BOOK IV

I

When October arrived, Marc with joyous serenity repaired to Jonville,

to take the modest post of village schoolmaster which he had formerly

occupied there. Great quietude had now fallen on him, new courage

and hope had followed the despair and weariness by which he had been

prostrated after the monstrous trial of Rozan.

The whole of one's ideal is never realised, and Marc almost reproached

himself for having relied on a splendid triumph. Human affairs do not

progress by superb leaps and bounds, glorious _coups-de-théâtre_. It

was chimerical to imagine that justice would be acclaimed by millions

of lips, that the innocent prisoner would return amid a great national

festival, transforming the country into a nation of brothers. All

progress, the very slightest, the most legitimate, has been won by

centuries of battling. Each forward step taken by mankind has demanded

torrents of blood and tears, hecatombs of victims, sacrificing

themselves for the good of future generations. Thus, in the eternal

battle with the evil powers, it was unreasonable to expect a decisive

victory, a supreme triumph, such as would fulfil all one's hopes, all

one's dream of fraternity and equity among mankind.

Besides, Marc had ended by perceiving what a considerable step had

been taken, after all, along that road of progress, which is so rough

and deadly. While one is still in the thick of the fight, exposed to

taunts and wounds, one does not always notice what ground one gains.

One may even think oneself defeated when one has really made much

progress and drawn very near to the goal. In this way, if the second

condemnation of Simon had at first sight seemed a frightful defeat, it

soon became apparent that the moral victory of his defenders was a

great one. And there were all sorts of gains, a grouping of free minds

and generous hearts, a broadening of human solidarity from one to the

other end of the world, a sowing of truth and justice, which would

end by sprouting up, even if the good grain should require many long

winters to germinate in the furrows. And, again, it was only with the

greatest difficulty that the reactionary castes, by dint of falsehoods

and crimes, had for a time saved the rotten fabric of the past from

utter collapse. It was none the less cracking on all sides; the blow

dealt to it had rent it from top to bottom, and the blows of the future

would complete its destruction and cast it down in a litter of wretched

remnants.

Thus the only regret which Marc now experienced was that he had not

been able to utilise that prodigious Simon affair as an admirable

lesson of things which would have instructed the masses, enlightened

them like a blaze of lightning. Never again, perhaps, would there

be so complete and decisive a case. There was the complicity of all

the powerful and all the oppressors banding themselves together to

crush a poor innocent man, whose innocence imperilled the compact

of human exploitation which the great ones of the world had signed

together. There were all the averred crimes of the priests, soldiers,

magistrates, and ministers, who, to continue deceiving the people, had

piled the most extraordinary infamies one on another, and who had all

been caught lying and assassinating, with no resource left them but

to sink in an ocean of mud; and finally there had been the division

of the country into two camps--on one hand the old authoritarian,

antiquated, and condemned social order, on the other the young society

of the future, free in mind already and ever tending towards increase

of truth, equity, and peace. If Simon's innocence had been recognised,

the reactionary past would have been struck down at one blow, and the

joyous future would have appeared to the simplest, whose eyes, at last,

would have been opened. Never before would the revolutionary axe have

sunk so deeply into the old worm-eaten social edifice. Irresistible

enthusiasm would have carried the nation towards the future city. In a

few months the Simon affair would have done more for the emancipation

of the masses and the reign of justice than a hundred years of ardent

politics. And grief that things should have become so spoilt, and

should have shattered the admirable work in their hands, was destined

to abide in the hearts of the combatants as long as they might live.

But life continued, and it was necessary to fight again, fight on for

ever. A step had been taken forward, and other steps remained to be

taken. Duty demanded that, day by day, whatever the bitterness and

often the obscurity of life, one should again give one's blood and

one's tears, satisfied with gaining ground inch by inch, without even

the reward of ever beholding the victory. Marc accepted that sacrifice,

no longer hoping to see Simon's innocence recognised legally,

definitively, and triumphantly by the whole people. He felt it was

impossible to revive the affair amid the passions of the moment, for

the innocent man's enemies would begin their atrocious campaign again,

helped on by the cowardice of the multitude. It would be necessary,

no doubt, to wait for the death of the personages involved in the

case, for some transformation of parties, some new phase of politics,

before the Government would be bold enough to apply once more to the

Court of Cassation and ask it to efface that abominable page from the

history of France. Such seemed to be the conviction of even David and

Simon, who, while leading a sequestered life, busy with their Pyrenean

enterprise, watched for favourable incidents and circumstances, but

felt that the situation tied their hands, and that it was necessary to

remain waiting, unless indeed they wished to stir up another useless

and dangerous onslaught.

Marc, being thus compelled to live in patience, reverted to his

mission, to the one work on which he set his hopes--the instruction of

the humble, the dissemination of truth by knowledge which alone could

render a nation capable of equity. Great serenity had come to him, and

he accepted the fact that generations of pupils would be necessary to

rouse France from her numbness, deliver her from the poisons with which

she had been gorged, and fill her with new blood which would transform

her into the France of his old dreams--a generous, freedom-giving, and

justice-dealing nation.

Never had Marc loved truth so passionately as he did now. In former

times he had needed it, even as one needs the air one breathes; he

had felt unable to live without it, sinking into intolerable anguish

whenever it escaped him. At present, after seeing it attacked so

furiously, denied, and hidden away in the depths of lies, like a corpse

which would never revive, he believed in it still more; he felt that

it was irresistible, possessed of sufficient power to blow up the

world should men again try to bury it underground. It followed its

road without ever taking an hour's rest; it marched on to its goal of

light, and nothing would ever stop it. Marc shrugged his shoulders with

ironical contempt when he beheld guilty men imagining that they had

annihilated truth, that it lay beneath their feet as if it had ceased

to exist. When the right moment came, truth would explode, scatter

them like dust, and shine forth serenely and radiantly. And it was the

certainty that truth, ever victorious, even after the lapse of ages,

was upon his side, that lent Marc all necessary strength and composure

to return to his work, and wait cheerfully for truth's triumph, even

though it might only come after his own lifetime.

Moreover, the Simon case had imparted solidity to his convictions,

breadth to his faith. He had previously passed condemnation on the

_bourgeoisie_, which was exhausted by the abuse of its usurped power,

which, from being a liberal class, had become a reactionary one,

passing from free thought to the basest clericalism as it had felt the

Church to be its natural ally in its career of rapine and enjoyment.

And now he had seen the French _bourgeoisie_ at work, he had seen it

full of cowardice and falsehood, weak but tyrannical, denying all

justice to the innocent, ready for every crime in order that it might

not have to part with any of its millions, terrified as it was by the

gradual awakening of the masses who claimed their due. And finding

that _bourgeoisie_ to be even more rotten, more stricken, than he had

imagined, he held that it must promptly disappear if the nation did

not desire to perish of incurable infection. Henceforth salvation was

only to be found in the masses, in that new force--that inexhaustible

reservoir of men, work, and energy. Marc felt that the masses were ever

rising, like a new, rejuvenated race, bringing to social life more

power for truth, justice, and happiness. And this confirmed him in the

mission he had assumed, that seemingly modest mission of a village

schoolmaster, which was in reality the apostolate of modern times,

the only important work that could fashion the society of to-morrow.

There was no loftier duty than that of striking down the errors and

impostures of the Church and setting in their place truth as proclaimed

by science, and human peace, based upon knowledge and solidarity. The

France of the future was growing up in the rural districts, in the

humblest, loneliest hamlets, and it was there that one must work and

conquer.

Marc speedily set to work. He had to repair all the harm which Jauffre

had caused by abandoning Jonville to Abbé Cognasse. But during the

earlier days, while Marc and Geneviève were settling down, how

delightful it was for them--reconciled as they were and renewing the

love of youthful times--to find themselves again in the poor little

nest of long ago! Sixteen years had passed, yet nothing seemed to be

changed; the little school was just the same, with its tiny lodging and

its strip of garden. The walls had merely been whitewashed, but the

place seemed fairly clean, thanks to a good scouring which Geneviève

superintended. She was never weary of summoning Marc to remind him of

one thing and another, laughing happily at all that recalled the past.

'Oh! come and look at the picture of Useful Insects which you hung up

in the classroom! It is still there.... I myself put up those pegs for

the boys' hats.... In the cupboard yonder, you'll find the collection

of solid bodies, which you cut out of beech wood.'

Marc hastened to her and joined in her laughter. And in his turn he

summoned her to him: 'Come upstairs--make haste! Do you see that date

cut with a knife in the wall of the alcove? Don't you remember that I

did that the day Louise was born?... And just recollect, when we were

in bed, we used to look at that crack in the ceiling, and jest about

it, saying that the stars were watching and smiling at us.'

Then, as they went through the little garden, they burst into

exclamations: 'Why, look at the old fig tree! It hasn't changed a

bit; we might have left it only yesterday.... Ah! we had a border of

strawberries in the place of that sorrel; we shall have to plant one

again.... The pump has been changed--that's a blessing! Perhaps we

shall be able to get water with this one.... Why, there's our seat, our

seat under the creeper! We must sit down and kiss each other--all the

young kisses of long ago in a good kiss of to-day.'

They felt moved to tears, and for an instant they lingered embracing,

amid that delightful renewal of their happiness. Great courage came

to them from the sight of those friendly surroundings, where they had

never shed a tear. Everything they saw drew them more closely together,

and seemed to promise them victory.

With respect to their daughter Louise, a separation had become

necessary at the very outset. She had been obliged to leave them for

the Training School of Fontenay, to which she had secured admission.

Her tastes and her love for her father had made her desirous of

becoming a mere schoolmistress, even as he was a mere village

schoolmaster. And Marc and Geneviève, remaining alone with little

Clément, saddened by their daughter's departure, though they knew it to

be necessary, drew yet closer together, in order to deaden their sense

of that sudden void. True, Clément remained with them, and gave them

occupation. He was now becoming quite a little man, and it was with

affectionate solicitude that they watched over the awakening of his

faculties.

Besides, Marc prevailed on Geneviève to undertake the management of the

adjoining girls' school--that is after requesting Salvan to intervene

with Le Barazer with a view to her appointment to the post. It will be

remembered that immediately after her convent days she had obtained

the necessary certificates, and that if she had not taken charge of

the girls' school when her husband was first appointed to Jonville,

it had been because Mademoiselle Mazeline had then held the post. But

the advancement now given to Jauffre and his wife had left both posts

vacant, and it seemed best that the two schools should be confided

to Marc and Geneviève, the husband taking the boys and the wife the

girls--this indeed being an arrangement which the authorities always

preferred.

Marc, for his part, perceived all sorts of advantages in it: the

teaching would proceed on the same lines in both schools; he would

have a devoted collaborator who would help instead of trying to thwart

him in his advance towards the future. And, again, though Geneviève

had given him no cause for anxiety since her return, she would find

occupation for her mind; she would be compelled to recover and exert

her reason in acting as a teacher, a guardian of the little maids who

would be the wives and mothers of to-morrow. Besides, would not their

union be perfected? would they not be blended for ever, if, with all

faith and all affection, they should share the same blessed work of

teaching the poor and lowly, from whom the felicity of the future would

spring? When a notification of the appointment arrived, fresh joy came

to them; it was as if they now had but one heart and one brain.

But in what a ruinous and uneasy state did Marc now find that village

of Jonville which he had loved so well! He remembered his first

struggles with the terrible Abbé Cognasse, and how he had triumphed by

securing the support of Mayor Martineau, that well-to-do, illiterate

but sensible peasant, who retained all a peasant's racial antipathy

for the priests--those lazy fellows, who lived well and did nothing.

