Chapter XXVII: Book IV: I (4)

Pausing in his stormy perambulations, Brother Gorgias drew up his gaunt and tragic figure. His eyes were blazing, an evil laugh distorted his face once more. For a moment he remained silent. Then in a jeering way he said: 'As you choose, Monsieur Froment! I came here in a friendly spirit to give you some particulars about the affair, which still interests you as you have not renounced the hope of getting Simon rehabilitated. You can make use of those particulars; I authorise you to make them known. And I ask you for no thanks, for I no longer expect any gratitude from men.'

Then he wrapped himself in his ragged cloak, and went off as he had come, opening the doors himself, and giving never a glance behind. Outside the icy rain was coming down in furious squalls, the wind filled the street with its howls, and Gorgias vanished like a ghost into the depths of the lugubrious darkness.

Geneviève had now opened the door behind which she had remained listening. Stupefied by all she had heard she let her arms drop, and for a moment remained gazing at Marc, who likewise stood there motionless, at a loss whether to laugh or to feel angry.

'He is mad, my friend,' said Geneviève. 'If I had been in your place I should not have had the patience to listen to him so long; he lies as he has always lied!' Then, as Marc seemed inclined to take things gaily, she continued: 'No, no, it is not at all amusing. The revival of all those horrid things has made me feel quite ill and anxious also, for I do not understand what can have been his purpose in coming here. Why did he make that pretended confession? Why did he select you to hear it?'

'Oh! I think I know, my dear,' Marc answered. 'In all probability Father Crabot and the others no longer give him a copper, that is, apart from some petty monthly allowance which they may have arranged to make him. And as the rascal has a huge appetite he tries to terrify them from time to time, in order to extract some big sum from them. I have had information; they have done their utmost to induce him to leave the region. Twice already, by filling his pockets they have prevailed on him to do so; but as soon as his pockets were empty he came back. They dare not employ the police in the affair, otherwise the gendarmes would have rid them of him long ago. And so, once again, as they have refused to let him have more money, he wishes to give them a good fright by threatening to tell me everything. And he has told me just a little truth mixed with a great deal of falsehood, in the hope that I may speak of it, and that the others in their fright may pay him well to prevent him from telling me all the rest.'

This logical explanation restored the calmness of Geneviève, who merely added: 'The rest--the full, plain truth--he will never tell it!'

'Who knows?' Marc retorted. 'His craving for money is great, but there is yet more hatred in his heart. And he is courageous; he would willingly risk his skin to revenge himself on those old accomplices who have cowardly forsaken him. Moreover, in spite of all his crimes, he really belongs to his Deity of extermination; he glows with a sombre, devouring faith, which would prompt him to martyrdom if he only thought that he might thereby win salvation and cast his enemies into the torments of hell.'

'Shall you try to make any use of what he told you?' Geneviève inquired.

'No, I think not. I shall talk it over with Delbos; but he, I know, has resolved that he will only move when he has a certainty to act upon.... Ah! poor Simon, I despair of ever seeing him rehabilitated; I have become so old!'

All at once, however, the new fact, awaited for so many years, became manifest, and Marc then beheld the realisation of the most ardent desire of his life. Delbos, who placed no faith in any help from Brother Gorgias, had set all his hopes on the Rozan medical man, that Dr. Beauchamp, a juror at the second trial, to whom Judge Gragnon was said to have made his second illegal communication, and who was reported to be tortured by remorse. This scent Delbos followed with infinite patience, having a watch kept upon the doctor, who preserved silence in compliance with the entreaties of his wife, a very pious and also sickly woman, whose death would probably have been hastened by any scandal. All at once indeed she died, and Delbos then no longer doubted the success of his enterprise. It took him another six months to perfect his arrangements; he managed to enter into direct relations with Beauchamp, whom he found all anxiety and indecision, assailed by a variety of scruples. But at last the doctor made up his mind to hand the advocate a signed statement in which he related how one day a friend, acting on behalf of Gragnon, had shown him the pretended confession which a workman, dying at the Beaumont hospital, was said to have made to one of the sisters--a confession in which this man acknowledged that he had engraved a false stamp for Simon, the Maillebois schoolmaster. And Beauchamp added that this secret communication alone had convinced him of the guilt of Simon, whom previously he had been disposed to acquit for lack of all serious proof.

