Chapter XXIV: Book IV: I (1)

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.'