Chapter XXII: Book III: I (6)

Then Delbos spoke during two sittings. Eager and nervous, endowed with passionate eloquence, he also dealt with the affair from the very beginning. But he did so in order to destroy the allegations in the old indictment, with the help of the arguments supplied by the Court of Cassation's inquiry. Not one of those allegations was worth anything. It was proved that Simon had returned home on foot on the night of the crime; that he had reached Maillebois at twenty minutes to twelve o'clock, an hour after the crime had been committed. Again, there was proof that the copy-slip had been stamped at the Brothers' school and initialled by Brother Gorgias, whose admissions on the subject were not even necessary, for counter experts, in a memorable report addressed to the Court of Cassation, had destroyed the extraordinary farrago of Masters Badoche and Trabut. Then Delbos turned to the new story of the forged stamp. No proof of this had been supplied. Nevertheless, he insisted on the subject; for he divined that some supreme abomination lurked beneath all that stealthy manœuvring compounded of mere allegation and reticence. A sick workman, it was said, had told a woman a vague story about a stamp which he had made for the Maillebois schoolmaster. Where was that woman? Who was she? What was her calling? As nobody would or could reply, he (Delbos) had a right to conclude that this story was one of those absurd lies such as _Le Petit Beaumontais_ was in the habit of retailing. However, if he was able to picture the whole crime as it must have taken place--Brother Gorgias returning after he had escorted Polydor home, pausing before Zéphirin's open window, finally entering the room, and at last succumbing to his ungovernable passions--he admitted that there was a gap in his narrative. Where had Gorgias found the copy-slip? For the rascal was right when he jeeringly inquired if schoolmasters usually walked about in the evening with copy-slips in their pockets. Undoubtedly the number of _Le Petit Beaumontais_ had been in the pocket of his own cassock, whence he had taken it in order to gag his victim. And the slip must have been there also. But how had that happened? Delbos suspected the truth, and if he had questioned Polydor Souquet so pressingly it was in order to extract it from him. He had failed in that endeavour, the witness having met him with an assumption of hypocritical stupidity. But, after all, what did that obscure point matter? Was not Gorgias's guilt absolutely manifest? His alleged alibi was based solely on a series of false statements. Everything proved his guilt--his flight, his semi-confessions, the criminal efforts made to save him, and the dispersal of his accomplices--Father Philibin hiding himself in some Italian convent; Brother Fulgence seeking refuge at a distance, and shielding himself with a diplomatic illness; and Father Crabot withdrawing to his cell, where Providence had visited him with a very salutary sprain. Was it not also in order to save Gorgias that President Gragnon had illegally communicated a forgery to the first jurors, as had been proved by the evidence of architect Jacquin? Amidst the accumulation of crimes, that one alone ought to have sufficed to open the eyes of the most prejudiced. And Delbos ended by depicting the frightful sufferings experienced by Simon, the fifteen years of transportation which he had endured amidst the most cruel physical and moral tortures, while ever stubbornly raising his cry of innocence. The advocate added that, like the Procureur de la République, he also desired to have the affair ended, but ended by an act of justice which would redound to the honour of France; for if the innocent man should be struck down again, the shame of France would be indescribable, and a future full of incalculable evils would lie before her.

There was no reply from the prosecution, the case was closed, and the jury at once withdrew to its retiring-room.[4] It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, and for more than an hour the spectators remained waiting, silent and anxious, in no wise resembling the audience at Beaumont, which had been so tumultuous and violent. The hall was very hot, and the atmosphere seemed as heavy as lead. There was little conversation, though occasionally the Simonists and the anti-Simonists glanced askance at one another. One might have fancied oneself in some funeral chamber where the life or death of a nation, the whole dolorous question of its future, was being decided. At last the jury reappeared, the judges came in, and amidst lugubrious silence the foreman arose: He was a little grey, lean man, a goldsmith, enjoying the custom of the local clergy. His shrill voice was distinctly heard. On the question of guilt the verdict was 'Yes,' by a majority; while 'extenuating circumstances' were unanimously granted. At Beaumont the jury had been unanimous with respect to guilt, and only a small majority had favoured the admission of extenuating circumstances. And now, after expediting the formalities, President Guybaraud hastily pronounced a sentence of ten years' solitary confinement. That done, he withdrew, and Pacart, the Procureur de la République, followed him, after bowing to the jury as if to thank them.

[Footnote 4: At French criminal trials the judges no longer sum up the evidence before the verdict is given. That privilege was taken from them by a special law several years ago, in consequence of their scandalous abuse of it.--_Trans._]

Marc, meantime, had glanced at Simon, on whose face he only detected a kind of faint smile, a painful contraction of the lips. Delbos, beside himself, was clenching his fists. David, whose emotion was too intense, had not returned into Court, but was awaiting the decision outside. The thunderbolt had fallen, and Marc felt a deadly chill in every vein. It was a frigid horror: the supreme iniquity, in which just minds had refused to believe, the crime of crimes, which had seemed impossible a few hours earlier, which reason had rejected, had suddenly become a monstrous reality. And there were no ferocious cries of joy, there was no onslaught like that of cannibals rushing to a feast of blood, as at Beaumont. Though the hall was full of rabid anti-Simonists, the frightful silence continued, such was the horror which froze one and all to their very bones. Only a long shudder, a stifled groan, sped through the throng. And they went out without a word, without a push, in a dark stream like some funeral assembly choking with emotion, stricken with fear. And outside Marc found David sobbing.