Between them, Marc and Martineau had begun to secularise the parish;

the schoolmaster no longer sang in the choir, no longer rang the bell

for Mass, no longer conducted his pupils to the Catechism classes;

while the Mayor and the parish council escaped from routine and

favoured the evolution which gave the school precedence over the

Church. Thanks to the action Marc brought to bear on his boys and their

parents, and the influence he exercised at the parish offices, where he

held the post of secretary, he had seen great prosperity set in around

him. But as soon as he had been transferred to Maillebois, Martineau,

falling into the hands of Jauffre, the man of the Congregations, had

speedily weakened. Indeed, he was incapable of action when he did not

feel himself supported by a resolute will. Racial prudence deterred

him from expressing an opinion of his own; he sided with the priest or

with the schoolmaster according as one or the other proved to be the

stronger. Thus, while Jauffre, thinking merely of his own advancement,

chanted the litanies, rang the bell, and attended the Communion, Abbé

Cognasse gradually became master of the parish, setting the Mayor and

the council beneath his heel, to the secret delight of the beautiful

Madame Martineau, who, though not piously inclined, was very fond of

displaying new gowns at High Mass on days of festival. Never had there

been a plainer demonstration of the axiom, 'According to the worth of

the schoolmaster, such is the worth of the school; and according to

the worth of the school, such is the worth of the parish.' In very few

years, indeed, the prosperity which had declared itself in Jonville,

the ground which had been gained, thanks to Marc, was lost. The village

retrograded, its life died away in increasing torpor after Jauffre had

delivered Martineau and his fellow-parishioners into the hands of the

triumphant Cognasse.

In this way sixteen years elapsed, bringing disaster. All moral and

intellectual decline leads inevitably to material misery. There is no

country where the Roman Church has reigned as absolute sovereign that

is not now a dead country. Ignorance, error, and base credulity render

men powerless. And what can be the use of exercising one's will, acting

and progressing, if one be a mere toy in the hands of a Deity who

plays with one according to his fancy? That Deity suffices, supplies

the place of everything. At the end of such a religion of terrestrial

and human nothingness, there is but stupidity, inertia, surrender

into the hands of Providence, mere routine in the avocations of life,

idleness, and want. Jauffre let his boys gorge themselves with Bible

history and Catechism, while in their peasant families all ideas of any

improved system of cultivating the land were regarded with increasing

suspicion. They knew nothing of those matters, they would not learn.

Fields remained unproductive, crops were lost for want of intelligent

care. Then effort seemed excessive and useless, and the countryside

became impoverished, deserted, though above it there still shone the

all-powerful and fructifying sun--that ignored, insulted god of life.

The decline of Jonville had become yet more marked after Abbé Cognasse

had prevailed on the weak Martineau to allow the parish to be dedicated

to the Sacred Heart in a pompous and well-remembered ceremony. The

peasants were still waiting for that Sacred Heart to bring them the

wondrous promised harvests by dispelling the hailstorms and granting

rain and fine weather in due season. By way of result one only found

more imbecility weighing on the parish, a sleepy waiting for divine

intervention, the slow agony of fanatical believers, in whom all power

of initiative has been destroyed, and who, if their Deity did not

nourish them, would let themselves starve rather than raise an arm.

During the first days that followed his return, Marc, on taking a

few country walks with Geneviève, felt quite distressed by all the

incompetency and neglect he beheld. The fields were ill-kept, the

roads scarcely passable. One morning they went as far as Le Moreux,

where they found Mignot installing himself in his wretched school, and

feeling as grieved as they were that the district should have fallen

into such a deplorable state.

'You have no idea, my friends,' said he, 'of the ravages of that

terrible Cognasse. He exercises some little restraint at Jonville;

but here, in this lonely village, whose inhabitants are too miserly

to pay for a priest of their own, he terrorises and sabres everybody.

Of late years, he and his creature Chagnat, while reigning here,

virtually suppressed the Mayor, Saleur, who felt flattered at being

re-elected every time, but who turned all the worries of his office

over to his secretary, Chagnat, and by way of exhibiting his person,

let himself be taken to Mass, though at heart he scarcely cared for the

priests.... Ah! how well I now understand the torments of poor Férou,

his exasperation, and the fit of lunacy which led to his martyrdom.'

With a quivering gesture Marc indicated that he was haunted by the

thought of that unhappy man, struck down by a revolver-shot yonder,

under the burning sun. 'When I came in just now, he seemed to rise

before me. Famished, having only his scanty pay to provide for himself,

his wife, and his children, he endured untold agony at feeling that

he was the only intelligent, the only educated, man among all those

ignorant dolts living at their ease, who disdained him for his poverty

and feared him for his attainments, which humiliated them.... That

explains, too, the power acquired by Chagnat over the Mayor, the

latter's one desire being to live in peace on his income, in the

somnolent state of a man whose appetite is satisfied.'

'But the whole parish is like that,' Mignot replied. 'There are no

poor, and each peasant remains content with what he harvests, not in a

spirit of wisdom, but from a kind of egotism, ignorance, and laziness.

If they are perpetually quarrelling with the priest, it is because

they accuse him of slighting them, of not giving them the Masses and

other ceremonies to which they consider themselves entitled. Thanks to

Chagnat, in his time something like an understanding was arrived at,

and, indeed, all that was said and done here in honour of St. Antony of

Padua can hardly be pictured.... But the result of Chagnat's _régime_

is deplorable; I found the school as dirty as a cowshed; one might have

thought that the Chagnats had lodged all the cattle of the district

in it, and I had to engage a woman to help me to scour and scrape

everything.'

Geneviève, meantime, had become dreamy; her glance seemed to wander

away to far-off memories. 'Ah! poor Férou!' she murmured, 'I was not

always kind to him and his family. That is one of my regrets. But how

can one remedy so much suffering and disaster? We have so little power,

we are still so few. There are times when I despair.' Then, suddenly

waking up, as it were, and smiling, she nestled close to her husband

and resumed: 'There, there, don't scold me, my dear, I did wrong to

speak like that. But you must allow me enough time to become fearless

and reproachless as you yourself are.... Come, it's understood, we are

going to set to work, and we shall conquer.'

Thereupon they all became merry, and Mignot, who wished to escort his

friends a little way, ended by accompanying them almost to Jonville.

There, at the roadside, stood a large square building, a kind of

factory, the branch establishment of the Good Shepherd of Beaumont,

which had been promised at the time of the consecration of the parish

to the Sacred Heart, and which had now been working for several years.

The fine clerical folk had made a great noise about the prosperity

which such an establishment would bring with it: all the daughters of

the peasants would find employment and become skilful workwomen, there

would be a great improvement in their morality, drones and gadabouts

would be duly corrected, and the business might end by endowing the

district with quite an industry.

The specialty of the Good Shepherd establishments was to provide the

big drapery shops of Paris with petticoats, knickers, and chemises--the

finest, most ornamental, and most delicate feminine body linen. At

Jonville, under the superintendence of some ten sisters, two hundred

girls worked from morning till night, trying their eyes over all that

rich and fashionable underwear, which was often destined for strange

festivities. And those two hundred little _lingères_ constituted but

a tiny fraction of all the poor hirelings who were thus exploited,

for the Order had establishments from one to the other end of France;

nearly fifty thousand girls toiled in its workshops, scantily paid,

ill-treated, and ill-fed, while they earned for it millions of francs.

At Jonville, there had been speedy disenchantment, none of the fine

promises had been fulfilled, the establishment seemed a gulf which

swallowed up the last energies of the region. The farms were raided and

their women folk carried off, the peasants could no longer keep their

daughters with them,--the girls all dreamt of becoming young ladies,

of spending their days on chairs, engaged in light work. But they soon

repented of their folly, for what with the long hours of enforced

immobility, the exhausting strain of unremitting application, never was

there more frightful drudgery; the stomach remained empty, the head

became heavy, there was no time for sleep in summer, and there was no

fire in winter. The place was a prison-house, where, under the pretext

of practising charity, of promoting morality, woman was exploited in

the most frightful manner, sweated in her flesh, stupefied in her

intelligence, turned into a beast of burden, from whom the greatest

gain possible was extracted. And scandals burst forth at Jonville; one

girl nearly perished of cold and starvation, another became half mad,

while another, turned out of doors penniless after years of crushing

toil, rebelled, and threatened the good sisters with a sensational

lawsuit.[1]

[Footnote 1: In the above account of the Good Shepherd establishments,

M. Zola has made use of numerous incidents brought to light by

proceedings in the French law courts, and also by the action

of the Bishop of Nancy, who, in attempting to put a stop to

abominable practices, incurred the odium of all the money-grubbing

Congregations.--_Trans._]

Marc, stopping short on the road, looked at the big factory, silent

like a prison, deathly like a cloister, where so many young lives were

wearing themselves away, nothing carolling, meanwhile, the happiness of

fruitful work.

'One source of the Church's strength,' said he, 'a very simple matter

in practice, is that she stoops to present-day requirements and borrows

our own weapons to fight us. She manufactures and she trades; there is

no object or article of daily consumption that she does not produce or

sell, from clothes to _liqueurs_. Several Orders are merely industrial

associations, which undersell other people, as they secure labour

for next to nothing, and thus compete disloyally with our smaller

producers. The millions of francs they gain go into the cash-boxes

of the Black Band, supplying sinews for the war of extermination

which is waged against us, swelling the thousands of millions which

the Congregations possess already, and which may render them so

redoubtable.'

Geneviève and Mignot had listened thoughtfully. And a moment of anxious

silence now followed amid the evening quietude, while the sunset cast a

great pink glow on the closed and mournful factory of the Good Shepherd.

'Why, I myself seem to be despairing now!' Marc resumed gaily. 'They

are still very powerful, it is certain. But we have a book on our

side, the little book of elementary knowledge, which brings truth with

it, and which will end by for ever overcoming the falsehoods they

have circulated for so many centuries. All our strength is in that,

Mignot. They may accumulate ruins here, they may lead poor ignorant

folk backward, and destroy the little good done by us formerly; but

it will suffice for us to resume our efforts to bring about progress

by knowledge, and we shall regain the lost ground, and continue to

advance until we at last reach the City of solidarity and peace.

Their prison-house of the Good Shepherd will crumble like all others,

their Sacred Heart will go whither all the gross fetiches of the dead

religions have gone. You hear me, Mignot; each pupil in whom you instil

a little truth will be another helper in the cause of justice. So to

work, to work! Victory is certain, whatever difficulties and sufferings

may be encountered on the road!'

That cry of faith and everlasting hope rang out across the quiet

countryside amid the calm setting of the planet which foretold a bright

to-morrow. And Mignot bravely returned to his task at Le Moreux, while

Marc and Geneviève went homeward to begin their work at Jonville.

Arduous work it was, requiring much will and patience, for it was

necessary to free Mayor Martineau, the parish council, and indeed the

whole village from the hands of the priest, who was determined not

to relax his hold. On hearing of Marc's appointment, Abbé Cognasse,

instead of evincing any anger or fear of the redoubtable adversary who

was being sent to face him, had contented himself with shrugging his

shoulders and affecting extreme contempt. He said on all sides that

this beaten man, this disgraced mediocrity, who had lost all honour

by his complicity in the Simon case, would not remain six months at

Jonville. His superiors had merely sent him there in order to finish

him off, not wishing to execute him at one blow. In reality, no doubt,

Abbé Cognasse scarcely felt at ease, for he knew the man he had to

deal with--a man all calmness and strength, derived from his reliance

on truth. And that the priest plainly scented danger was shown by the

prudence and _sangfroid_ which he himself strove to preserve, for fear

of spoiling everything if he should yield to some of his customary fits

of passion. Thus the unexpected spectacle of a superbly diplomatic

Abbé Cognasse, who left to Providence the duty of striking down the

enemy, was presented to the village. As his servant Palmyre, who with

increasing age had become quite terrible, did not possess sufficient

self-restraint to imitate his silent contempt, he scolded her in public

when she ventured to declare that the new schoolmaster had stolen some

consecrated wafers from the church at Maillebois for the purpose of

profaning them in the presence of his pupils. That was not proved, said

the Abbé, nor was there any proof of the story that hell had lent Marc

a devil, who, on being summoned, stepped out of the wall and helped

him with his class-work. Indoors, however, all was agreement between

the priest and the servant, who both displayed extraordinary greed and

avarice, the former picking up as many Masses as possible, the latter

keeping the accounts, and growling angrily when money did not come

in. With reference to Marc, then, there ensued, on the Abbé's part, a

stealthy and venomous campaign, with the object of destroying both the

master and his school, in order that he, Cognasse, might continue to

reign over the parish.