Having secured this decisive statement Delbos did not act precipitately. He waited a little longer. He gathered together other documents, which showed that Gragnon had communicated his extravagant forgery to other jurors, men of the most amazing credulity. Equally extraordinary was it to find that the ex-presiding judge had dared to repeat the trick of Beaumont, carrying a gross forgery in his pocket, circulating it secretly through Rozan, exploiting human imbecility with the most sovereign contempt. And twice had the trick succeeded, Gragnon on the second occasion saving himself from the galleys by sheer criminal audacity. He was now beyond the reach of punishment, for he had lately died, perishing miserably, quite withered away, his features furrowed, it seemed, by invisible claws. And it was certainly his death which had induced Dr. Beauchamp to speak out.

Marc and David had long thought that the Simon affair would be quite settled when the personages compromised in it should have disappeared. At present ex-investigating Magistrate Daix was also dead, while the former Procureur de la République, Raoul de La Bissonnière, had lately been retired with the grant of a Commandership of the Legion of Honour. Then Counsellor Guybaraud, who had presided at the Assizes at Rozan, having been stricken with hemiplegia, was passing away between his confessor and a servant-mistress; whereas Pacard, the ex-demagogue who in spite of a nasty story of cheating at cards had managed to become a public prosecutor, had quitted the magistracy to take up somewhat mysterious duties at Rome as legal adviser to some of the congregations. Again, at Beaumont there were great changes in the political, administrative, clerical, and teaching worlds. Other men had succeeded Lemarrois, Marcilly, Hennebise, Bergerot, Forbes, and Mauraisin. Of the direct accomplices in the crime, Father Philibin had died far away, Brother Fulgence had disappeared, being also dead perhaps, in such wise that there only remained Father Crabot, the great chief. But even he had withdrawn from among the living, cloistered, it was alleged, in some lonely cell, where he was spending his last years in great penitence.

And thus there was quite a new social atmosphere; politics had altogether changed, men's passions were no longer the same when Delbos, having at last collected the weapons he desired, brought the affair forward once more with masterly energy. Of recent years he had risen to a position of influence in the Chamber of Deputies, so he took his documents straight to the Minister of Justice and speedily prevailed on him to lay the new fact before the Court of Cassation. It is true that a debate on the subject ensued the very next day, but the Minister contented himself with stating that the matter was purely and simply a legal one, and that the Government could not allow it to be turned once more into a political question. And then, amid the indifference with which this old Simon affair was now regarded, a vote of confidence in the Government was passed by a considerable majority. As for the Court of Cassation, which still smarted from the smack it had received at Rozan, it tried the case with extraordinary despatch, purely and simply annulling the Rozan verdict without sending Simon before any other tribunal. It was all, so to say, a mere formality; in three phrases everything was effaced, and justice was done at last.

Thus, then, in all simplicity, the innocence of Simon was recognised and proclaimed amid the pure glow of truth triumphant after so many years of falsehood and of crime.

III

On the morrow of the court's judgment there came an extraordinary revival of emotion at Maillebois. There was no surprise, for those who now believed in Simon's innocence were very numerous; but the material fact of that decisive legal rehabilitation upset everybody. And the same thought came to men of the most varied views. They approached one another, and they said:

'What! can no possible reparation be offered to that unfortunate man who suffered so dreadfully? Doubtless neither money nor honours of any kind could indemnify him for his horrible martyrdom. But when a whole people has been guilty of such an abominable error, when it has turned a fellow-being into such a pitiable, suffering creature, it would be good that it should acknowledge its fault, and confer some triumph on that man by a great act of frankness, in which truth and justice would find recognition.'