So the Church was victorious--the Brothers' school would revive to life, while the secular school would again become the ante-room of hell, the satanic den where children were corrupted both in mind and body. The desperate and gigantic effort made by the Congregations and by almost all the clergy had again retarded their defeat, which was certain in the future. For years, however, one would again see the young generations stupefied by error, rotted by lies. The forward march of mankind would be hampered afresh until the day when free thought--invincible and still pursuing its course in spite of everything--should at last deliver the people by science, which alone could render it capable of truth and equity.

On the following evening, when Marc returned to Maillebois, exhausted by fatigue and quite heart-broken, he found a letter of three lines awaiting him: 'I have read the whole of the inquiry, I have followed the trial. The most monstrous of crimes has been committed. Simon is innocent.--_Geneviève.'_

IV

On the morrow, a Thursday, Marc, who had scarcely slept that night, had just risen when he received an early visit from his daughter Louise. She, having heard of his return, had escaped for a moment from her grandmother's house. And, throwing her arms wildly about her father's neck, she exclaimed: 'Oh! father, father, what a deal of sorrow you must have had, and how pleased I am to be able to kiss you!'

A big girl nowadays, Louise was fully acquainted with the Simon affair, and shared all the faith, all the passion for justice displayed by that dearly-loved father, the master whose lofty mind was her guide. Thus her cry was instinct with the revolt and despair into which she had been cast by the monstrous proceedings at Rozan.

But, on thus seeing her before him and feeling her embrace, Marc thought of Geneviève's letter, to which his sleeplessness that night had been largely due. 'And your mother,' he asked, 'do you know that she has written to me, and that she is now on our side?'

'Yes, yes, father, I know it. She spoke of it to me.... Ah! if I were to tell you of all the quarrels there were when grandmother saw mamma beginning to read everything, procuring documents which had never been in the house before, and going out every morning to buy the full report of the new trial. Grandmother wanted to burn everything, so mamma shut herself up in her own room and spent all her time there.... And I also read everything; mamma allowed me to do so. Oh! papa, what a dreadful affair--that poor man, that poor innocent, overwhelmed by so many cruel people! If I could, I should love you all the more for having loved and defended him!'

She again threw her arms about her father's neck and kissed him with heartfelt fervour. And he, in spite of his sufferings, began to smile as if some delicious balm had somewhat calmed the smarting of his wounds. And while he smiled he pictured his wife and his daughter reading together, learning the truth, and at last returning to him. 'Her letter, her dear letter,' he said in an undertone, 'what consolation and hope it gave me! Will not joy return after so many misfortunes?'

Then he anxiously questioned Louise: 'So your mother spoke to you of me? Does she understand, does she regret our torments? I always felt that she would come back to me when she knew the truth.'

But the girl prettily raised a finger to her lips. She, in her turn, was smiling. 'Oh! papa,' she said, 'don't try to make me say what I can't say yet. I should be telling a falsehood if I spoke positively. Our affairs are in a good way, that is all.... Remain patient a little longer, remain confident in your daughter, who tries to be as reasonable and affectionate as you are.'

Then she gave him some bad news about Madame Berthereau. For several years the latter had been suffering from a heart complaint, which recent events seemed to have suddenly aggravated. Madame Duparque's fits of anger, the outbursts with which she made the dark, dismal little house shake at all hours of the day, proved very prejudicial to the sick woman, for they brought on shuddering and stifling fits, which she could hardly overcome. At present, in order to escape those nervous frights, she no longer went down into the little sitting-room, but remained on a couch in her bed-chamber, gazing from morn till night at the deserted Place des Capucins, with those poor, melancholy eyes of hers, in which one read such keen regret for the joys she had lost so long ago.

'Oh! we don't amuse ourselves at all now,' Louise continued. 'Mamma remains in her room, grandmamma Berthereau in hers, and grandmamma Duparque goes up and down, bangs the doors, and quarrels with Pélagie when she finds nobody to scold.... But I don't complain, for I shut myself up as well, and work. Mamma has agreed to it, you know; I shall go up for admission to the training school in six months' time, and I hope to get in.'

Just at that moment, Sébastien Milhomme, who was free that day, arrived from Beaumont, all anxiety to embrace his former master, of whose return he had heard. And almost immediately afterwards came Joseph and Sarah, who, on behalf of their mother and the Lehmanns, whom the reconviction of Simon had overwhelmed, wished to thank Marc for his heroic if vain efforts. The brother and sister related what a thunderbolt had fallen on the wretched shop in the Rue du Trou on the previous evening, when David had telegraphed the frightful tidings. Madame Simon had preferred to await them there with her parents and her children, such great hostility had she encountered in that clerical town of Rozan, where, moreover, her modest means did not allow her to live. And the mournful house was again in tears, acquainted only with the iniquitous verdict and ignorant of what might now happen, all decision as to the future being postponed until the return of David, who, for the time, had remained near his brother.