Marc, on his side, behaved as if the Church and the priest did not

exist. To win back Martineau, the council, and the inhabitants, he

contented himself with teaching the truth, with promoting the triumph

of reason over ridiculous dogmas, limiting himself strictly to his

duties as a master, convinced as he was that the true and the good

would prove victorious when he should have fashioned hearts and minds

capable of will and understanding. He had necessarily resumed the

duties of secretary at the parish office, but he there contented

himself with discreetly advising Martineau, who at heart was well

pleased by his return. The Mayor had already had a quarrel with his

wife respecting the chanting of Mass, which chanting Abbé Cognasse had

done away with now that Jauffre was no longer there. And there was also

the ancient and everlasting quarrel about the church clock, which would

not work. The first thing which showed that a change had taken place at

Jonville was the vote of a sum of three hundred francs by the council

for the purchase of a new clock which was fixed to the pediment of the

parish offices. This seemed a very bold step to take, but it met with

the approval of the villagers. They would at last know the correct

time, which the rusty, old, worn-out clock of the church no longer

gave. However, Marc avoided any semblance of triumph; he knew that

years would be needed to regain all the lost ground. Each day would

bring a little progress, and he patiently sowed the future, convinced

that those peasants would come over to his side when they found in

truth the one sole source of health, prosperity, and peace.

And now, for Marc and Geneviève, came fruitful years of work and

happiness. He, in particular, had never felt so courageous and strong.

The loving return of his wife, and the complete union which had

followed it, brought him fresh power, for his life now accorded with

his work. In former times he had greatly suffered at finding that,

while he claimed to teach truth to others, he could not convince the

companion of his life, the wife he loved, the mother of his children;

and he had felt hampered in his task of wresting others from error

when, from weakness or powerlessness, he tolerated error in his own

home. But now he possessed irresistible strength, all the authority

which comes to one from example, from the realisation of happiness at

the family hearth through perfect agreement and a common faith. And

what healthy delight there was in the prosecution of the same work by

the husband and the wife, acting in conjunction one with the other, and

yet freely, each retaining the exercise of his or her individuality!

Moments of weakness still came occasionally to Geneviève, but Marc

scarcely intervened; he preferred to let her regret and repair the

errors arising from the past, of her own accord.

Every evening, when the boys and girls had gone home, the master and

the mistress found themselves together in their little lodging, and

talked of the children confided to them, taking account of the day's

work, and coming to an understanding respecting the work of the morrow,

though without binding themselves to identical programmes. Geneviève,

being sentimentally inclined, endeavoured the more particularly to make

sincere and happy creatures of her girls, trying to free them from the

ancient slavery less by knowledge than by sense and love, for fear

of casting them into pride and solitude. Marc, perhaps, would have

gone further, and have fed both boys and girls on the same knowledge,

leaving life to indicate the social _rôle_ of each sex. Before long

the great regret experienced by himself and his wife was that they

did not direct a mixed school, like Mignot's at Le Moreux, whose

population of little more than two hundred souls supplied scarcely a

dozen boys and as many girls. At Jonville, which numbered nearly eight

hundred inhabitants, the master had some thirty boys under him, and the

mistress some thirty girls. Had they been united, what a fine class

there would have been--Marc acting as director, and Geneviève as his

assistant! Such indeed was their idea; had they been in authority they

would no longer have separated the girls from the boys; they would

have entrusted all those little folk to a married couple, a father

and a mother, who would have educated and reared them one with the

other as if they all belonged to their own family. They held that all

sorts of advantages would result from such a course, a more logical

apprenticeship of life, excellent emulation, more frank and gentle

manners. In particular, the adjunction of the wife to the husband as

an assistant seemed likely to prove fruitful in good results. Briefly,

they would have liked to pull down the wall which separated their

pupils from one another, in such wise as to have had but one school, a

little miniature world in which he would have set his virility, she her

tenderness, and what good work would they not then have accomplished,

devoting themselves entirely to those little couples of the future!

But the regulations had to be observed, and Marc, on resuming his work,

pursued the methods that he had followed at Maillebois for fifteen

years. His class was smaller than it had been there, and his resources

were more limited; but he had the satisfaction of being almost _en

famille_, and his action became more direct and efficacious. After

all, what did it matter if the number of pupils whom he fashioned into

men was only a score or so? Had each schoolmaster in all the little

villages followed Marc's example, so as to endow the nation with

twenty just and sensible men, the result would have sufficed to make

France the emancipator of the world. Another source of contentment

for Marc was that he secured almost complete liberty of action from

Mauraisin's successor, the new Elementary Inspector, M. Mauroy, to

whom Le Barazer, whose friend he was, had discreetly given special

instructions. The village was so small that Marc's doings could not

attract much attention, and thus he was able to pursue his methods

without any great interference. As a first step, he again got rid of

all religious emblems, all pictures, copybooks, and books in which

the supernatural was shown triumphant, and in which war, massacre,

and rapine appeared as ideals of power and beauty. He considered that

it was a crime to poison a lad's brain with a belief in miracles,

and to set brute force, assassination, and theft in the front rank

as manly and patriotic duties. Such teaching could only produce

imbecile inertia, sudden criminal frenzy, iniquity, and wretchedness.

Marc's dream, on the contrary, was to set pictures of work and peace

before his pupils, to show sovereign reason ruling the world, justice

establishing brotherliness among men, the ancient violence of warlike

ages being condemned, and giving place to agreement among all nations,

in order that they might arrive at the greatest possible happiness.

And having rid his class of the poisonous ferments of the past, Marc

particularly instructed his pupils in civic morality, striving to make

each a citizen well informed about his country, and able to serve

and love it, without setting it apart from the rest of mankind. Marc

held that France ought no longer to dream of conquering the world by

arms, but rather by the irresistible force of ideas, and by setting an

example of so much freedom, truth, and equity, that she would deliver

all other countries and enjoy the glory of founding with them the great

confederation of free and brotherly nations.

For the rest, Marc tried to conform to the school programmes, though,

as they were very heavy, he occasionally set them aside. Experience had

taught him that learning was nothing if one did not understand what

one learnt and if one could not put it to use. Accordingly, without

excluding books, he gave great development to oral lessons, and, once

again, he strove to rejuvenate himself, to share the pastimes of his

pupils, and descend, as it were, to their mental level, in such wise

that, like them, he seemed to be learning, seeking truth, and making

discoveries. It was in the fields also that he explained to them how

the soil ought to be cultivated, and he took them to carpenters,

locksmiths, and masons in order that they might acquire correct ideas

of manual work. In his opinion, moreover, it was fit that gymnastics

should partake of the character of amusement, and thus playtime was

largely devoted to bodily exercise. Again, Marc took on himself the

office of a judge; he requested his boys to lay all their little

differences before him, and he strove to make his decisions acceptable

to all parties; for not only did he possess absolute faith in the

beneficent power of truth upon young minds, but he was also convinced

of the necessity of equity to content and ripen them. By truth and

justice towards love: such was his motto. A boy to whom one never

tells a falsehood, whom one treats invariably with justice, becomes

a friendly, sensible, intelligent, and healthy man. And this was why

Marc kept such a careful watch over the books which the curriculum

compelled him to place in the hands of his pupils; for he well knew

that the best of them, written with the most excellent intentions, were

still full of ancient falsehoods, the great iniquities consecrated by

history. If he distrusted phrases and words, the sense of which seemed

likely to escape his little peasants, and endeavoured to interpret

them in clear and simple language, he feared yet more the dangerous

legends, the errors of articles of faith, the abominable notions set

forth in the name of a mendacious religion and a false patriotism.

There was often no difference between the books written by clerics

for the Brothers' schools and those which university men prepared for

the secular ones. The intentional errors contained in the former were

reproduced in the latter, and it was impossible for Marc to refrain

from intervening and refuting those errors by verbal explanations,

since it was essentially his task to fight the Congregational system of

teaching, that source of all falsehood and all misery.

For four years Marc and Geneviève worked on, modestly but

efficaciously, silently accomplishing as much good as was possible in

their little sphere. Generations of children followed one another; and

to the master and the mistress it seemed that fifty years would have

sufficed to rejuvenate the world, if each child, on reaching maturity,

had contributed to it a little more truth and justice. Four years

of effort had certainly not yielded a marked result, but many good

symptoms were manifest; the future was already rising from the fruitful

soil, sown so perseveringly.

Salvan, after being pensioned off, had ended by taking up his abode at

Jonville, in a little house left him by a cousin. He lived there like

a sage, with just enough money to provide for his wants and indulge

in the cultivation of a few flowers. In his garden, under an arbour

of roses and clematis, there was a large stone table, round which

on Sundays he liked to assemble a few friends, former pupils of the

Training College, who chatted, fraternised, and indulged together in

fine dreams. Salvan was the patriarch of the gathering, which Marc

joined every Sunday, his satisfaction being complete whenever he

there met Joulic, his successor at Maillebois, from whom he obtained

information about his old school. Joulic was a tall, slim, fair young

man, gentle yet energetic, who had taken to the teaching profession by

taste, and in order to escape the brutifying office life from which

his father, a petty clerk, had suffered. One of Salvan's best pupils,

he brought to his work a mind liberated from all absurd dogmas, won

over entirely to experimental methods. And thanks to a great deal of

shrewdness and quiet firmness, which had enabled him to avoid the

traps set for him by the Congregations, he proved very successful at

Maillebois. He had lately married a schoolmaster's daughter, a fair

little creature, gentle like himself, and this had helped to make his

school an abode of gaiety and peace.

One Sunday, when Marc reached Salvan's, he found Joulic already

chatting with the master of the house at the stone table in the flowery

arbour, and they, at the sight of him, at once made merry.

'Come on, my friend!' cried Salvan; 'here's Joulic telling me that some

more boys have left the Brothers' school at Maillebois. People say

that we are beaten, but we work on quietly, and our action spreads and

triumphs more and more each year!'

'Yes,' Joulic added, 'everything is progressing at Maillebois, which

once seemed to be the rotten borough of clericalism.... Brother

Joachim, Fulgence's successor, is certainly a very clever man, as

artful and as prudent as the other was wild and rough, but he cannot

overcome the distrust of the families of the town--the turn which

public opinion has taken against the Congregational schools, where

the studies are indifferent and the morals doubtful. Simon may have

been reconvicted, but, all the same, the ghost of Gorgias returns to

the spot which he polluted, and his very defenders are haunted by

the memory of his crime. And thus I recruit each boy who leaves the

Ignorantines.'

Marc, who had now seated himself, laughed and thanked his young

colleague. 'You don't know how much your news pleases me, my dear

Joulic,' he replied. 'When I quitted Maillebois I left a part of my

heart there, and I felt worried as to what might become of the work

which I had been pursuing for fifteen years; but I have long ceased to

feel any anxiety, knowing my old school to be in such capable hands as

yours. Yes, if some of the poison which infected Maillebois has been

eliminated, it is because the pupils who quit you, year by year, become

men of sense and equity.... Ask your old master, Salvan, what he thinks

of you.'

But Joulic with a gesture curtailed Marc's praises. 'No, no,' said he,

'I am only a pawn in the great battle. If I am worth anything I owe

it to my training, so that the chief merit belongs to our master.

Besides, I am not alone at Maillebois; I derive the most precious help,

I will even say the greatest support, from Mademoiselle Mazeline. She

has often consoled and encouraged me. You cannot imagine how much

moral energy that gentle and sensible woman possesses. A large part

of our success is due to her, for it is she who has gradually won

family people over to our cause by turning out so many good wives and

mothers.... When a woman personifies truth, justice, and love, she

becomes the greatest power in the world----'

Joulic paused, for at that moment Mignot made his appearance. Those

Sunday meetings brought delightful relaxation to Marc's former

assistant, who cheerfully walked the two and a half miles which

separated Le Moreux from Jonville. Having caught Joulic's last words,

he at once exclaimed: 'Ah! Mademoiselle Mazeline--do you know that I

wanted to marry her? I never mentioned it, but I may admit it now....

It is all very well to say that she is plain; but at Maillebois, on

seeing how good and sensible, how admirable she was, I dreamt of her.