From that moment, indeed, the idea that reparation was necessary gained ground, spreading by degrees through the entire region. One circumstance touched every heart. While the Court of Cassation was examining the documents respecting the illegal communication made at Rozan, old Lehmann, the tailor, who had reached his ninetieth year, lay dying in that wretched house of the Rue du Trou which had been saddened by so many tears and so much mourning. His daughter Rachel had hastened from her Pyrenean retreat in order that she might be beside him at the last hour. But every morning, by some effort of will, the old man seemed to revive; being unwilling to die, said he, so long as justice should not have been done to the honour of his son-in-law and his grandchildren. And, indeed, it was only on the night of the day when the news of the acquittal reached him that he at last expired, radiant with supreme joy.

After the funeral Rachel immediately rejoined Simon and David in their solitude, where they intended to remain for another four or five years, when perhaps they might sell their marble quarry and liquidate their little fortune. And it so happened that the old house of the Rue du Trou was now demolished, a happy inspiration coming to the Municipal Council of Maillebois to purify that sordid district of the town by carrying a broad thoroughfare through it, and laying out a small recreation-ground for the working-class children. Sarah, whose husband Sébastien had now been appointed head-master of one of the Beaumont schools, had sold the tailoring business to a Madame Savin, a relative of those Savins who in former times had pelted her brother Joseph and herself with stones; and thus no trace remained of the spot where the Simon family had wept so bitterly in the distant days, when each letter arriving from the innocent prisoner in the penal settlement yonder had brought them fresh torture. Trees now grew there in the sunshine, flowers shed their perfume beside the lawns, and it seemed as if it were from that health-bringing spot that spread the covert remorse of Maillebois, its desire to repair the frightful iniquity of the past.

Nevertheless, things slumbered for a long time yet. A period of four years went by, during which only individual suggestions were made, no general agreement being arrived at. But generation was following generation; after the children had come the grandchildren, and then the great-grandchildren of those who had persecuted Simon, in such wise that quite a new population ended by dwelling in Maillebois. Yet it was necessary for the great evolution towards other social conditions to be entirely accomplished, in order that the seed which had been sown should yield a harvest of citizens freed from error and falsehood, to whom one might look for a great manifestation of equity.

Meantime life continued, and the valiant workers whose task was completed made way for their children. Marc and Geneviève, now nearly seventy years old, retired, and the Jonville schools were entrusted to their son Clément and his wife Charlotte, Hortense Savin's daughter, who, like himself, had adopted the teaching profession. Mignot, on his side, had quitted Le Moreux and retired to Jonville, in order to be near Marc and Geneviève, who dwelt in a small house near their old school. Thus the village held quite a little colony of the first participators in the great enterprise, for Salvan and Mademoiselle Mazeline were still alive, enjoying a smiling and kindly old age. Then, at Maillebois, the boys' school was in the hands of Joseph, and the girls' school in those of his wife Louise. He was now forty-four, she two years younger; and they had a big son, François, who, in his twenty-second year, had married his cousin Thérèse, the daughter of Sébastien and Sarah, by whom he had a beautiful baby-girl named Rose, now barely a twelvemonth old. Joseph and Louise were bent on never quitting Maillebois, and they gently chaffed Sébastien and Sarah respecting the honours which awaited them; for there was now a question of appointing Sébastien to the directorship of the Training College where Salvan had worked so well. As for François and Thérèse, who by hereditary vocation had also adopted the scholastic profession, they now dwelt at Dherbecourt, where both had become assistant teachers. And what a swarming of the sowers of truth there was on certain Sundays when the whole family assembled at Jonville round the grandparents, Marc and Geneviève! And what fine, bright health was brought from Beaumont by Sébastien and Sarah, from Maillebois by Joseph and Louise, from Dherbecourt by François and Thérèse, who came carrying their little Rose; while at Jonville they were met by Clément and Charlotte, who also had a daughter, Lucienne, now a big girl, nearly seven years of age! And, again, what a table had to be laid for that gathering of the four generations, particularly when their good friends Salvan, Mignot, and Mademoiselle Mazeline were willing to join them to drink to the defeat of Ignorance, the parent of every evil and every form of servitude!