The eyes of Joseph and Sarah were still red and swollen, for they had spent a tearful, feverish night without a moment's quiet rest; and as, while speaking of their father, they again began to sob, Sébastien, carried away by his feelings, kissed his good friend Sarah, while Louise, taking hold of Joseph's hands, and likewise shedding tears, naïvely sought to console him somewhat by speaking of her great affection for him. She was seventeen and he twenty. Sébastien was a year or two older, and Sarah was eighteen. Marc felt moved as he saw those young folk there before him, quivering with youth, intelligence, and kindliness. And a thought, which had occurred to him and brought him a delightful hope already in the days when he had seen them playing as children, now returned. Might they not, indeed, be predestined consorts, such as would produce the happy harvest of the future, who would bring broader hearts and more liberal minds to the great work of to-morrow?

But although his daughter's visit gave Marc no little comfort for the time, he became very downcast on the ensuing days, so distressful was the spectacle which his poor poisoned and dishonoured country now presented. The crime of crimes had been committed, and France did not rise against it! During the long struggle for revision Marc had already failed to recognise in her the generous, magnanimous, liberating, and justice-dealing country to which he had dedicated such lofty and passionate love. But never had he thought it possible that she would sink to that base level, and become a deaf, harsh, sleepy, and cowardly France, making her bed in shame and iniquity!

How many years and generations would be needed to arouse her from that abominable somnolence? For a moment Marc despaired; he deemed his country lost; it was as if he could hear Férou's maledictions arising from the grave: 'France doomed, completely rotted by the priests, poisoned by a filthy press, sunk in such a morass of ignorance and credulity that never would one be able to extricate her.' On the morrow of the monstrous verdict of Rozan he had still imagined an awakening to be possible, he had awaited a rising of upright consciences and healthy minds; but none had stirred, the bravest seemed to hide themselves away in their corners, and the supreme ignominy took its course, thanks to the universal imbecility and cowardice.

As he went about Maillebois, Marc caught sight of Darras, who now pulled a very long face, though he was simply in despair at the mayoralty again escaping him, owing to the triumph of the clerical party. Then, on meeting Fernand Bongard, the Doloirs and the Savins, his former pupils, Marc felt greatly distressed, for he now realised, decisively, that he had been able to impart to them little if any social equity and civic courage. Fernand shrugged his shoulders, bent on knowing nothing. The Doloirs had again begun to doubt Simon's innocence; while as for the twin Savins, if they remained convinced of it, they argued that they could not effect a revolution by themselves, and that, after all, one Jew more or less was a matter of no importance. Terror reigned, people hurried home, resolved to compromise themselves no further. Things were even worse at Beaumont, whither Marc repaired to see if he could not arouse some influential people and persuade them to attempt a last effort to have the infamous verdict set aside. Lemarrois, to whom he thus ventured to apply, seemed to take him for a madman; and discarding his usual courteous kindliness, he plainly, almost roughly, told him that the affair was ended, and that any attempt to revise it would be insane, for the country was utterly sick and weary of the whole business. It had become most hurtful as a basis for political action, and if the clerical reactionaries were allowed an opportunity to exploit it any further, the Republic would certainly be undone at the approaching elections. The elections indeed! That was again the great argument. The only policy was to bury the supreme iniquity in even deeper silence than after the first trial. There was no need of any understanding to that effect. The deputies, the senators, the prefect, the officials, all sank instinctively into perfect silence, in the dread they felt at the thought of the twice condemned but innocent man. And once again former Republicans and Voltaireans like Lemarrois drew yet nearer to the Church, whose help they thought they might require to resist the rising tide of Socialism. Lemarrois, personally, had been pleased to see his adversary Delbos defeated at Rozan, and in resorting to a cowardly policy of silence he was largely influenced by a desire to let Simon's compromised champions drown themselves. Amid that general _débâcle_ only Marcilly retained his amiable smile. He had already held the portfolio of Public Instruction in a Radical ministry, and felt certain of securing it again, some day, in a Moderate one. And so convinced was he now of the irresistible power of his suppleness and his freely-bestowed hand-shakes that, alone amongst those to whom Marc applied, he gave him a cordial greeting; and, without making any express promise, allowed him to hope for everything should he (Marcilly) return to power.

For the moment the Congregations became triumphant. What a relief it was to think that Father Crabot, his accomplices and his creatures, were saved! Ex-presiding Judge Gragnon gave a grand dinner, followed by a reception, to which flocked all the members of the judicial world, with many functionaries and even university men. They smiled and shook hands, well pleased at finding themselves alive after incurring such serious danger. Every morning _Le Petit Beaumontais_ celebrated the victory of the valiant soldiers of God and the country. Then, all at once, it became silent, in compliance no doubt with some hint received from exalted spheres. The fact was that amid all the stir of victory everybody began to detect moral defeat. Fear of the morrow revived, and it was deemed prudent to divert people's minds.

Moreover, the Rozan jurors had now made revelations; it was known that they had convicted Simon merely by a majority of seven to five, and that on quitting the court they had unanimously signed a recommendation for pardon. They could not have confessed more plainly the mortal embarrassment in which they had been placed, the cruel necessity of confirming the former verdict of Beaumont, even though they retained little doubt of the prisoner's innocence. And the extraordinary course taken by that jury, which, in the most contradictory way, at one moment condemned Simon and at another absolved him, tended to make his innocence manifest to everybody. A pardon was felt to be so necessary and so inevitable that nobody was surprised when one was signed a few days later. _Le Petit Beaumontais_ thought fit to insult the dirty Jew a last time, but even the managers of that unprincipled rag heaved a sigh of relief, glad to be at last delivered from the abominable part they had played for so many years.

