Although he brazened it out, declaring himself to be a ‘Voltairean’ freethinker,* he felt an incredulity, a bourgeois frisson vis-à-vis the priest, in which there was more than a touch of lively curiosity.

Not a sound came from the second floor. On the stairs, Mouret listened hard, and even risked going up to the attic. His step slowed as he went along the landing; he was greatly agitated by what sounded like a shuffling of slippers behind the door. Unable to discover anything definite, he went down to the garden and walked around under the arbour at the bottom, looking up and trying to see through the windows what was happening in the rooms. But not even the shadow of the priest could be seen. Madame Faujas, who, no doubt, did not have any curtains, had hung some sheets over the glass for the time being.

At lunch Mouret seemed very put out.

‘Are they dead up there?’ he said as he cut the bread for the children. ‘Marthe, you haven’t heard them moving around?’

‘No, dear. I haven’t been listening.’

Rose shouted from the kitchen:

‘They haven’t been up there for a while. If they are out and about still, they must have gone a long way.’

Mouret called the cook and questioned her in detail.

‘They went out, Monsieur. The mother first and the priest afterwards. They step so quiet I shouldn’t have seen them, if their shadows hadn’t passed in front of the kitchen window when they opened the door… I looked out into the street to see. But they had slipped off smartly, I can tell you.’

‘That’s very strange. Then—where was I?’

‘I believe Monsieur was at the bottom of the garden looking at the grapes in the arbour.’

That had the effect of putting Mouret in a frightful mood. He heaped insults upon the priesthood: they were all sly; they were up to all kinds of tricks the devil himself was no match for them; they affected a ridiculous prudery, to such an extent that no one had ever seen a priest shaving. In the end, he was wishing he hadn’t rented rooms to this priest he’d never met.

‘You are to blame as well!’ he said to his wife, getting up from the table.

Marthe was about to protest and remind him of their discussion the day before. But she raised her eyes, looked at him, and said nothing. He, however, could not bring himself to go out as he usually did. He went back and forth from dining room to garden, picking up this and that, pretending that everything was untidy, that the house was turned upside down. Then he got cross with Serge and Octave who, he said, had left half an hour early for school.

‘Isn’t Papa going out?’ Désirée asked in her mother’s ear. ‘He will get on our nerves if he stays here.’

Marthe made her be quiet. Mouret spoke finally about some business he had to complete in the course of the day. He did not have a moment. He couldn’t even have a day’s rest at home, if he needed it. He left, in despair at not being there, and not to be on watch.

In the evening when he got back he was in a fever of curiosity.

‘What news of the priest?’ he asked before he had even taken off his coat.

Marthe was working in her usual place, on the terrace.

‘The priest?’ she repeated in some surprise. ‘Oh yes, the priest… I haven’t seen him. I think he has moved his things in. Rose told me someone had brought some furniture.’

‘That’s what I was afraid of,’ cried Mouret. ‘I should have been there; the furniture is my guarantee after all… I knew you wouldn’t budge from your chair. You don’t have much sense, my dear… Rose! Rose!’

And when the cook had arrived:

‘Did anyone bring furniture for the people upstairs?’

‘Yes, Monsieur. In a little cart.