Mouret spent the whole of the next morning in playing the spy on his new tenant¹. This espionage² would now enable him to fill up the idle hours which he had hitherto spent in pottering about the house, in putting back into their proper places any articles which he happened to find lying about, and in picking quarrels with his wife and children. Henceforth he would have an occupation, an amusement which would relieve the monotony of his everyday life. As he had often said, he was not partial to priests, and yet Abbé Faujas, the first one who had entered into his existence, excited in him an extraordinary amount of interest. This priest brought with him a touch of mystery and secrecy³ that was almost disquieting⁴. Although Mouret was a strong-minded man and professed⁵ himself to be a follower⁶ of Voltaire, yet in the Abbé's presence he felt the astonishment⁷ and uneasiness of a common bourgeois⁸.

Not a sound came from the second floor. Mouret stood on the staircase and listened eagerly; he even ventured to go to the loft⁹. As he hushed his steps while passing along the passage, a pattering of slippers¹⁰ behind the door filled him with emotion. But he did not succeed in making any new discovery, so he went down into the garden and strolled into the arbour at the end of it, there raising his eyes and trying to[Pg 20] look through the windows in order to find out what might be going on in the rooms. But he could not see even the Abbé's shadow. Madame Faujas, in the absence of curtains, had, as a makeshift, fastened some sheets behind the windows.

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