David was beset by a final anguish, a frightful struggle of conscience, in connection with that pardon. His brother's strength was quite spent, fever consumed him, he was so exhausted, both physically and morally, that, doubtless, he would merely return to prison to die there. And, on the other hand, a weeping wife and children awaited him, still hoping that they might save him by dint of care and love. Nevertheless, David at first rejected the idea of a pardon, and, before everything else, wished to consult Marc, Delbos, and the other valiant defenders of the innocent prisoner; for he well understood that, even if the pardon would not deprive Simon of the right of some day establishing his innocence, it would rob the others of their most powerful means of prosecuting that cause of justice to which they had given their lives. But, however grieved they might be, all bowed to the suggestion of a pardon, and David then accepted it. At the same time it was felt by Marc and Delbos that the Congregations had good reason to be triumphant, for, humanly, the Simon affair was ended by that pardon, in consequence of which it would no longer stir the multitude to a sense of equity and generosity.

The question of Simon's future was speedily settled. It was impossible to take him back to Maillebois, where Madame Simon had decided to remain a little longer with her children, Joseph and Sarah, who were awaiting the reopening of the neighbouring training schools. David once more took everything on himself. He had long previously formed his plans, which were to dispose of his sand and gravel pits, and acquire a marble quarry in a lonely valley of the Pyrenees--an excellent affair, which a friend had recommended to him and which he had carefully studied. He meant to remove Simon thither, taking him as a partner, and assuredly the mountain air and the delight of active life would restore his health within six months' time. As soon as the installation should be effected Madame Simon might rejoin her husband, and even the children might end the vacation in their father's company. All this was carried into effect with remarkable precision and despatch. Simon was conjured away from Rozan, which was still in an agitated state, and for a time nobody even suspected that he had been removed. He travelled unrecognised, vanishing with David into that lonely valley, embosomed amid lofty peaks. It only became known by a newspaper article that his family had joined him. From that moment he altogether disappeared, and people even began to forget his existence.

On the very day when the Simon family found itself reunited in that Pyrenean solitude, Marc repaired to the Training College of Beaumont, whither an urgent letter from Salvan had summoned him. And as soon as they had shaken hands they began to talk of the Simons, evoking the sweet and touching scene which was being enacted far away--indeed at the other end of France.

'We must all take it as our reward,' said Salvan. 'If we have not yet managed to make the affair yield the great social lesson and the penalties that attach to it, we have at least brought this happiness to pass, we have restored the poor martyr to his wife and his children.'

'Yes,' said Marc, 'I have been thinking of it ever since this morning. I can picture them all together, smiling, in peace, under the broad blue sky. And, for that poor man so long fastened to his chain, what a delight it must be to be able to walk about freely, inhaling the freshness of the mountain springs, the pure odours of the plants and trees! The dear children, too, and the dear wife, how happy they must feel to see their dream realised, to have him beside them again, to take him about like a big child just recovering from a severe illness, and watch him reviving to health and strength!... You are right, it is our reward--the only one.'

He paused, then added in a lower voice with some of the bitterness of a combatant who laments that his weapon should have been broken in his hand: 'Our _rôle_ is quite over. A pardon was inevitable, no doubt, but it has deprived us of all power of action. We can only wait for the crop of good grain we have sown--that is, if ever it will sprout up in the hard ground where we have scattered it.'

'Oh! it will rise, never fear, my friend,' Salvan exclaimed. 'We must never despair of our poor, great country. It may be deceived, it may deceive itself, but it always returns to truth and reason. Let us rest satisfied with our work, it will bear fruit in the future.' Then, after a pause, he continued in a thoughtful way: 'But I agree with you that our victory will not be immediate. The times are really execrable; never have we passed through a more troublous and threatening period. And, indeed, if I asked you to call to-day, it was in order to talk to you of the present disquieting situation.'

Then he acquainted Marc with what he had learnt. Since the trial at Rozan, all the recognised Simonists, all the brave men who had become compromised in the affair, had found themselves exposed to the vengeance of the Congregations, the hatred of the egotistical and cowardly multitude. Undoubtedly they would be made to pay heavily in their interests and their persons for the crime they had committed by supporting the cause of truth and justice.

'Have you heard that nobody now bows to Delbos at the Palace of Justice?' said Salvan. 'Half the cases confided to him have been withdrawn. Clients regard him as being altogether too compromising. He has to begin his career afresh; and at the next elections he will certainly be defeated again, for the affair has led to disruption even in the Socialist ranks.... For my own part, I shall probably be dismissed----'

'Dismissed? You!' interrupted Marc in accents of surprise and grief.