The times of human liberation, which had been so long in coming, which had been awaited so feverishly, were now being brought to pass by sudden evolutions. A terrible blow had been dealt to the Church, for the last Legislature had voted the complete separation of Church and State,[1] and the millions formerly given to the priests, who had employed them to perpetuate among the people both hatred of the Republic and such abasement as was suited to a flock kept merely to be sheared, would now be better employed in doubling the salaries of the elementary schoolmasters. Thus the situation was entirely changed: the schoolmaster ceased to be the poor devil, the ill-paid varlet, whom the peasant regarded with so much contempt when he thought of the well-paid priest, who waxed fat on surplice fees and the presents of the devout. The priest ceased to be a functionary, drawing pay from the State revenue, supported both by the prefect and by the bishop; and thus he lost the respect of the country-folk. They no longer feared him; he was but a kind of chance sacristan, dependent on a few remaining believers, who from time to time paid him for a Mass. Again, the churches ceased to be State institutions, and became theatres run on commercial lines, subsisting on the payments made by the spectators, the last admirers of the ceremonies performed in them. It was certain, too, that before long many would have to close their doors, business already being so bad with some that they were threatened with bankruptcy. And nothing could be more typical than the position of that terrible Abbé Cognasse, whose outbursts of passion had so long upset Le Moreux and Jonville. His numerous lawsuits had remained famous; one could no longer count the number of times he had been fined for pulling boys' ears, kicking women, and flinging stones from his garden wall upon those passers who declined to make the sign of the Cross. Nevertheless, he had retained his office amid all the worries brought upon him by the citations he received, for he was virtually irremovable and exercised a paid State function. When, however, in consequence of the separation of Church and State, he suddenly became merely the representative of an opinion, a belief, when he ceased to receive State pay to impose that belief on others, he lapsed into such nothingness that people no longer bowed to him. In a few months' time he found himself almost alone in his church with his old servant Palmyre, for, however much the latter might pull the bell-rope with her shrivelled arms, only some five or six women still came to Mass. A little later there were but three, and finally only one came. She, fortunately, persevered, and the Abbé was pleased to be able to celebrate the offices in her presence, for he feared lest he should have the same deplorable experience at Jonville as he had encountered at Le Moreux. During a period of three months he had gone every Sunday to the latter village in order to say Mass without even being able to get a child as server, so that he had been obliged to take his little clerk with him from Jonville. And during those three months nobody had come to worship; he had officiated in solitude in the dank, dark, empty church. Naturally, he had ended by no longer returning thither, and at present the closed church was rotting away and falling into ruins. When, indeed, one of the functions of social life disappears, the building and the man associated with it become useless and likewise disappear. And in spite of the violent demeanour which Abbé Cognasse still preserved, his great dread was that he might see his last parishioner forsake him and his church closed, crumbling away amidst an invading growth of brambles.

[Footnote 1: It will be understood that in the above passage M. Zola anticipates events; but it may be remarked that the separation of Church and State in France within a few years has never appeared more likely than it does now (1902-3).--_Trans._]

