a wonderful profusion of detail. That precious phrase of the graceful abbé as he got into the chaise: “We’re off to Paradise!” was repeated from mouth to mouth. They knew he had kissed her hand; and they speculated as to the reason why the amorous couple had lied.
The best part of the business was that Sauvaire, not knowing why Marius had had Clairon carried off, displayed absolute naïvete. He understood that if Donadéi’s passion for her could be made to appear serious, the joke would be all the more funny, and he therefore lied with all the assurance of an inhabitant of the south of France; he made believe that the priest was really dying of love for this wrinkled, sallow-faced creature, wornout with shame, who was known to everyone.
There was general astonishment, universal mockery; people could not believe that the gallant abbé, with whom the penitent ladies of Marseille were so charmed, had run away with such a woman, and they jeered to their heart’s content at the monstrous alliance.
Next day the scandal was known to the whole city. Sauvaire triumphed and became a personage. They knew he had been Clairon’s last protector, and that the abbé had stolen the girl away from him. All day he sauntered up and down the Cannebière in slippers, comically receiving the condolences of his intimate acquaintances. He shouted out very loud, answering some, calling to others, using and abusing of his popularity. He certainly did not regret his thousand francs: he had never put out money for his amusement at so high a rate of interest.
The scandal became awful when Clairon returned two days later. Sauvaire bought her a silk gown and drove about Marseille with her for a week, in an open carriage. People pointed them out, and ran to their doors as they passed by. The master-stevedore almost burst with delight.
Clairon had gone as far as Toulon. Abbé Donadéi had not been long in discovering the kind of person he was eloping with: he had then flown into a frightful rage, and wanted to throw her out on the highway at one o’clock in the morning, far from any dwelling. But Clairon was not to be so easily got rid of. She had talked big and threatened the abbé, making use of the arms Marius held in his hands. Donadéi trembling and compelled to give way, had been obliged to conduct his companion as far as Toulon, where they separated, Clairon returning to Marseille, and the priest hurrying across the frontier.
Sauvaire drove the young person so much about and raised such an outcry, that the authorities took the matter in hand, and at the Bishop’s request sent Clairon to exercise the power of her charms elsewhere. Since then the master-stevedore in his effusive moments, which occurred ten or twelve times a day, was in the habit of saying to all who liked to listen to him: “Ah! if you only knew what a pretty person I had under my protection! It was the priests who took her away from me!”
CHAPTER XIX
PHILIPPE’S RANSOM
MARIUS went to his office, on the day following the elopement, delighted with his expedition of the previous evening.
He had just saved an honourable family from despair, and had delivered the city of an intriguing man, against whom he had, moreover, a personal grievance. He was about to set to work with a light heart and tranquil conscience, when they came and told him that M. Martelly would be pleased to see him.
On his way to the drawingroom the young man suddenly made up his mind to ask his principal to lend him the money for Philippe’s ransom. This decision set him all of a tremble. He felt he would never dare make such a request