'Why, yes, my friend. You are not ignorant of the fact that Mauraisin has long coveted my post. He never manœuvred otherwise than in order to dislodge me. His prolonged flirtation with the Church party has been simply a matter of tactics in order to secure its support in the hour of victory. After the inquiry of the Court of Cassation he certainly felt frightened, and began to say that he had always regarded Simon as innocent. But, since Simon was reconvicted, Mauraisin has again been barking with the clerical pack, feeling convinced that Le Barazer will be compelled to dismiss me by the pressure brought to bear on him by all the victorious reactionary forces. It will astonish me very much if I am still here when the new term begins in October.'

Marc again began to express his grief; and, moreover, he refused to believe Salvan. He recalled all the services which the latter had rendered, and set forth the necessity of persevering with the great work of saving France from falsehood and credulity. 'You cannot leave before your task is accomplished,' he added; 'there remains so much for you to do. Although Le Barazer has never spoken out plainly, he has been at heart on our side, and I am sure that he will never be guilty of such a bad action as to dismiss you.'

Salvan smiled somewhat sadly. 'In the first place,' he answered, 'nobody is indispensable; I may disappear, but others will rise to continue the good work we have begun. Mauraisin may take my place, but I am convinced that he will do no great harm, for he will not retain it long, and he will be forced to follow in my footsteps. Some work, you see, when once it has been begun, is accomplished by the very force of human evolution, and remains independent of any particular, individual men.... But one might think by the way you talk that you did not know Le Barazer. We are, personally, of little account in his intricate republican diplomacy. He was on our side, that is certain; he would be with us still if we had won the battle. But our defeat has placed him into the greatest possible embarrassment. He really has but one desire, to save his work, the system of secular and compulsory education of which he was one of the creators. Thus, as the Church has regained power for the moment and threatens his work, he will resign himself to necessary sacrifices and temporise until he is able to speak as a master in his turn. Such is his nature, and we cannot alter him.'

Salvan continued in this strain, enumerating all the influences which were being brought to bear on Le Barazer. Rector Forbes, who was so desirous of quietude and who so greatly feared worries with the minister, had plainly told him that he must satisfy the demands of the opposition deputies. These, at the head of whom Count Hector de Sanglebœuf distinguished himself by his violence, were making every effort to secure the dismissal of all the notorious Simonists belonging to the civil and the educational services. And none of the Republican deputies, not even the radical Lemarrois, moved; indeed, they consented to that hecatomb in order to pacify public opinion, anxious as they were to lose as few electors as possible. At present, also, professors and masters followed the example of Principal Depinvilliers, attending Mass with their wives and daughters every Sunday. Then, at the Lycée of Beaumont, the chaplain reigned supreme; religious exercises were becoming compulsory; all pupils who refused attendance were badly noted, harassed and ill-treated until no resource was left them but to comply or quit. Father Crabot made his hand felt at that Lycée with the same reactionary authority that he displayed in the management of the College of Valmarie. And the increasing audacity of the Congregations was demonstrated by the fact that the Jesuit professors of Valmarie now openly acknowledged their standing, whereas previously, in order to defeat the laws, they had outwardly passed themselves off as secular priests.

'That is how we stand,' Salvan concluded. 'Thanks to the reconviction of Simon, they speak as masters, and wring whatever they please from the universal cowardice and imbecility.... It is already said that Mademoiselle Rouzaire is to be appointed head-mistress of the chief girls' school in Beaumont. Jauffre, now at Jonville, is also to be appointed here, it seems; for he has threatened to turn against Abbé Cognasse if there should be any further delay in rewarding his services. Finally, Doutrequin, once a Republican, who has rallied to the Church from a deplorable aberration of patriotism, has secured two suburban schools for his sons, who have made Nationalism and Anti-Semitism their chief dogmas, so that we are now once more in a period of acute reaction--the last we shall witness, I hope, pending the day when the country will spit out the poison which is killing it.... And if I am dismissed, my friend--you suspect it, do you not?--you will be dismissed also.'

Marc smiled. He now understood why Salvan had sent for him in all haste. 'So I am condemned?' he said.

'Yes, I am afraid so; and I wished to warn you of it immediately.... Oh! the thing is not settled yet; Le Barazer remains silent, biding his time, as it were, and saying nothing of his intentions. But you can have no idea of the assaults he has to withstand, particularly with respect to yourself. Naturally enough, it is your dismissal that is most urgently demanded. I was talking to you just now of that big simpleton Sanglebœuf, that puppet whose strings are pulled by the old Marchioness de Boise, whom he drives to despair, I hear, so clumsily does he execute the movements which she directs. Well, three times already Sanglebœuf has bounced up to the Préfecture to threaten Le Barazer with an interpellation in the Chamber of Deputies if he does not come to an understanding with Prefect Hennebise to annihilate you. You would be already dead, I think, if it had not been for the arrogance of that ultimatum. But it isn't possible for Le Barazer to resist much longer, my poor friend. And you mustn't bear him any malice. Remember all the quiet obstinacy and diplomatic skill with which for many years he supported you. He always found some means of saving you by granting compensations to your adversaries. But now it is all over, I have not even spoken to him about you. All efforts on your behalf would be useless. You must let him act as he pleases. Doubtless he is only delaying his decision in order to devise something ingenious; for he himself does not like to be defeated, and he will never relinquish his efforts on behalf of his work, that system of secular and compulsory education which alone can give us a new France.'