At Maillebois the separation of Church and State had dealt a last blow to the once prosperous School of the Christian Brothers. Victorious over the secular school at the time of the Simon case, it had fallen into increasing disfavour as the truth had gradually become manifest. But with true clerical obstinacy it had been kept in existence even when only four and five pupils could be recruited for it; and the new laws and the dispersion of the community had been needed to close its doors. The Church was now driven from the national educational service. Henceforth to the sixteen hundred thousand children whom year by year the Congregations had poisoned, a system of purely secular instruction was to be applied. And the reform had spread from the primary to the secondary establishments. Even the celebrated College of Valmarie, already weakened by the expulsion of the Jesuits, was stricken unto death by the great work of renovation which was in progress. The principle of integral and gratuitous instruction for all citizens was beginning to prevail. Why should there be two Frances? Why should there be a lower class doomed to ignorance, and an upper class alone endowed with instruction and culture? Was not this nonsense? Was it not a fault, a danger in a democracy, all of whose children should be called upon to increase the nation's sum of intelligence and strength? In the near future all the children of France, united in a bond of brotherliness, would begin their education in the primary schools, and would thence pass into the secondary and the superior schools, according to their aptitudes, their choice, and their tastes. This was an urgent reform, a great work of salvation and glory, the necessity of which was plainly indicated by the great contemporary social movement, that downfall of the exhausted _bourgeoisie_ and the irresistible rise of the masses, in whom quivered the energies of to-morrow. Henceforth it was on them one would have to draw; and among them, as in some huge reservoir of accumulated force, one would find the men of sense, truth, and equity, who, in the name of happiness and peace, would build the city of the future. But, as a first step, the bestowal of gratuitous national education on all the children would finish killing off those pretended free and voluntary schools, those hotbeds of clerical infection, where the only work accomplished was a work of servitude and death. And after the Brothers' school of Maillebois, now empty and long since virtually dead, after the College of Valmarie, whose buildings and grounds were shortly to be sold, the last religious communities would soon disappear, together with all their teaching establishments, their factories of divers kinds, and their princely domains, which represented millions of money filched from human imbecility and expended to maintain the human flock in subjection under the slaughterer's knife.

Nevertheless, near the dismal Brothers' school of Maillebois, where the shutters were closed and where spiders spun their webs in the deserted classrooms, the Capuchin community maintained its chapel dedicated to St. Antony, whose painted and gilded statue still stood there erect in a place of honour. But in vain did Father Théodose, now very aged, exert himself to invent some more extraordinary financial devices. The zeal of the masses was exhausted, and only a few old devotees occasionally slipped half-franc pieces into the dusty collection-boxes. It was rumoured, indeed, that the saint had lost his power. He could no longer even find lost things. One day, too, an old woman actually climbed upon a chair in the chapel and slapped the cheeks of his statue because, instead of healing her sick goat, he had allowed the animal to die. Briefly, thanks to public good sense, aroused at last by the acquirement of a little knowledge, one of the basest of superstitions was dying.

Meantime, at the ancient and venerable parish church of St. Martin's, Abbé Coquard, encountering much the same experience as Abbé Cognasse at Jonville, found himself more and more forsaken, in such wise that it seemed as if he would soon officiate in the solitude and darkness of a necropolis. Unlike Cognasse, however, he evinced no violence. Rigid, gloomy, and silent, he seemed to be leading religion to the grave, preserving the while a sombre stubbornness, refusing to concede anything whatever to the impious men of the age. In his distress he more particularly sought refuge in the worship of the Sacred Heart, decorating his church with all the flags which the neighbouring parishes refused to keep--large red, white, and blue flags, on which huge gory hearts were embroidered in silk and gold. One of his altars, too, was covered with other hearts--of metal, porcelain, goffered leather, and painted mill-board. Of all sizes were these, and one might have thought them just plucked from some bosom, for they seemed to be still warm, to palpitate and shed tears of blood, in such wise that the altar looked like some butcher's gory stall. But that gross re-incarnation no longer touched the masses, which had learnt that a people stricken by disaster raises itself afresh by work and reason, and not by penitence at the feet of monstrous idols. As religions grow old and sink into carnal and base idolatries they seem to rot and fritter away in mouldiness. If the Roman Church, however, was thus at the last gasp, it was, as Abbé Quandieu had said, because it had virtually committed suicide on the day when it had become an upholder of iniquity and falsehood. How was it that it had not foreseen that by siding with liars and forgers it must disappear with them, and share the shame of their infamy on the inevitable day when the innocent and the just would triumph in the full sunlight? Its real master was no longer the Jesus of innocence, of gentleness and charity; it had openly denied Him, driven Him from His temple; and all it retained was that heart of flesh, that barbarous fetish with which it hoped to influence the sick nerves of the poor in spirit. Laden with years and bitterness, Abbé Quandieu had lately passed away repeating: 'They have for the second time condemned and crucified the Lord--the Church will die of it.' And dying it was.