And one day I told her of my idea. You should have seen how moved she

was--grave, yet smiling, quite sisterly! She explained her position to

me, saying that she was too old--already five and thirty, just my own

age. Besides, she added, her girls had become her family, and she had

long renounced all idea of living for herself.... Yet I fancy that my

proposal stirred up some old regrets.... Briefly, we continued good

friends, and I decided to remain a bachelor, though this occasionally

embarrasses me at Le Moreux, on account of my girl pupils, who would be

better cared for by a woman.'

Then he, also, gave some good news of the state of feeling in

his parish. All the crass ignorance and error, which Chagnat had

voluntarily allowed to accumulate there, were beginning to disappear.

Saleur, the Mayor, had experienced great trouble with his son, Honoré,

whom he had sent to the Lycée of Beaumont, where he had been stuffed

by the chaplain with as much religious knowledge as he would have

acquired in a seminary--in such wise that, after being appointed to

the management of a little Catholic bank in Paris, he had come to

grief there by practices which had nearly landed him in a criminal

court. Since then his father, the ex-grazier, who at heart had never

liked the priests, never wearied of denouncing what he called the

Black Band, exasperated as he was by the downfall of his son, which

had quite upset his comfortable life as an enriched peasant. And thus,

at each fresh quarrel with Abbé Cognasse, he sided with schoolmaster

Mignot, carrying the parish council with him, and threatening to have

nothing more to do with the Church if the priest should still treat

the inhabitants as a subjugated flock. Indeed, never before had that

lonely sluggish village of Le Moreux so freely granted admittance to

the new ideas. In part this was due to the better position which the

schoolmasters had secured of recent years. Various laws had been passed

improving their circumstances, and the lowest annual salaries were now

fixed at twelve hundred francs without any deductions.[2] It had not

been necessary to wait long for the result of this change. If Férou,

ill-paid, ragged, and wretched, had formerly incurred the contempt

of the peasantry on being compared by them with Abbé Cognasse, who

waxed fat on surplice-fees and presents, and was therefore honoured

and feared, Mignot, on the contrary, being able to live in a dignified

way, had risen to his proper position--that is the first. Indeed, in

that century-old struggle between the Church and the school, the whole

region was now favouring the latter, whose victory appeared to be

certain.

[Footnote 2: It is true that such laws have been passed, but in

various respects they are merely of a permissive character, and

the financial circumstances of the French Government have hitherto

prevented the realisation of provisions favoured by the Legislature.

Several publications issued in the autumn of 1902, since M. Zola's

death, have shown this to be the case. M. Zola, however, in this last

section of 'Truth,' anticipates rather than follows events, as will

plainly appear in the final chapters; and, as a strong movement in

favour of the secular schoolmasters is now following the suppression of

the Congregational schools, considerable improvement in the former's

position will probably take place before long.--_Trans._]

'My peasants are still very ignorant,' Mignot continued. 'You cannot

imagine what a sluggish spot Le Moreux is, all numbness and routine.

The peasants have lands of their own, they have never lacked bread,

and they would submit to be fleeced as in former times rather than

turn to anything novel and strange.... But there is some change all

the same; I can see it by the way they take off their hats to me, and

the more and more preponderating position which the school assumes in

their estimation. And, by the way, this morning, when Abbé Cognasse

came over to say Mass, there were just three women and a boy in the

church. When the Abbé went off he banged the vestry door behind him,

threatening that he wouldn't come back any more, as it was useless for

him to walk all that distance for nobody.'

Marc began to laugh. 'Yes,' said he, 'I've heard that the Abbé is

getting surly again at Le Moreux. Here he still restrains himself, and

strives to win the battle by diplomatic artfulness, particularly with

the women, for his superiors have taught him, no doubt, that one is

never beaten so long as one has the women on one's side. I have been

told that he frequently goes to Valmarie to see Father Crabot, and it

is surely there that he acquires that unctuous, caressing way with the

ladies which surprises one so much in a rough, brutal man of his stamp.

When he again loses his temper, as he will some day, it will be all

over.... Besides, things are quite satisfactory at Jonville. We gain

a little ground every year; the parish is regaining prosperity and

health. In consequence of the recent scandals the peasants no longer

allow their daughters to work at the factory of the Good Shepherd. And

it seems that the parish council--Martineau at the head of it--greatly

regrets its imbecility in having allowed Abbé Cognasse and Jauffre

to dedicate Jonville to the Sacred Heart. I am on the lookout for an

opportunity to efface that remembrance, and I shall end by finding one.'

There came a short pause. Then Salvan, who had listened complacently,

said, by way of conclusion, in his quiet, cheerful manner: 'All that

is very encouraging. Maillebois, Jonville, and Le Moreux are advancing

towards those better times for which we have battled. The others

thought they would conquer us, exterminate us for ever, and indeed, for

months, it seemed as if we were dead; but now comes the slow awakening,

the seed has germinated in the ground; it was sufficient for us to

resume our work in silence, and the good grain grows and flowers once

more. And now nothing will hinder the future harvest. The fact is that

we have been on the side of truth, which nothing can destroy, nothing

arrest in its splendour.... No doubt, things are not quite satisfactory

at Beaumont. The sons of Doutrequin, that old Republican of the heroic

times who lapsed into clericalism, have obtained advancement, and

Mademoiselle Rouzaire still gorges her girls with Bible history and

Catechism. But even public feeling at Beaumont is beginning to change.

Moreover, Mauraisin has not succeeded at the Training College. Some

of the students have told me jocularly that my ghost appears to him

there, and paralyses him with fear. The fact is that the impulse had

been given, and he has found it impossible to stop the emancipation

of the schoolmaster. I even hope that we shall soon be rid of him....

And a very hopeful symptom is that, behind Maillebois, Jonville, and

Le Moreux, there are other small towns and villages, nearly all in

fact, where the schoolmaster is defeating the priest, and setting the

secular school erect on the ruins of the Congregational school. Reason

is triumphing, and justice and truth are slowly increasing their sphere

of conquest at Dherbecourt, Juilleroy, Rouville, and Les Bordes. It is

a general awakening, an irresistible movement, carrying France towards

her liberating mission.'

'But it is your work!' cried Marc with sudden enthusiasm. 'There is

a pupil of yours in each of the localities you have named. They are

the children of your heart and mind; it was you who sent them as

missionaries into lonely country districts to diffuse the new gospel of

truth and justice. If people are at last awaking, returning to manly

dignity, becoming an equitable, free, and healthy democracy, it is

because a generation of your pupils is now installed in our classrooms,

instructing the young, and making true citizens of them. You are the

good workman; you realised that no progress is possible save by reason

and knowledge.'

Then Joulic and Mignot seconded Marc with similar enthusiasm: 'Yes,

yes, you have been the father, we are your children! The country will

only be worth what the schoolmasters may make it, and the schoolmasters

themselves can only be worth what the training colleges have made them.'

Salvan, who seemed very moved, protested with modest _bonhomie_. 'Men

like me, my friends? Why, there are some everywhere; there will be

plenty when they are allowed to act. Le Barazer helped me a great

deal by keeping me at my post, and not tying me down too much. What

I did? Why, Mauraisin himself is almost obliged to do the same, for

the evolution carries him on; the work, once begun, never stops. And

you'll see, Mauraisin's successor will turn out even better masters

than those who passed through my hands.... One thing which delights

me, and which you have not mentioned, is that nowadays students are

recruited much more easily for the training colleges. What made me most

anxious in former times was the distrust, the contempt into which the

teaching profession had fallen, ill-paid, unhonoured as it was. But

since the salaries have been increased, now that real honour attaches

to the humblest members of the profession, candidates arrive from all

quarters, so that one is able to pick and choose, and form an excellent

staff.... And if I have rendered any services you may be sure that,

on seeing my work continued and fulfilled, I feel rewarded beyond all

my hopes. At present I desire to remain a mere spectator of things; I

applaud your efforts, and live happily in my little garden, delighted

to be forgotten by everybody--excepting you, my lads.'

He ceased speaking, and a thrill of feeling passed through the others

as they sat there at the large stone table in the arbour, balmy with

the perfume of the roses, while from the verdant garden, from the whole

stretch of country around them, infinite serenity was wafted.

Every year since her parents had removed to Jonville, Louise had spent

the vacation with them. Her brother Clément would now soon be ten years

old, and Marc still kept him in his school, giving him that elementary

education which he would have liked to have seen generalised, applied

to all the children of the nation to whatever class they might belong,

in order that one might have based upon it, in accordance with the

tastes and talents of the pupils, a system of general and gratuitous

secondary education. If his own tastes should be shared by his son,

he intended to prepare him for the Training College of Beaumont, for

the great national work of salvation would lie in the humble village

schools for many years longer. Louise also had disinterestedly set her

ambition upon becoming an elementary teacher. And, indeed, on quitting

the school of Fontenay with the necessary certificates, she was, to

her great delight, appointed assistant to her former and well-loved

mistress, Mademoiselle Mazeline, at Maillebois.

At that time Louise was nineteen years of age. Salvan had intervened

with Le Barazer to secure her appointment, which passed virtually

unnoticed. The times were changing more and more; the period of

delirium--when the mere names of Simon and Froment had sufficed to

raise a tempest--was quite over. And this emboldened Le Barazer, six

months later, to appoint Simon's son Joseph as assistant to Joulic.

Joseph, it should be said, had made his _début_ at Dherbecourt after

quitting the Training College two years previously with an excellent

record. As advancement his transfer to Maillebois was of little

account, but it was a somewhat bold action to place him in a school

where his presence implied at least some preliminary rehabilitation of

his father. For a moment there was a slight outcry, the Congregations

tried to stir up the parents of the town; but the new assistant soon

won their favour, for he behaved very discreetly, gently, yet firmly,

in all his intercourse with the children.

One incident which at that time plainly indicated the change in public

opinion was the little revolution that took place at the Milhommes'

stationery shop. One day Madame Edouard, so long the absolute mistress

of the establishment, disappeared into the back shop, where Madame

Alexandre had remained so many years. And Madame Alexandre took her

place at the counter and served the customers. Nobody mistook the

meaning of that revolution,--the customers were changing, the secular

school was triumphing over its Congregational rival, and thus, in the

interests of the business, Madame Edouard, like a good trader, made

way for her sister-in-law. It must be said, too, that Madame Edouard

now had some great worries with her son Victor, who, entering the

army after his departure from the Brothers' school, and reaching the

rank of sergeant, had lately been compromised in a very unpleasant

affair; whereas Madame Alexandre had every right to be proud of her son

Sébastien, who had been one of Simon's and Marc's best pupils, then

Joseph's companion at the Training College, and was now, for three

years past, assistant-master at Rouville. Indeed, all those young folk,

Sébastien, Joseph, and Louise, after growing up together, had at last

reached active life, bringing with them broad minds, ripened early in

the midst of tears, to continue the bitterly-contested work of their

elders.

A year went by. Louise was now twenty, and, repairing to Jonville every

Sunday, spent the day with her parents. She then often met Joseph

and Sébastien, who had remained great friends and were very fond of

visiting their former masters, Marc and Salvan. It also frequently

happened that Joseph was accompanied by his sister Sarah, who was

well pleased to spend a day in the open air among her best friends.

For three years past she had been residing with her grandparents,

the Lehmanns, displaying so much activity and skill that a little

prosperity had returned to the dismal shop in the Rue du Trou.

Customers had returned to it, and Sarah, retaining the connection

formed with some of the large Paris clothiers, had recruited several

work girls and banded them together in a kind of co-operative group.

Madame Lehmann had lately died, however, and her husband, now

seventy-five years old, lingered on with only one regret, which was

that his age deprived him of all hope of ever witnessing Simon's

rehabilitation. Every year he spent a week or two with Simon, David,

and Rachel among the Pyrenees, and returned home well pleased to have

found them working quietly in their lonely retreat, but also very

sad when he realized that they would know no real happiness as long

as the monstrous proceedings of Rozan should remain unrevised. Sarah

had tried to induce the old man to stay with the others in the south,

but he obstinately returned to the Rue du Trou, under the pretence of

making himself useful there by superintending the workroom. And, as

it happened, this circumstance enabled the girl to take an occasional

holiday when, on accompanying her brother Joseph to Jonville, she

chanced to feel somewhat tired.