Marc smiled no longer; indeed, he had become very sad. 'It will be a great blow,' he answered. 'I shall leave the best of myself behind me in that school of Maillebois, among those dear lads whom I regard almost as my own children.... Besides, what shall I do if my career is thus brought to an end? I am not competent to take up any other useful work, and how painful it will be to see the work I have been doing interrupted, left unfinished at the very moment when, more than ever, truth has need of sturdy workers.'

But Salvan in his turn bravely smiled, and, taking hold of Marc's hands, said to him: 'Come, don't lose your courage. We shall surely find something to do; we sha'n't remain with our arms crossed.'

Then Marc, feeling comforted, replied: 'You are right! When a man like you is struck, one can follow him into disgrace without thought of shame. The future, at all events, belongs to us.'

A few more days went by. At Maillebois the victorious Congregations were endeavouring to turn the situation to pecuniary account. Great efforts were made to restore the former prosperity of the Brothers' school, several families were won over, and it seemed likely that at the new term the school would gain a dozen fresh pupils. Meantime the Capuchins showed extraordinary audacity. Was it not, after all, the glorious St. Antony of Padua who had managed everything, obtained everything from the benevolence of heaven? Indeed, it could not be denied. It was to him that one owed the reconviction of Simon, thanks to the franc and two-franc pieces which so many pious souls had dropped into the saint's collection-boxes while asking him to bring about the annihilation of the Jew. Thus a fresh miracle had been performed. Never before had the saint's power been manifested in so lofty a manner, and as a natural result offerings poured in from all sides. Moreover, Father Théodose, encouraged, inspired by this success, conceived a masterly plan to reap another large harvest of money by the saint's aid. He launched an extraordinary financial affair with mortgage bonds on Paradise, each bond being of five francs' value. The district was flooded with circulars and prospectuses explaining the ingenious working of these investments in celestial felicity. Each bond comprised ten coupons of half a franc, representing good works, prayers, and masses payable as interest here below, and redeemable in heaven at the cashier's office of the miracle-working St. Antony. Premiums were also offered in order to attract subscribers. Twenty bonds gave one a right to a coloured statuette of the saint, and a hundred ensured one an annual Mass. Finally, the prospectus explained that the name of St. Antony's Bonds was given to this scrip, because it was the saint who would redeem it a hundredfold in the next world. And the announcement ended with these words: 'Such supernatural guarantees make these bonds absolutely safe. No financial catastrophe can threaten them. Even the destruction of the world, at the end of time, would leave them in force, or rather would at once place the holders in the enjoyment of the full capitalised interest.'[1]

[Footnote 1: As some readers might think this an invention on M. Zola's part, it is as well to mention that the prospectus referred to was actually issued by a French religious community.--_Trans._]

The success was enormous. In a few weeks' time thousands of bonds had been sold. Those devotees who were too poor to buy a whole one clubbed together, and then divided the coupons. Credulous and suffering souls eagerly risked their money in this new lottery, whose great prize was to be the realisation of a fondly dreamt-of eternity of happy life. It was certainly rumoured that Monseigneur Bergerot intended to prohibit this impudent speculation which scandalised the more reasonable Catholics; but in the unpleasant position in which the prelate had been placed by the defeat of the Simonists, whom he was accused of having stealthily supported, he was doubtless afraid to do so. Though it greatly distressed him to abandon the Church to the rising tide of superstition, he had found that he could place little reliance on his clergy, and thus he had never had the courage to resist the all-powerful Congregations. Aged as he now was, he had become weaker still, only retaining enough strength to kneel and beg God's forgiveness for thus suffering the merchants to invade the temple. But Abbé Quandieu, the priest of St. Martin's, could not bear that desecration any longer. All his Christian resignation forsook him when the so-called Bonds of St. Antony made their appearance. Such trafficking was too outrageous, and he gave expression in the pulpit to his revolt as a minister of Christ, his grief at beholding the base downfall of that great Christianity which had renewed the world, and which so many illustrious minds had raised to the purest summits of ideality. Then he paid a last visit to his Bishop and friend, Monseigneur Bergerot, and finding him unable to continue the struggle, feeling too that he himself was vanquished and paralysed, he resigned his cure and withdrew to a little house in the outskirts of Maillebois, intending to dwell there on a scanty income, outside that Church whose policy of hatred and whose basely superstitious worship he could no longer serve.

The Capuchins deemed the opportunity favourable for a fresh triumph in celebration of what Father Théodose styled the flight of their former adversary. By careful manœuvring the Bishop had been induced to appoint a young curate of the _arriviste_ school, a creature of Father Crabot's, to the parish of Maillebois, and the idea was to bear a superb statue of St. Antony, all red and gold, in solemn procession from the Capuchin Chapel to St. Martin's, where it would be set up in great pomp. This would be the crowning consecration of the victory which had been achieved, the conquest of the parish by the Congregation, the monks becoming its sovereign masters, able to disseminate on every side the idolatrous worship, by which they hoped to bleed and abase the community, and turn it into the ignorant flock of the days of servitude. The procession, which took place one warm day in September, with the co-operation of all the clergy of the district, proved magnificent, and was attended by a great concourse of people who repaired to Maillebois from all points of the department. Only the Place des Capucins and a short lane really separated the chapel from the church, but a roundabout line of route was selected; they crossed the Place de la République and marched along the whole high street, in this wise promenading St. Antony from one to the other end of the town. Mayor Philis, surrounded by the clerical majority of the Municipal Council, followed the painted statue, which was borne on a platform draped with red velvet. Although it was holiday time, the whole of the Brothers' school had been mobilised, boys had been specially recruited, dressed, and provided with candles. Behind them came the Daughters of Mary and numerous pious brotherhoods, sisterhoods, and other associations, an interminable string of devotees, to say nothing of all the nuns brought expressly from the Beaumont convents. Only Monseigneur Bergerot was wanting. As it happened he had sent a letter of regret, having fallen ill two days previously.

