Saunière acquired a housekeeper in 1892 – Marie Dénarnaud, one of the daughters in the family with whom he had lodged. This year is also the first for which there is evidence that Saunière was receiving extra payment for saying Masses – about 904 francs that year, which represented payment for three Masses every day, the upper daily limit the Church permitted any priest to say.

How did he gain the requests to say these Masses? Some conspiracy theorists have suggested that people knew Saunière had some sort of special secret or power that gravitated them towards him, and that the people sought out Saunière specifically, longing to have the Masses said especially by him. This is completely inaccurate. Trafficking in Masses comes about when a priest advertises his services – perhaps among colleagues, other congregations, and so on. He may even – as Saunière did – advertise in newspapers! Claire and Antoine Captier possess at least two of Saunière’s notebooks (which have been subjected to rigorous study) in which Saunière lists Mass applications – lots of them. It is noted that he contacted his colleagues, hospices, boarding schools, hospitals, lunatic asylums, orphanages, and so on. Each payment for a Mass was typically 1 or 2 francs, but when carried out systematically, this Mass trafficking was quite lucrative. As can be seen, even limiting himself to the 3-Masses-per-day limit, Saunière had effectively doubled his salary.

It should be noted that this was illegal. Solicitation of Masses was utterly forbidden, but it was carried out successfully because priests in larger towns who kept to the limit of the number of Masses they were asked to perform could not keep up with all the requests. An unscrupulous priest, therefore, had a ready audience, willing to pay. Saunière’s added legitimate income from saying Masses, had he not solicited for extra Masses, would have been picayune at best – as already stated, he was in a poor village with less than 300 inhabitants. The demand for Masses in such an isolated and poverty-stricken village was not high – not like the demand in larger villages or towns where the life of a priest could be remarkably busy.

Absences

Marie Dénarnaud and Saunière seem to have become quite close – not, as some have suggested, that the housekeeper became his mistress, but that she was his confidante in hiding his frequent absences which seem to have begun around this time (1892). Confirmation that Saunière did indeed depart on “frequent and unexplained trips away from Rennes to undisclosed destinations and for unknown purposes”⁷ comes from Descadeillas, who also published copies of letters which Saunière had prepared in advance. These letters, couched in sufficiently general terms to be used for a variety of purposes, were pre-written by Saunière and left with Marie Dénarnaud while Saunière was away on one of his frequent trips. In the event that a letter came for him, demanding his immediate response, the housekeeper would send one of these letters so as to disguise the fact that her employer was actually absent on a trip he had no wish to explain or have known.