The reunion of the young people at Jonville, the days they spent there

so gaily, brought about the long-foreseen marriages. At first it was a

question of Sébastien marrying Sarah, which surprised nobody; though

it was regarded as an indication of the changing times that young

Milhomme should marry Simon's daughter not only with the consent of his

mother but also with the approval of Madame Edouard, his aunt. A little

later, when the wedding was postponed for a few months in order that

it might coincide with that of Louise and Joseph, a little excitement

arose at Maillebois, for this time the proposed union was one between

the condemned man's son and the daughter of his most valiant defender.

But the idyl of their love, which was the outcome of the old bitter

battle and all the heroism that had been displayed in it, touched

many a heart, and even tended to pacify the onlookers, though all

were curious to learn how Louise's marriage would be regarded by her

great-grandmother, Madame Duparque, who, for three years past, had not

quitted her little house on the Place des Capucins. And, indeed, the

marriage was postponed for another month in order that Madame Duparque

might come to some decision respecting it.

Though Louise was now twenty years old, she had not made her first

Communion, and it had been settled that only the civil ceremony should

be performed at her wedding with Joseph, as at that of Sébastien with

Sarah. Anxious as she was for an interview with Madame Duparque, the

girl wrote her an entreating letter; but all in vain, for she did not

even receive an answer. The old lady's door had not been opened to

Geneviève and her children since they had returned to Marc. For nearly

five years now the great-grandmother had clung to her fierce oath that

she would cast off all her relatives and live cloistered, alone with

God. Geneviève, touched by the thought of that woman of fourscore

years leading in solitude a life of gloom and silence, had made a few

attempts at a _rapprochement_, but they had been savagely, obstinately

repulsed. Nevertheless, Louise desired to make a last attempt,

distressed as she was at not having the approval of all her kinsfolk in

her happiness.

One evening, then, at sunset, she repaired to the little house,

which was already steeped in the dimness of twilight. But, to her

astonishment, on pulling the bell-knob, she heard no sound; it seemed

as if somebody had cut the wire. Gathering courage, she then ventured

to knock, at first lightly, and then loudly; and at last she heard a

slight noise, the board of a little judas cut in the door, as in the

door of a convent, having been pulled aside.

'Is it you, Pélagie?' Louise inquired. 'Is it you? Answer me!'

It was only with difficulty, after placing her ear close to the judas,

that she at last heard the servant's deadened and almost unrecognisable

voice: 'Go away, go away,' Pélagie answered; 'madame says that you are

to go away at once!'

'Well, no, Pélagie, I won't go away,' Louise promptly retorted. 'Go

back and tell grandmother that I shall not leave the door until she has

come and answered me herself.'

The girl remained waiting for ten minutes, or perhaps a quarter of

an hour. From time to time she knocked again--not angrily, but with

respectful, solicitous persistence. And all at once the judas was

re-opened, but this time in a tempestuous fashion, and a rough,

subterranean voice called to her: 'What have you come here for? You

wrote to me about a fresh abomination, a marriage, the very shame of

which might well suffice to kill me! What is the use of speaking of it?

Are you even fit to marry? Have you made your first Communion? No, eh?

You amused yourself with me, you were to have made it when you were

twenty years old; but to-day, no doubt, you have decided that you will

never do so.... So it is useless for you to come here. Be off, I tell

you, I am dead to you!'

Louise, quite upset, shuddering as if she had felt an icy breath

from the grave sweeping across her cheek, had barely time to cry:

'Grandmother, I will wait a little longer; I will come back in a

month's time!' Then the judas was shut violently, and the little dim

and silent house became quite deathly in the darkness, which had now

gathered all around.

During the previous five years Madame Duparque had gradually

relinquished all intercourse with the world. At first, on the morrow of

Madame Berthereau's death and Geneviève's departure, she had contented

herself with ceasing to receive her relations, restricting herself to

the society of a few pious friends of her own sex, and of the priests

and other clerics whom she had made her familiars. Among these was

Abbé Coquard, who had succeeded Abbé Quandieu at St. Martin's. He was

a rigid man, full of a sombre faith, and it delighted Madame Duparque

to hear the threats which he addressed to the wicked--threats of hell

with its consuming flames, its red forks, and its boiling oil. Thus,

morning and evening she was seen repairing now to the parish church,

now to the Capuchin Chapel, in order to attend the various offices and

ceremonies. But as time went by she went out less and less, and at last

a day came when she ceased to cross her threshold. It was as if she

were gradually sinking into gloom and silence, burying herself by slow

degrees. One day even the shutters of her house, which had still been

opened every morning and closed at night, remained closed, the façade

becoming blind, as it were, the house dead, neither a glimmer nor a

breath of life emanating from it any more. One might have thought that

it was abandoned, uninhabited, if sundry frocks and gowns had not been

seen slipping through the doorway at nightfall. They were the gowns of

Abbé Coquard, Father Théodose, and at times--so people said--Father

Crabot, who thus paid the old lady friendly visits. Her little fortune,

now a matter of two or three thousand francs a year, which she had

arranged to leave, one half to the College of Valmarie, the other to

the Capuchin Chapel, hardly sufficed to explain the fidelity of her

clerical friends. Their visits must also have been due in part to her

exacting and despotic nature, which overcame the most powerful, and in

part to their apprehensions of some deed of mystical madness, of which

they knew her to be capable. It was said, too, that she had obtained an

authorisation to hear Mass and take the Communion at home; and this, no

doubt, explained why she no longer set foot out of doors. By the force

of her piety she had compelled even the Deity to come to her house, in

order that she might be spared the affliction of going to His; for the

idea of seeing the streets and the people in them, of again setting

her eyes on that abominable age in which Holy Church was agonising,

had become such torture to her that she had caused her shutters to be

nailed in position, and every chink in the woodwork to be stopped up,

in order that no sound or gleam of the world might again reach her.

This was the supreme crisis. She spent her days in prayer. She was

not content with having broken off all intercourse with her impious

and accursed relations, she asked herself if her own salvation were

not in danger through having incurred, perhaps, some responsibility

in the damnation of her kinsfolk. She was haunted by a recollection

of Madame Berthereau's sacrilegious revolt on her death-bed, and

believed that unhappy woman to be not merely in purgatory, but in

hell. Then, too, came the thought of Geneviève, whom the demon had

assailed so terribly, and who had gone back to her errors like a dog

to his vomit. And, finally, there was Louise, the pagan, the godless

creature, who had rejected even the gift of the Divine Body of Jesus.

Those two--Geneviève and Louise--belonged, both in body and in spirit,

to the devil; and if Madame Duparque caused Masses to be said and

candles burnt for the repose of her dead daughter's soul, she had

abandoned those who still lived to the just wrath of her God of anger

and punishment. But, at the same time, her anguish remained extreme;

she wondered why Heaven had thus stricken her in her posterity, and

strove to interpret this visitation as a terrible trial, whence her own

holiness would emerge dazzling and triumphant. The confined, claustral

life she led, entirely devoted to religious practices, seemed to her

to be necessary reparation, for which she would be rewarded by an

eternity of delight. In this wise she expiated the monstrous sinfulness

of her descendants, those women guilty of free thought, who, in three

generations, had escaped from the Church and ended madly by putting

their belief in a religion of human solidarity. Thus, wishing to

redeem the apostasy of her grandchildren, Madame Duparque set all her

pride in humbling herself, in living for God alone, in seeking to slay

what little womanliness still lingered in her; for it was from that

womanliness that her condemned descendants had sprung.

So stern and sombre was her ardour that she wearied the few clerics who

alone now linked her to the world. She was conscious of the decline

of the Church; she could detect the collapse of Catholicism under the

efforts of those diabolical times from which she had withdrawn by way

of protest against Satan's victory--as if, indeed, she denied that

victory by not beholding it. And in her opinion her renunciation, her

fancied martyrdom, might perhaps impart new vigour to the soldiers

of religion. She would have liked to have seen them as ardent, as

resolute, as fierce as she herself was, encasing themselves in the

rigidity of dogmas, carrying fire and sword into the midst of the

unbelievers, and aiding the great Exterminator to conquer His people

by dint of thunderbolts. She never felt satisfied; she found Father

Crabot, Father Théodose, even the sombre Abbé Coquard, altogether too

lukewarm. She accused them of compounding with the hateful worldly

spirit of the times, and of completing the ruin of the Church with

their own hands by adapting religion to the tastes of the day. She

dictated their duty to them, preached a campaign of frankness and

violence, unhinged as she was, thrown into extreme exaltation by her

lonely life, and ever athirst with some supreme longings in spite of

all the penitence heaped upon her.

Father Crabot was the first to grow tired of that strange penitent,

who, at eighty-three years of age, treated herself so harshly, and bore

herself like a despairing prophetess, whose uncompromising Catholicism

was really a condemnation of the long efforts made by his own Order to

humanise the terrible Deity of the stakes and the massacres. Thus the

Jesuit allowed long intervals to elapse between his discreet visits,

and, finally, he altogether ceased to call, being of opinion, no doubt,

that the legacy he had hoped to receive for Valmarie would not be

sufficient compensation for the dangers he might incur with a woman

whose soul was ever in a tempest. A few months later Abbé Coquard

likewise withdrew, not because he had any cowardly fears of being

compromised, but because each of his discussions with the old lady

degenerated into a horrible battle. Eager and despotic like herself,

the Abbé was bent on retaining all his power and authority as a priest;

and one day, when Madame Duparque began to thunder in the name of God,

reproaching him with inaction, in such wise that he appeared to be a

mere transgressing sinner, he became quite angry, for he declined to

accept such a reversal of their respective positions. Then, for nearly

another year, only Father Théodose's frock was to be seen slipping into

the little, silent, closed house of the Place des Capucins.

Father Théodose, no doubt, regarded Madame Duparque's little fortune as

worth taking, for the times were hard with poor St. Antony of Padua. In

vain did the Capuchin scatter prospectuses broadcast; money did not now

flow into the collection boxes as it had done in the happy days when,

by a stroke of genius, he had induced Monseigneur Bergerot to bless one

of the saint's bones. In those days the miracle lottery had put people

into quite a fever; the sick, the idle, and the poor had all dreamt of

winning happiness from heaven in return for an investment of twenty

sous; whereas, now that a little sense and truth were spreading through

the district, thanks to the secular schools, the base commerce of the

Capuchin Chapel stood revealed in all its shameful imbecility.

For a time, it is true, another stroke of genius on the part of Father

Théodose, the creation of some wonderful mortgage bonds on heaven,

had again stirred the souls of the humble and the suffering, who, as

life below proved so cruel to them, hungered for felicity beyond the

grave. Then, during several months, the money of dupes had flowed

in; all the savings hidden in old stockings had been brought forth

by believers anxious to secure the chance of a little peace in the

Unknown. But finally, being confronted by growing incredulity, Father

Théodose had found it difficult to place his remaining bonds, and had

thereupon planned a third stroke of genius--this time the invention

of some private, reserved gardens in the ever-flowery Fields of the

Blessed. According to him there were to be some delightful little

nooks in Eternity, garnished with roses and lilies of the very best

varieties, under foliage set out to please the eyes, and near springs

which would be particularly pure and fresh. And thanks once more to

the decisive intervention of St. Antony of Padua, one might book

those little nooks in advance, thereby ensuring to oneself the eternal

enjoyment of them. Naturally, the booking was very expensive if one

desired something spacious and comfortable, though there were indeed

gardens at all prices, which varied in accordance with site, charm, and

proximity to the abodes of the angels. Two old ladies, it appeared, had

already bequeathed their fortunes to the Capuchins in order that the

miracle-working saint might reserve for them two of the best gardens

that were still vacant, one being in the style of an old French park,

whereas the other was more of the 'romantic' type, with a maze and a

waterfall. And it was also said that Madame Duparque had in a like way

made her choice, this being a golden grotto on the slope of an azure

mount, among clumps of myrtle bushes and oleanders.