Never before had Maillebois been possessed by such religious fever. People knelt on the foot pavements, men shed tears, three girls fell to the ground in hysterical fits, and had to be carried to a chemist's shop. In the evening the benediction at St. Martin's amid the pealing of the bells was quite dazzling. And not a doubt remained; surely the town was now redeemed and forgiven; by that grandiose ceremony Providence signified its willingness to wipe out for ever the vile memory of Simon the Jew.

It so happened that Salvan came to Maillebois that day in order to see Madame Berthereau, respecting whom he had received some extremely disquieting news. And he had just quitted the little house in the Place des Capucins when he caught sight of Marc, who, on his way home after a visit to the Lehmanns, had found his progress barred by the interminable procession. They shook hands in silence; then for some time were compelled to remain waiting. When the last of the monks had gone by behind the idol all ablaze with gilding and red paint, they just exchanged a glance and took a few steps in silence.

'I was going to call on you,' said Salvan at last.

Marc fancied that he had brought him news of his dismissal. 'Is it signed then?' he inquired. 'Am I to pack my trunks?'

'No, no, my friend; Le Barazer has given no signs of life as yet. He is preparing something.... But our dismissal is certain, you must take a little patience.' Then, ceasing to jest, he added with an expression of grief: 'The fact is, I heard that Madame Berthereau was at the last stage and I desired to see her.... I have just left her, and her end is certainly very near.'

'Louise came to warn me of it yesterday evening,' Marc replied. 'I should have liked to call at once, as you have done. But Madame Duparque has signified that she will immediately quit the house if I should dare to set foot in it on any pretext. And though Madame Berthereau, as I know, would like to see me, she is afraid to give expression to her desire, for fear of some scandal beside her death-bed.... Ah! my friend, one can never overcome the hatred of a bigot.'

They walked on, again preserving silence. At last Salvan resumed: 'Yes, Madame Duparque keeps good guard, and for a moment I thought that she would not let me go upstairs. At all events she did not quit me; she kept a watch on everything I said, either to the patient or your wife.... She is certainly afraid that something may result from the blow which is about to fall on the house. Yes, Madame Berthereau, her daughter, is about to escape from her by death, and she fears, perhaps, that Geneviève, her granddaughter, may also free herself.'

Marc halted, and, giving his friend a keen glance, inquired: 'Did you notice any sign of that?'

'Well, yes; but I did not wish to mention it to you, for it would distress me to give you any false hope.... But it was in connection with that procession, that barefaced idolatry which we witnessed just now. It appears that your wife absolutely refused to attend it. And that is why I found Madame Duparque at home. She, of course, was very desirous of displaying her piety in the front rank of all the devotees, but she feared that if she should absent herself for a single moment, you or some other soul-snatcher might get into the house and rob her of her daughter and granddaughter. So she remained at home, and you can imagine with what cold fury she received me, trying to transpierce me with those eyes of hers, which are like rapiers.'

Marc was becoming excited: 'Ah! so Geneviève refused to attend that procession! She understood its hurtfulness, its baseness and folly, then; and she is returning in some degree to the healthy common-sense she used to show?'

'No doubt,' Salvan answered. 'I believe that she felt particularly hurt by those ridiculous mortgage bonds on Paradise.... Ah! what a master-stroke, my friend! Never before was human imbecility exploited to such a degree by religious impudence.'

While conversing the friends had slowly directed their steps towards the railway station, where Salvan intended to take the train in order to return to Beaumont. He did so, and Marc, on quitting him, felt once again full of hope.

As Salvan had indeed suggested, Geneviève--in that little house of the Place des Capucins, which had become yet more mournful and frigid now that death hovered over it so threateningly--was assailed by another crisis which was gradually transforming her. At first she had been thunderstruck by the revelation of the truth, the certainty of Simon's innocence, which the perusal of all the documents had brought her--that terrible light whose blaze had revealed to her the infamy of the holy men whom she had hitherto accepted as the directors of her conscience and her heart. All came from that, doubt penetrated into her mind, faith took flight, she could not do otherwise than reflect, examine and judge everything. A feeling of disquietude had already come upon her at the time when she quitted Father Théodose; and the latter's Bonds of St. Antony, that base attempt to exploit the credulity of the public, had suddenly shown her his venality and disgusted her with him. Moreover, not only did the monk's character decline in her estimation to the lowest level, but the worship he represented--that religion which had cast her into transports of mystical desire likewise lost its semblance of holiness. What! must she accept that unworthy trafficking, that idolatrous superstition, if she desired to remain a practising Catholic, steadfast in her faith? She had long bowed to beliefs and mysteries, even when her natural good sense had covertly protested against them; but there were limits to everything. She could not countenance that flotation of shares in heaven; she refused to walk behind that St. Antony, bedaubed with red and gold and carried about like a guy or an advertisement, to increase the multitude of subscribers. And the revolt of her reason gathered additional strength when she thought of the retirement of Abbé Quandieu, the gentle and paternal confessor, to whom she had returned when the suspicious ardour of Father Théodose had alarmed her. If such a man as the Abbé felt unable to abide in the Church, such as it had been made by the clerical policy of hatred and domination, was it not certain that all upright souls would henceforth find it difficult to remain in it?

