Émile Zola - Abbe Mouret's Transgression

The remembrance of the fowls’ voracity made her laugh. She calmly related other cruelties of theirs: young chickens devoured, of which she had only found the necks and wings, and a litter of kittens eaten up in the stable in a few hours.

‘You might give them a human being,’ she continued, ‘they’d finish him. And aren’t they tough livers! They get on with a broken limb even. They may have wounds, big holes in their bodies, and still they’ll gobble their victuals. That’s what I like them for; their flesh grows again in two days; they are always as warm as if they had a store of sunshine under their feathers. When I want to give them a treat, I cut them up some raw meat. And worms too! Wait, you’ll see how they love them.’

She ran to the dungheap, and unhesitatingly picked up a worm she found there. The fowls darted at her hands; but to amuse herself with the sight of their greediness she held the worm high above them. At last she opened her fingers, and forthwith the fowls hustled one another and pounced upon the worm. One of them fled with it in her beak, pursued by the others; it was thus taken, snatched away, and retaken many times until one hen, with a mighty gulp, swallowed it altogether. At that they all stopped short with heads thrown back, and eyes on the alert for another worm. Desiree called them by their names, and talked pettingly to them; while Abbe Mouret retreated a few steps from this display of voracious life.

‘No, I am not at all comfortable,’ he said to his sister, when she tried to make him feel the weight of a fowl she was fattening. ‘It always makes me uneasy to touch live animals.’

He tried to smile, but Desiree taxed him with cowardice.

‘Ah well, what about my ducks, and geese, and turkeys?’ said she. ‘What would you do if you had all those to look after? Ducks are dirty, if you like. Do you hear them shaking their bills in the water? And when they dive, you can only see their tails sticking straight up like ninepins. Geese and turkeys, too, are not easy to manage. Isn’t it fun to see them walking along with their long necks, some quite white and others quite black? They look like ladies and gentlemen. And I wouldn’t advise you to trust your finger to them. They would swallow it at a gulp. But my fingers, they only kiss – see!’

Her words were cut short by a joyous bleat from the goat, which had at last forced the door of the stable open. Two bounds and the animal was close to her, bending its forelegs, and affectionately rubbing its horns against her. To the priest, with its pointed beard and obliquely set eyes, it seemed to wear a diabolical grin. But Desiree caught it round the neck, kissed its head, played and ran with it, and talked about how she liked to drink its milk. She often did so, she said, when she was thirsty in the stable.

‘See, it has plenty of milk,’ she added, pointing to the animal’s udder.

The priest lowered his eyes. He could remember having once seen in the cloister of Saint-Saturnin at Plassans a horrible stone gargoyle, representing a goat and a monk; and ever since he had always looked on goats as dissolute creatures of hell. His sister had only been allowed to get one after weeks of begging. For his part, whenever he came to the yard, he shunned all contact with the animal’s long silky coat, and carefully guarded his cassock from the touch of its horns.

‘All right, I’ll let you go now,’ said Desiree, becoming aware of his growing discomfort. ‘But you must just let me show you something else first. Promise not to scold me, won’t you? I have not said anything to you about it, because you wouldn’t have allowed it… But if you only knew how pleased I am!’

As she spoke she put on an entreating expression, clasped her hands, and laid her head upon her brother’s shoulder.

‘Another piece of folly, no doubt,’ he murmured, unable to refrain from smiling.

‘You won’t mind, will you?’ she continued, her eyes glistening with delight. ‘You won’t be angry? – He is so pretty!’

Thereupon she ran to open the low door under the shed, and forthwith a little pig bounded into the middle of the yard.

‘Oh! isn’t he a cherub?’ she exclaimed with a look of profound rapture as she saw him leap out.

The little pig was indeed charming, quite pink, his snout washed clean by the greasy slops placed before him, though incessant routing in his trough had left a ring of dirt about his eyes. He trotted about, hustled the fowls, rushing to gobble up whatever was thrown them, and upsetting the little yard with his sudden turns and twists. His ears flapped over his eyes, his snout went snorting over the ground, and with his slender feet he resembled a toy animal on wheels. From behind, his tail looked like a bit of string that served to hang him up by.

‘I won’t have this beast here!’ exclaimed the priest, terribly put out.

‘Oh, Serge, dear old Serge,’ begged Desiree again, ‘don’t be so unkind. See, what a harmless little thing he is! I’ll wash him, I’ll keep him very clean. La Teuse went and had him given her for me. We can’t send him back now. See, he is looking at you; he wants to smell you. Don’t be afraid, he won’t eat you.’

But she broke off, seized with irresistible laughter. The little pig had blundered in a dazed fashion between the goat’s legs, and tripped her up. And he was now madly careering round, squeaking, rolling, scaring all the denizens of the poultry-yard. To quiet him Desiree had to get him an earthen pan full of dish-water. In this he wallowed up to his ears, splashing and grunting, while quick quivers of delight coursed over his rosy skin. And now his uncurled tail hung limply down.

The stirring of this foul water put a crowning touch to Abbe Mouret’s disgust. Ever since he had been there, he had choked more and more; his hands and chest and face were afire, and he felt quite giddy. The odour of the fowls and rabbits, the goat, and the pig, all mingled in one pestilential stench. The atmosphere, laden with the ferments of life, was too heavy for his maiden shoulders. And it seemed to him that Desiree had grown taller, expanding at the hips, waving huge arms, sweeping the ground with her skirts, and stirring up all that powerful odour which overpowered him. He had only just time to open the wicket. His feet clung to the stone flags still dank with manure, in such wise that it seemed as if he were held there by some clasp of the soil. And suddenly, despite himself, there came back to him a memory of the Paradou, with its huge trees, its black shadows, its penetrating perfumes.

‘There, you are quite red now,’ Desiree said to him as she joined him outside the wicket. ‘Aren’t you pleased to have seen everything? Do you hear the noise they are making?’

On seeing her depart, the birds and animals had thrown themselves against the trellis work emitting piteous cries. The little pig, especially, gave vent to prolonged whines that suggested the sharpening of a saw. Desiree, however, curtsied to them and kissed her finger-tips to them, laughing at seeing them all huddled together there, like so many lovers of hers. Then, hugging her brother, as she accompanied him to the garden, she whispered into his ear with a blush: ‘I should so like a cow.’

He looked at her, with a ready gesture of disapproval.

‘No, no, not now,’ she hurriedly went on. ‘We’ll talk about it again later on – But there would be room in the stable. A lovely white cow with red spots. You’d soon see what nice milk we should have. A goat becomes too little in the end. And when the cow has a calf!’

At the mere thought of this she skipped and clapped her hands with glee; and to the priest she seemed to have brought the poultry-yard away with her in her skirts. So he left her at the end of the garden, sitting in the sunlight on the ground before a hive, whence the bees buzzed like golden berries round her neck, along her bare arms and in her hair, without thought of stinging her.