Father Théodose, then, alone continued to visit the old lady, putting

up with her fits of temper, and returning to the house even after she

had driven him from it in exasperation at finding him so lukewarm and

resigned to the triumph of the Church's enemies. And the Capuchin had

actually ended by securing a latch-key in order that he might enter the

house whenever he pleased, instead of having to ring the bell again

and again, for poor Pélagie had become extremely deaf. It was also

at this same moment that the two women, the two recluses as they may

be called, cut the bell wire; for of what use was it to retain that

connecting link with the outer world? The only living being whom they

now received had a key to admit himself, and by cutting the wire they

were spared the nervous starts that came upon them whenever they heard

that jangling bell which they did not wish to answer. Pélagie, indeed,

had become as fierce and as maniacal as her mistress. She had begun by

curtailing her chats in the tradespeople's shops, scarcely speaking to

anybody when she went out, but gliding swiftly past the houses like a

shadow. Next, she had decided to go shopping twice a week only, in this

wise condemning her mistress and herself to live on stale bread and a

few vegetables--such fare as might have suited a pair of hermits in the

desert. And now the few tradespeople came themselves to the house at

nightfall on Saturday evenings, and left their goods at the doorway in

a basket, which they found waiting for them on the ensuing Saturday,

with the money due to them wrapped in a scrap of newspaper.

At the same time Pélagie had one great worry--her nephew Polydor, who

had entered a Beaumont monastery in a menial capacity, and who came

and made frightful scenes with her whenever he wished to extort money.

He alarmed the old woman to such a degree that she did not even dare

to leave him at the door, for she felt sure that on some pretext or

other he would collect a crowd and force his way in. And when she had

admitted him, she trembled still more; for she knew that he was a man

to deal her a nasty blow should she refuse to give him a ten-franc

piece. For many long years she had caressed the dream of employing

all her savings--some ten thousand francs, scraped together copper by

copper--to procure some happiness in the other world; and if the little

treasure was still carefully hidden away inside her palliasse, this

was because she hesitated as to the best, the most efficacious mode of

investment. Should she found a perpetual Mass for the repose of her

soul, or should she book one of Father Théodose's reserved gardens,

a modest little nook in heaven, by the side of her mistress's lordly

grotto? And she was still hesitating in this respect when misfortune

fell upon her.

One night, when she had been obliged to admit Polydor, the rascal did

not murder her, but rushed in turn upon every article of furniture in

her garret, finally ripping up the palliasse and fleeing with the ten

thousand francs, while Pélagie, whom he had thrust aside and who had

fallen beside the bed, groaned with despair at seeing that bandit--who

was of her own flesh and blood--make off with the blessed money which

St. Antony of Padua was to have given her back in eternal delight.

Would she be damned, then, as she no longer possessed the wherewithal

to speculate in the miraculous lottery? Such was the shock the old

woman experienced that two days later she died; and it was Father

Théodose who found her, already stark and cold, in her bare and dirty

garret, to which he climbed in his surprise and anxiety at discovering

her nowhere else. He was obliged to attend to everything--declare the

death, make arrangements for the funeral, and busy himself as to how

the last remaining inmate of the little house would live now that she

had nobody left to serve her.

For several weeks past Madame Duparque, whose legs had become too

feeble to support her weight, had taken to her bed, in which, however,

she remained in a sitting posture, erect and tall, though withered.

Little breath was left her, yet she still seemed to reign despotically

over that silent, dark, and empty house, whence she had driven all her

kith and kin, and where the only creature, the domestic animal, whom

she had been willing to tolerate, had just died. When Father Théodose,

on returning from Pélagie's funeral, tried to ascertain Madame

Duparque's intentions with respect to her future mode of life, he could

not even extract an answer from her. Greatly embarrassed, he insisted,

and offered to send her a sister, pointing out that it was impossible

for her to attend to any household duties as she could not even leave

her bed. But she at once flew into a temper, growled like some mighty

animal stricken unto death and unwilling to be disturbed in its final

hour. Vague charges gurgled in her throat; they were all cowards, all

traitors to their God, all egotists who abandoned the Church in order

that the vaults might not fall upon their heads! Thereupon Father

Théodose, in his turn growing exasperated, left her, deciding that

he would return the following morning to see if she had become more

reasonable.

A night and a day elapsed, for the Superior of the Capuchins was only

able to return at dusk, four and twenty hours later. During that night

and day, then, Madame Duparque remained alone, absolutely alone, behind

the nailed shutters, the carefully closed doors and windows of her

dark room, where neither a sound nor a ray of light from the outer

world penetrated. She herself had willed it thus, severing all carnal

ties with her relations, withdrawing from the world in protest against

the hateful society of the times in which sin had proved triumphant.

And, after giving herself wholly to the Church, she had gradually

become disgusted with its ministers--those priests who lacked all

militant faith, those monks who had no heroic bravery, but who were all

worldly men bent on personal enjoyment. Thus she had dismissed them

also, and now she remained alone with her Deity--an implacable and

stubborn Deity, who ruled with absolute, exterminating, and vengeful

power. All light and all life had departed from that cold, dismal,

fast-closed, and tomb-like house, where there only remained a feeble

octogenarian woman, sitting up in bed, gazing into the black darkness,

and waiting for her jealous God to carry her away, in order that

lukewarm souls might have an example of a really pious end. And when

Father Théodose presented himself at the house at dusk he found, to

his intense surprise, that the door would not open, that it resisted

all his efforts. The key turned readily enough in the lock, and it

seemed, therefore, that the door must have been bolted. But who could

have bolted it? There was nobody inside except the ailing woman, who

could not leave her bed. The Capuchin then made fresh attempts, but in

vain; and at last, feeling frightened, unwilling to incur any further

responsibility, he hastened to the Town Hall to explain the matter

to the authorities. A messenger was at once sent to Mademoiselle

Mazeline's for Louise; and, as it happened, Marc and Geneviève were

there, having come over from Jonville as the news of Pélagie's death

had made them feel anxious.

A tragical business followed. The whole family repaired to the Place

des Capucins. As the door would not yield, a locksmith was sent for,

but he declared he could do nothing, for assuredly the bolts were

fastened. It therefore became necessary to send for a mason, who, with

his pick, unsealed the door hinges set in the stone work. At each blow

the silent house re-echoed like a closed vault. And when the door had

been torn down it was with a quiver that Marc and Geneviève, followed

by Louise, re-entered that family abode whence they had been banished.

An icy dampness reigned there; it was only with difficulty that they

managed to light a candle. And upstairs, in the bed, they found Madame

Duparque, still in a sitting posture, propped up by pillows, but quite

dead, with a large crucifix between her long, thin, shrivelled hands.

In a superhuman effort she had assuredly found the supreme energy to

leave her bed, crawl down the stairs, and shoot the bolts in order

that no living soul, not even a priest, might disturb her in her last

communion with God. And then she had crawled upstairs again, and

had died there. When Father Théodose saw her he fell on his knees,

shuddering, and stammering a prayer. He was distraught, for he detected

in that death not merely the end of a terrible old woman, raised to a

fierce grandeur, as it were, by her uncompromising faith, but also the

end of all superstitious and mendacious religion. And Marc, in whose

arms Geneviève and Louise had sought a refuge, seemed to feel a great

gust sweeping by, as though eternal life were springing from that death.

When the family, after leaving the funeral arrangements to Abbé

Coquard, made a search in the old lady's drawers, they found

nothing--neither will nor securities of any kind. It could not be

said that Father Théodose had purloined any property, for he had not

returned to the house. Was it to be assumed, then, that the old lady

had previously handed her securities to him or to another? Or had she

destroyed them, unwilling that her relatives should benefit by her

fortune? The mystery was never solved, not a copper was ever found.

Only the little house remained, and it was sold, the proceeds being

given to the poor at the request of Geneviève, who said that in taking

that course she was certainly doing what her grandmother would have

desired.

In the evening, after returning from the funeral, Geneviève cast her

arms round her husband's neck, and made him a frank confession: 'If you

only knew!' said she. 'I was beset again when I heard that grandmother

was all alone, so bravely and loftily adhering to her stubborn

faith.... Yes, I asked myself if my place were not beside her, and if

I had done right in leaving her.... But what can you expect, dear? I

shall never be quite cured. In the depths of my being I shall always

retain a little of my old belief.... Yet, what a frightful death that

was! And how right you are in asking that people should live as they

ought to; that women should be liberated, set in their right position

as the equals and companions of men, and that life should partake of

all that is good and true and just!'

A month later the two long-deferred weddings at last took place. Louise

was married to Joseph, Sarah to Sébastien; and in those espousals Marc

perceived a beginning of victory. The good crop, sown with so much

difficulty in the midst of persecution and outrage, was germinating and

growing already.

II

Years went by, and Marc continued his work, sturdy yet at sixty years

of age, and as passionately attached to truth and justice as he had

been at the outset of the great struggle. And one day, when he happened

to go to Beaumont to call on Delbos, the latter suddenly said to him:

'By the way, my dear fellow, I have had a strange encounter.... The

other evening, at dusk, while I was returning home I noticed a man of

about your age, looking wretched and ravaged, walking ahead of me along

the Avenue des Jaffres.... And, all at once, in the blaze of light

coming from the confectioner's shop at the corner of the Rue Gambetta,

it seemed to me that I recognised our Gorgias.'

'Eh, our Gorgias?'

'Why, yes, Brother Gorgias, not wearing an Ignorantine's cassock,

but a greasy frock-coat, and slipping alongside the walls, with the

suspicious gait of an emaciated old wolf.... He must have come back

secretly, and must be living in some dark nook or other, still trying

to frighten and exploit his old accomplices.'

Marc, whom the announcement had greatly surprised, remained full of

doubt. 'You must have been mistaken,' said he; 'Gorgias attaches too

much value to his skin to return to Beaumont and run the risk of being

sent to the galleys--that is whenever the discovery of a new fact may

enable us to apply for the quashing of the Rozan judgment.'

'It is you who are mistaken, my friend,' Delbos answered. 'Our man has

nothing more to fear. According to our law of limitation there can

be no public action in a criminal matter after the expiration of ten

years, and so, even nowadays, little Zéphirin's murderer can walk the

streets in the daylight without any fear of arrest.... However, I may

have been deceived by a mere resemblance; and in any case the return of

Gorgias can have no interest for us, for you agree with me, do you not,

that we can derive nothing useful from him?'

'No, nothing whatever. He lied so much at the time of the affair that

if he should say anything now he would certainly lie again.... The

long-sought truth can never come to us from him.'

In this wise, at long intervals, Marc called upon Delbos in order to

chat with him about that everlasting Simon case, which, after the

lapse of so many years, still remained like a cancer gnawing at the

heart of the country. People might deny its existence, believe it to

be dead, cease to speak of it, but nevertheless it still stealthily

prosecuted its ravages, like some secret venom poisoning life. Twice

a year David quitted his lonely retreat in the Pyrenees and came to

Beaumont in order to confer with Delbos and Marc; for, in spite of the

pardon granted to his brother, he had not for an hour relinquished his

hope of eventual acquittal and rehabilitation. They, David, Delbos, and

Marc, were convinced that the monstrous verdict would be some day set

aside, and that the affair would end by the victory of the innocent.

But, even as in previous years, after the judgment of the Court of

Cassation, they found themselves struggling amidst an intricate network

of falsehoods. After hesitating for a time as to which scent they might

best follow, they had decided to investigate a second crime committed

by ex-President Gragnon, a crime which they had already suspected at

Rozan, and of which they were now convinced.

Gragnon, at the time of the Rozan proceedings, had repeated his illegal

communication trick. On this second occasion, however, he had availed

himself, not of one of Simon's letters with a forged postscript and

paraph, but of a confession alleged to have been written by the

workman who was said to have made a false stamp for the Maillebois

schoolmaster--this confession having been handed, it was alleged, to

one of the nuns of the Beaumont hospital by the workman in question

when he was near his death. Assuredly Gragnon had walked about Beaumont

with that confession in his pocket, speaking of it as a thunderbolt

which he would hurl at the Simonists if they drove him to extremities,

showing it also, or causing it to be shown, to certain members of

the jury, those who were pious and weak-minded, but at the same time

affecting a keen desire to save the holy nun to whom the confession

had been given from being publicly mixed up in such a scandal. And

this explained everything. The abominable behaviour of the jury in

reconvicting the innocent prisoner became excusable. Those men of

average intelligence and honesty had been deceived like the jurors

of Beaumont, and had yielded to motives which had remained secret.