Doubtless, however, Geneviève's evolution would not have been so rapid if certain preparatory work had not been already effected in her, slowly and without her knowledge. In order that one might fully understand those first causes, it was necessary to recall the whole of her story. Inheriting much of her father's nature--tender, gay, and amorous--she had fallen in love with Marc, carried away by such ardent passion that, in order to have that modest schoolmaster as her husband, she was willing to dwell with him almost in poverty, in the depths of a lonely village. Weary, too, in her eighteenth year, of the mournful life she had led beside Madame Duparque, the idea of liberty had attracted her; and for a moment it had seemed as if she had cast aside all her pious training, for with her husband she had displayed such youthful enchantment that he had been able to think she was wholly his. Moreover, if any fears lurked within him, he had dismissed them, setting himself to worship her, imagining he would be powerful enough to recast her in his own image, and so carried away by the happiness of the hour that he deferred that moral conquest till some other time.

But her past had revived, and again he had shown weakness, delaying action under the pretext of respecting the freedom of her conscience, and allowing her to return to religious observances. All her childhood then came back, the mystical poison which had not been eliminated from her system asserted itself, and the crisis which fatally assails the souls of women nourished on errors and falsehoods arrived, her case being aggravated by her frequentation of that bigoted and domineering woman, her grandmother. Then a whole series of incidents--the Simon case, the postponement of Louise's first Communion--had precipitated the rupture between husband and wife. In Geneviève there glowed a desire for the _au-delà_ of passion, a hope of finding in heaven the divine and boundless bliss promised to her formerly in her girlish days; and her love for Marc had simply become dimmed amid her dream of the ecstasies which the canticles celebrate, an ever loftier and ever deceptive delight. But in vain had others excited her, lied to her, set her against her husband, by promising to raise her to the highest truth, the most perfect felicity. The failure, the defeat she ever encountered, sprang from her abandonment of the only natural and possible human happiness; for never since that time had she been able to content her longings. She had lived, indeed, amid increasing distress without either repose or joy, however stubbornly she might declare that she had found felicity in her deceptive and empty chimeras.

Even now she did not confess in what a void she had ever remained after her long prayers on the old flagstones of chapels, her useless Communions, when she had vainly hoped to feel the flesh and blood of Jesus mingling with her own in a union of eternal rapture. But good Mother Nature each day was winning her back, restoring her a little more to health and human love; while the old poison of mysticism became in an increasing degree eliminated at each successive defeat of religious imposture. Cast for a time into great perturbation, she strove to divert her thoughts, to stupefy herself, by stern and painful religious practices in order that she might not be compelled to understand that her love for Marc had reawakened, that she craved for rest in his embrace, in the one, sole, eternal certainty which makes of husband and wife the emblems of health and happiness.

But quarrels had broken out between Madame Duparque and Geneviève, and had grown more and more frequent and bitter. The grandmother felt that her granddaughter was escaping from her. She watched her closely, made her almost a prisoner; but, whenever a dispute arose, Geneviève always had the resource of shutting herself up in her own room. There she could dwell upon her thoughts, and she did not answer even when the terrible old woman came up and hammered at the door. In this way she secluded herself on two successive Sundays, refusing to accompany her grandmother to vespers, in spite of both entreaties and threats.

Madame Duparque, now seventy-eight years old, had become a most uncompromising bigot, fashioned in that sense by a long life of absolute servitude to the Church. Reared by a rigid mother, she had found no affection in her husband, whose mind had been set on his business. For nearly five and twenty years they had kept a draper's shop in front of the Cathedral of St. Maxence at Beaumont, a shop whose custom came chiefly from the convents and the parsonages. And it was towards her thirtieth year that Madame Duparque, neglected by her husband and too upright to take a lover, had begun to devote herself more and more to religious observances. She checked her passions, she quieted them amid the ceremonies of the ritual, the smell of the incense, the fervour of the prayers, the mystical assignations she made with the fair-haired Jesus depicted in pious prints. Having never known the transports of love, she found sufficient consolation in the society of priests. And not only did she derive happiness from the unctuous gestures and caressing words of her confessor, but even his occasional rigour, his threats of hell and all its torments, sent a delightful quiver coursing through her veins. In blind belief and strict adherence to the most rigid practices, she found, too, not only satisfaction for her deadened senses, but the support and governance she needed in her weakness as a daughter of the ages. The Church knows it well; it does not conquer woman only by the sensuality of its worship, it makes her its own by brutalising and terrorising her. It treats her as a slave habituated to harsh treatment for centuries, a slave who ends by feeling a bitter delight in her very servitude.