Marc and David well remembered that they had heard some juryman ask

certain questions which had then seemed to them ridiculous. But they

now understood that this juryman had referred to the terrible document

which Gragnon had stealthily hawked about, and of which it was not

prudent to speak plainly. Delbos therefore busied himself with that

new fact, that second criminal communication, which, if proved,

would entail the immediate annulment of the proceedings at Rozan.

But, unfortunately, nothing could be more difficult to prove, and

for years Delbos and his friends had striven vainly. Only one hope

remained to them: a juror, a retired medical man, named Beauchamp, had

acquired a certainty that the workman's alleged confession was simply

a gross forgery. In a measure things repeated themselves, as is not

infrequently the case in real life, Beauchamp being assailed by remorse

like his predecessor, architect Jacquin. He himself, it is true, was

not a clerical, but he had an extremely devout wife and did not wish

to plunge her into desolation by relieving his conscience. Thus it was

necessary to wait.[1]

[Footnote 1: It may be held that M. Zola has perpetrated an artistic

blunder by introducing into his narrative a repetition, so to say, of

the Jacquin episode; but it should be remembered that the Simon affair

is based on the Dreyfus case, in which there were several repetitions

of that character. Among those who sat in judgment on Dreyfus,

Esterhazy, and Picquart, there were repeated instances of belated

conscientious scruples, some indeed known to the initiated but never

made public. Thus, if M. Zola is inartistic in making two characters

of his story adopt virtually the same course, he is at least true to

life.--_Trans._]

However, as the years went by, circumstances became more favourable.

Thanks to the spread of secular education the social evolution was

being hastened and giving great results. All France was being renewed,

a new nation was coming from its thousands of parish schools, whose

influence was to be found beneath each fresh reform that was effected,

each fresh step that was taken toward solidarity and peace. Things

which had seemed impossible in former times were easily accomplished

now that the nation was delivered from error and falsehood, endowed

with knowledge and force of will.

Thus, at the general elections which took place in May that year,

Delbos at last defeated Lemarrois, who had been Mayor of Beaumont for

so long a period. At one time it had seemed as if the latter would

never lose his seat, personifying as he did the great mass of average

public opinion. But the _bourgeoisie_ had denied its revolutionary

past, and allied itself with the Church in order that it might not

have to abandon any of its usurped power. It clung to the privileges

it had acquired, and, rather than share its royalty or its wealth

with the masses, it preferred to make use of all the old reactionary

forces in order to thrust the now awakened and enlightened people into

servitude once more. Lemarrois was a typical example of the _bourgeois_

Republican, who, wishing to defend his class, sank into a kind of

involuntary reaction, and was therefore condemned and swept away in

the inevitable _débâcle_ of that _bourgeoisie_ which a hundred years

of trafficking and enjoyment had sufficed to rot. It was inevitable

that the people should ascend to power as soon as it became conscious

of its strength, of the inexhaustible reserve of energy, intelligence,

and will slumbering within it; and it was sufficient that it should be

emancipated, roused from the heavy sleep of ignorance by the schools

in order that it might take its due place and rejuvenate the nation.

The _bourgeoisie_ was now at the point of death, and the people would

necessarily become the great liberating, justice-dealing France of

to-morrow. And there was, so to say, an annunciation of all those

things in the victory achieved at Beaumont by Delbos, the man who had

been Simon's counsel, who had been denied and insulted so long, at

first securing only a few Socialist votes, which by degrees had become

an overwhelming majority.

Another proof of the people's accession to power was to be found in

the complete change which had come over Marcilly. He had formerly

figured in a Radical ministry; then, after the reconviction of Simon,

he had entered a Moderate administration; and now he affected extreme

Socialist principles; and, by harnessing himself to Delbos's triumphal

car, had managed to get re-elected. It is true that the popular

victory was not complete throughout the department, for Count Hector

de Sanglebœuf had also been re-elected, this time as an uncompromising

reactionary; for the usual phenomenon of troublous times had appeared,

only plain, frank, extreme opinions finding support. The party

vanquished for ever was the old Liberal _bourgeoisie_, which had become

Conservative from egotism and fright, and which, lacking all strength

and logic, was ripe for its fall. And the ascending class, the great

mass of those who only the day before had been called the disinherited,

would naturally take the place of the _bourgeoisie_ after sweeping away

the few stubborn defenders that remained to the Church.

But the election of Delbos was particularly notable as being the first

great success achieved by one of those rascals without God or country,

one of those traitors who had publicly declared Simon to be innocent.

After the monstrous proceedings of Rozan all the notable Simonists

had suffered in their persons or their pockets for having dared to

desire truth and justice. Insult, persecution, summary dismissal had

been heaped upon them. There was Delbos, to whom no client had dared

to confide his interests; there was Salvan dismissed, compulsorily

retired; there was Marc disgraced, sent to a little village; and behind

the leaders how many others there were, relations and friends, who for

merely behaving in an upright manner were assailed with worries, and at

times even ruined!

Full of mute grief at the sight of such aberration, well understanding

that all rebellion was useless, the friends of truth had simply turned

to their work, awaiting the inevitable hour when reason and equity

would triumph. And that hour seemed to be approaching; for now Delbos,

one of the most deeply involved in the affair, had defeated Lemarrois,

who had long pursued a pusillanimous policy, refusing to take sides

either for or against Simon. Was not this a proof that opinion had

changed, that a great advance had been effected? Moreover, Salvan

secured consolation, for one of his old pupils was appointed to the

directorship of the Training College after Mauraisin had been virtually

dismissed for incapacity. Great was the delight of the sage when those

tidings reached him, not because it pleased him to crow over his

vanquished adversary, but because he at last saw the continuation of

his work entrusted to one who was brave and faithful. And, finally,

a day came when Le Barazer, who now felt strong enough to repair

former injustice, sent for Marc and offered him the head mastership

of a school at Beaumont. Such an offer, on the part of that prudent

diplomatist, the Academy Inspector, was extremely significant, and Marc

was pleased indeed; nevertheless he declined it, for he did not wish to

leave Jonville, where his task was not yet finished.

There were also other precursory signs of the great impending change

in the country. Prefect Hennebise had been replaced by a very energetic

and sensible functionary who had immediately demanded the revocation

of Depinvilliers, under whose management the Lycée of Beaumont had

become a kind of seminary. Rector Forbes had been compelled to rouse

himself from the study of ancient history, in order to dismiss the

chaplains, rid the classrooms of the religious emblems placed in them,

and secularise secondary as well as elementary education. Then General

Jarousse, having been placed on the retired list, had decided to quit

Beaumont; for, though his wife owned a house there, he was exasperated

with the new spirit which reigned in the town, and did not wish to come

into contact with his successor, a Republican general, whom some people

even declared to be a Socialist. Moreover, ex-investigating Magistrate

Daix had met a wretched death, haunted as he was by spectres, in spite

of his belated confession at Rozan; while the former Procureur de la

République, Raoul de La Bissonnière, after having a fine career in

Paris, seemed likely to come to grief there amidst the collapse of a

colossal swindle[2] which he had in some way befriended. And, as a last

and excellent symptom of the times, nobody now saluted Gragnon, the

ex-presiding judge, when, thin and yellow, he anxiously threaded the

Avenue des Jaffres, hanging his head but glancing nervously to right

and left as if he feared that somebody might spit upon him as he passed.

[Footnote 2: All newspaper readers know that various judicial

personages have been compromised in recent French swindles.--_Trans._]

The happy effects of free and secular education, which brought light

and health in its train, were also manifest at Maillebois, whither

Marc often repaired to see his daughter Louise, who, with Joseph

her husband, lived in the little lodging which Mignot had so long

occupied at the Communal school. Maillebois, indeed, was no longer

that intensely clerical little town, where the Congregations had

succeeded in raising their creature Philis to the mayoralty. In

former times the eight hundred working men of the _faubourg_, being

divided among themselves, could return only a few Republicans to the

Municipal Council, in which they were reduced to inaction. But at the

recent elections the whole Republican and Socialist list had passed,

by a large majority, in such wise that Darras, defeating his rival

Philis, had now again become Mayor. And his delight at returning to

that office, whence the priests had driven him, was the keener as he

was now supported by a compact majority which would enable him to act

frankly instead of being continually reduced to compromises.

Marc met Darras one day and found him quite radiant. 'Yes, I remember,'

said he, 'you did not think me very brave in former times. That poor

Simon! I was convinced of his innocence, yet I refused to act when you

came to me at the municipal offices. But how could I help it? I had a

bare majority of two, the council constantly escaped my control, and

the proof is that it ended by overthrowing me.... Ah! if I had then

only had the majority we now possess! We are the masters at last, and

things will move quickly, I promise you.'

Marc smiled and asked him what had become of Philis, his defeated

adversary.

'Philis--oh! he has been greatly tried. A certain person--you know whom

I mean--died recently, and so he has had to resign himself to living

alone with his daughter Octavie, a very pious young woman who does not

care to marry. His son Raymond, being a naval officer, is always far

away, and the house cannot be very cheerful, unless indeed Philis is

already seeking consolation, which may be the case, for I saw a new

servant there the other day--yes, quite a sturdy, fresh-looking girl!'

Darras burst into a loud laugh. For his own part, having retired from

business with a handsome fortune, he was living his last years in

perfect union with his wife, their only regret being that they had no

children.

'Well,' Marc resumed, 'Joulic may now feel certain that he will not

be worried any more.... It is he, you know, who, in spite of all

difficulties, transformed the town with his school, and made your

election possible.'

'Oh! you were the first great worker,' Darras exclaimed. 'I don't

forget the immense services which you rendered.... But you may be

quite easy, Joulic is now safe from all vexations, and I will help

him as much as I can in his efforts to make Maillebois free and

intelligent.... Besides, your daughter Louise and Simon's son Joseph

are now, in their turn, continuing the work of liberation. You are

a knot of brave but modest workers, to whom we shall all feel very

grateful hereafter.'

Then, for a moment, they chatted about the now distant times when Marc

had been first appointed to the Maillebois school. More than thirty

years had elapsed! And how many were the events that had occurred,

and how many were the children who had passed through the schoolroom

and carried some of the new spirit into the district around them!

Marc recalled some of his old, his first, pupils. Fernand Bongard,

the little peasant with the hard nut, who had married Lucille Doloir,

an intelligent girl, whom Mademoiselle Rouzaire had tried to rear in

sanctimonious fashion, was now the father of a girl eleven years of

age, named Claire, whom Mademoiselle Mazeline was freeing somewhat from

clerical servitude. Then Auguste Doloir, the mason's undisciplined son,

who had married Angèle Bongard, an obstinate young woman of narrow

ambition, had a son of fifteen, Adrien, a remarkably intelligent

youth whom Joulic, his master, greatly praised. Charles Doloir, the

locksmith, who had been as bad a pupil as his brother, but who had

improved somewhat since his marriage with his master's daughter, Marthe

Dupuis, also had a son, Marcel, who was now thirteen, and had left

the school with excellent certificates. There was also Léon Doloir,

who, thanks to Marc, had taken to the teaching profession, and after

becoming one of Salvan's best students, now directed the school at Les

Bordes, assisted by his wife, Juliette Hochard, who had quitted the

Training School at Fontenay with 'No. I' against her name. That young

couple was all health and good sense, and their life was brightened by

the presence of a little four-year-old urchin, Edmond, who was sharp

for his age, already knowing his letters thoroughly. Then came the twin

Savins: first Achille, so sly, so addicted to falsehoods as a boy, then

placed with a process-server, dulled like his father by years of office

work, and married to a colleague's sister, Virginie Deschamps, a lean

and insignificant _blonde_, by whom he had a charming little girl,

Léontine, who at eleven years of age had just secured her certificate,

and was one of Mademoiselle Mazeline's favourite pupils. Then came

Philippe Savin, who, long remaining without employment, had been

rendered better by a life of hardship, and was now still a bachelor,

and manager of a model farm, being associated in that enterprise

with his younger brother Jules, the most intelligent of the two, who

had given himself to the soil and married a peasant girl, Rosalie

Bonin--their firstborn, Pierre, now six years old, having lately

entered Joulic's school. Thus generation followed generation, each

going towards increase of knowledge, reason, truth, and justice, and it

was assuredly from that constant evolution which education produced,

that the happiness of the communities of the future would spring.

But Marc was more particularly interested in the home of Louise and

Joseph, and in that of his dearest pupil, Sébastien Milhomme, who

had married Sarah. That day, on quitting Darras, he repaired to the

Communal school in order to see his daughter. Mademoiselle Mazeline,

now more than sixty years of age, with a record of forty years spent

in elementary teaching, had, like Salvan, lately retired to Jonville,

where she now dwelt in a very modest little house near his beautiful

garden. She might still have rendered some services in her profession

had not her eyesight failed her. Indeed, she was nearly blind. In

retiring, however, she at least had the consolation of handing her

duties over to her well-loved assistant Louise, who was appointed head

mistress in her stead. Moreover, a headmastership at Beaumont was now

being spoken of for Joulic, in such wise that his assistant Joseph

might succeed him at Maillebois; and thus the young couple would share

the school which still re-echoed the names of Simon and Marc, whose

good work they would continue. Louise, who was now two and thirty, had

presented her husband with a son, François, who at twelve years of age

was already wonderfully like his grandfather Marc. And the ambition

of that big bright-eyed boy with the lofty brow was to enter the

Training College like his forerunners, for he also wished to become an

elementary teacher.

It was a Thursday--half-holiday day--and Marc found Louise just

quitting a housework class which she held once a week outside the

regulation hours. Joseph, with his son and some other boys, had gone on

a geological and botanical ramble along the banks of the Verpille. But

Sarah happened to be with Louise, for she was very much attached to her

sister-in-law, and always visited her when she came over from Rouville,

where her husband Sébastien was now head-master.

They had a charming little girl, Thérèse, in whom all the beauty of her

grandmother Rachel had reappeared. And three times a week Sarah came

from Rouville to Maillebois--the journey by rail lasting barely ten

minutes--in order to superintend the tailoring business which was still

carried on at old Lehmann's in the Rue du Trou. He was now very old

indeed, more than eighty, and as it had become difficult for Sarah to

superintend the establishment she thought of disposing of it.

As soon as Marc had kissed Louise he pressed both of Sarah's hands.

'And how is my faithful Sébastien?' he asked. 'How is your big girl

Thérèse, and how are you yourself, my dear?'

'Everybody is in the best of health,' Sarah answered gaily. 'Even

grandfather Lehmann is as strong as an oak-tree in spite of his

advanced years.... And I have had good news from yonder, you know.

Uncle David has written to say that my father has got over the attacks

of fever which have been troubling him occasionally.'

Marc jogged his head gently. 'Yes, yes, his wound is not altogether

healed. To restore him completely to health one needs that long-desired

rehabilitation which it is so difficult to obtain. We are advancing

towards it, however; I am still full of hope, for glorious times are

coming.... Remind Sébastien that each boy he makes a man of will be

another worker in the cause of truth and justice.'

Then Marc chatted a while with Louise, giving her news of Mademoiselle

Mazeline, who lived a very retired life at Jonville in the company of

birds and flowers. And he made his daughter promise to send her son

François to spend the Sunday there, for it was a great delight for his

grandmother to have the boy with her occasionally. 'And why not come

yourself?' he added. 'Tell Joseph to come as well; we will all call on

Salvan, who will be well pleased to see such a gathering of teachers,

whose father in a measure he is.... And you, Sarah, you ought to come

with Sébastien and your daughter Thérèse. Let it be a general outing

and our pleasure will be complete.... Come, it is understood, eh? Till

Sunday, then!'

He kissed the two young women and hurried away, for he wished to catch

the six-o'clock train. But he nearly missed it by reason of a strange

encounter which for a moment delayed him. He was turning out of the

High Street into the avenue leading to the railway station, when he

espied two individuals who were disputing violently behind a clump of

spindle trees. One of them, who seemed to be a man of forty, attracted

Marc's attention by his long, livid, and doltish face. Where was it

that he had previously seen that stupid, vicious countenance? All at

once he remembered: that man was certainly Polydor, Pélagie's nephew.

For more than twenty years Marc had not met him, but he was aware

that he had been dismissed, long ago, from the Beaumont convent which

he had entered as a servant, and that he led a chance existence among

the knaves of disreputable neighbourhoods. However, Polydor, noticing

and probably recognising the bystander who was looking at him so

attentively, hastened to lead his companion away. And then, as Marc

glanced at the other man, he started with surprise. Clad in a dirty

frock-coat, looking both wretched and fierce, Polydor's companion

had the haggard countenance of an old bird of prey. Surely he was

Brother Gorgias! Marc at once remembered what Delbos had told him; and

thereupon, wishing to arrive at a certainty, he started after the two

men, who had already turned into a little side street. But though he

gave the street a good look, he could see nobody. Polydor and the other

had disappeared into one of the houses of suspicious aspect which lined

it. Then Marc again began to doubt. Was it really Gorgias whom he had

seen? He was not prepared to swear it; he feared that he had perhaps

yielded to some fancy.

At present Marc triumphed at Jonville. By degrees, as healthy and

reasonable men had emerged from his school, the mentality of the

region had improved, and not only was there increase of knowledge,

logic, frankness, and brotherliness, but great material prosperity

was appearing, for a land's fortune and happiness depend solely upon

the mental culture and the civic morality of its inhabitants. Again,

then, was abundance returning to clean and well-kept homes; the fields,

thanks to newly adopted methods of culture, displayed magnificent

crops; the countryside was once more becoming a joy for the eyes in the

bright summer sunshine. And thus a happy stretch of land was at last

advancing towards that perpetual peace which for centuries had been so

ardently desired.

Martineau the Mayor, followed by the whole parish council, now acted

in agreement with Marc. A series of incidents had hastened that good

understanding by which all desirable reforms were accelerated. Abbé

Cognasse, after for some time restraining himself, in accordance

with the advice given him at Valmarie, which was to retain his

influence over the women,--for whoever possesses their support proves

invincible,--had relapsed into his wonted violence, incapable as he

was of long remaining patient, and enraged, too, at seeing the women

gradually escape from him, owing to the ill grace with which he sought

to detain them. At last, like the vengeful minister of a ravaging

and exterminating Deity, he became absolutely brutal, distributing

outrageous punishment in his wrath at the slightest offences. One day,

for instance, he rubbed little Moulin's ears till they positively bled,

merely because the lad had playfully pulled the skirts of the terrible

Palmyre, who, in her time, had administered smacks and whippings so

freely. Another day the Abbé boxed young Catherine's ears in church

because she laughed during Mass on seeing him blow his nose at the

altar. And finally, one Sunday, quite beside himself at finding that

the district was escaping from his control, he actually launched a

kick at Madame Martineau the mayoress, imagining that she defied him

because she did not make room for him to pass as quickly as he desired.

This time it was held that his behaviour exceeded all bounds, and

Martineau, quite enraged, cited him before the Tribunal of Correctional

Police, with the result that the battle became a furious one, Cognasse

retaliating with fresh acts of violence, and gathering quite a quantity

of lawsuits around him.

Marc meanwhile, anxious to complete his work in the village, had been

nursing an idea, which he was at last able to carry into effect. In

consequence of some new laws enacted by the Legislature, the Sisters

of the Good Shepherd, who carried on the factory in which two hundred

work-girls were sweated and starved, had been obliged to quit Jonville.

And it was a good riddance for the district, a plague-spot, a shame

the less. Marc, however, persuaded the parish council to purchase the

large factory buildings, when they were offered for sale by auction;

his idea being to modify and turn them into a Common House, in which

recreation and dancing rooms, a library, a museum, and even some free

baths might be gradually installed as by degrees the resources of the

parish increased. In this wise he dreamt of setting, in full view of

the church, a kind of civic palace, which would become a meeting and

recreation place for the hard-working community. If the women for

years past had only continued to go to Mass in order to show their

new gowns and see those of their acquaintances, they would yet more

willingly repair to that cheerful palace of solidarity, where a little

healthy amusement would await them. Thus, the recreation rooms were

the first inaugurated, and the ceremony gave rise to a great popular

demonstration.

The desire of the inhabitants was to efface and redeem that former

consecration of the parish to the Sacred Heart, which had filled the

mayor and the council with keen remorse ever since they had recovered

their senses. Martineau, for his part, accounted for that proceeding

by accusing Jauffre of having abandoned him to Abbé Cognasse, after

disturbing his mind by threatening both the parish and himself with all

sorts of misfortunes if he did not submit to the Church, which would

always be the most powerful of the social forces. Martineau, who now

perceived that this was not correct, for the Church was already being

beaten, and the more the district drew away from it the more prosperous

it became, was very desirous of setting himself on the winning side,

like a practical peasant, one who talked little but who always kept his

eye fixed on the main chance. He would therefore have liked some kind

of abjuration, some ceremony such as might allow him to come forward

at the head of the council, and restore the parish to the worship of

reason and truth, in order to wipe out that former ceremony when it

had dedicated itself to dementia and falsehood. And it was this desire

which Marc thought of fulfilling by arranging that the mayor and the

council should in a fitting manner inaugurate the recreation rooms of

the new Common House, in which it was proposed that the inhabitants of

the district should meet every Sunday to take part in suitable civic

festivities.

Great preparations were made. It was arranged that the pupils of Marc

and Geneviève should act a little play, dance, and sing. An orchestra

was soon recruited among the young men of the region. Maidens clad in

white were also to sing and dance in honour of the work of the fields

and the joys of life. Indeed it was particularly life, lived healthily

and fully, overflowing with duties and felicities, that was to be

celebrated as the universal source of strength and certainty. And the

various games and recreations which had been provided, games of skill

and energy, gymnastic appliances, with running tracks and lawns set

out in the adjoining grounds, were to be handed over to the young folk

who would meet there every week, while shady nooks would be reserved

for wives and mothers, who would be drawn together and enlivened by

having a _salon_, a meeting place, assigned to them. For the inaugural

ceremony, the rooms were decorated with flowers and foliage, and

already at an early hour the inhabitants of Jonville, clad in their

Sunday best, filled the village streets with their mirth.

By Marc's desire, and with the consent of the parents, Mignot, that

Sunday, brought his pupils over from Le Moreux in order that they might

participate in the festivity. He was met by Marc near the church just

as old Palmyre double-locked the door of the edifice in a violent,

wrathful fashion. That morning Abbé Cognasse had said Mass to empty

benches, and it was he who, in a fit of furious anger, had ordered his

servant to close the church. Nobody should enter it again, said he,

as those impious people were bent on offering sacrifices to the idols

of human bestiality. He himself had disappeared, hiding away in the

parsonage whose garden wall bordered the road leading to the new Common

House.

'This is the second Sunday that he has not gone to Le Moreux,' Mignot

said to Marc. 'He declares with some truth that it is not worth his

while to trudge so many miles to say Mass in the presence of two old

women and three little girls. The whole village has rebelled against

him, you know, since he brutally spanked little Eugénie Louvard for

having put out her tongue to him; though that is only one of the acts

of violence in which he has indulged since he has felt himself to be

defeated. Curiously enough, it is I who am obliged to defend him now

for fear lest the indignant villagers should do him an injury.'

Mignot laughed and, on being questioned, gave further particulars.

'Yes, Saleur, our mayor, has talked of bringing an action against him

and writing to his bishop. As a matter of fact, if I at first had some

difficulty in extricating Le Moreux from the ignorance and credulity

in which it was steeped by my predecessor Chagnat, at present I simply

have to let events follow their course. The whole population is

rallying around me, the school will soon reign without a rival, for, as

the church is being shut up, the battle is virtually over.'

'Oh! we have not got to that point yet,' Marc answered. 'Here, at

Jonville, Cognasse will resist till the last moment--that is, as long

as he is paid by the State and imposed on us by Rome. But I have often

thought that the lonely little hamlets like Le Moreux, particularly

when life is easy there, would be the first to free themselves from

the priests, because the latter's departure would make virtually no

alteration in their social life. When people don't like their priest,

when they go to church less and less, the disappearance of the priest

is witnessed without regret.'