Moreover, it was not passing away alone; the aristocratic and _bourgeois_ classes, on which it had vainly sought to lean, were collapsing also. All the ancient noble and military forces, even the financial powers, were collapsing, stricken with madness and impotence, since the reorganisation of the conditions of work had been leading to an equitable distribution of the national wealth. Some characteristic incidents which occurred at La Désirade showed what a wretched fate fell on the whilom rich and powerful, whose millions flowed away like water. Hector de Sanglebœuf lost his seat in the Chamber when the electorate, enlightened and moralised by the new schools, at last rid itself of all reactionary and violent representatives. But a greater misfortune was the death of the Marchioness de Boise, that intelligent and broad-minded woman who had so long promoted prosperity and peace at La Désirade. When she was gone the vain and foolish Sanglebœuf went altogether wrong, becoming a gambler, losing huge sums at play, and descending to ignoble amours; with the result that he was one day brought home beaten unmercifully--so battered, indeed, that three days later he died; no complaint, however, being lodged with the authorities, for fear of all the mud which would soil his memory if the real facts of his death were brought to light.

His wife, the once beautiful and indolent Léa, the pious and ever sleepy Marie of later times, then remained alone amid the splendours of that large estate. When her father, Baron Nathan, the millionaire Jew banker, suddenly died after being confined by paralysis to his sumptuous mansion in the Champs Élysées, he had long ceased to see her; and he left her as little as possible of his fortune, slices of which had already gone to all sorts of aristocratic charitable enterprises, and even to certain ladies of society who, during the final years of his life, had procured him the illusion of imagining that he had become really one of their set, and was quite cleansed of all his Jewry. However, his supine and indolent daughter, who had never known a passion in her life, not even one for money, paid due honour to his memory, even ordering Masses to be said for his soul, by way of compelling heaven to admit him within its precincts; for, as she often repeated, he had rendered quite enough services to Catholicism to be entitled to a place on the Deity's right hand. And now, having no children, Léa led a lonely life at La Désirade, which remained empty and deathly, enclosed on every side by walls and railings, which shut out the public as if it were some forbidden paradise. Yet there were rumours to the effect that, on the closing of the College of Valmarie, the Countess had granted an asylum to her old friend Father Crabot, who had now reached a very great age. His removal to La Désirade was said by some to be a mere change of cell, for in an ascetic spirit he was content to occupy a little garret formerly assigned to a servant, and furnished with merely an iron bedstead, a deal table, and a rush-seated chair. But he none the less reigned over the estate, as if he were its sovereign master; the only visitors being a few priests and other clerics, who came to take counsel of him, and whose gowns might be seen occasionally gliding between the clumps of verdure or past the marble basins and their plashing waters. Though his ninetieth year was past, Crabot, ever a conqueror of women, a bewitcher of pious souls, repeated the triumphant stroke of his earlier days. He had lost Valmarie, that royal gift, which he had owed to the love of the Countess de Quédeville, but he won La Désirade from the good grace of that ever-beautiful Léa, whom he so fervently called 'my sister Marie in Jesus Christ.' As manager and almoner he set his hands on her fortune, financing all sorts of religious enterprises, and subscribing lavishly to the funds which the reactionary parties established for the purpose of carrying on their desperate campaign against the Republic and its institutions. And thus, when the Countess was found dead on her couch one evening, looking as if in her indolence she had just fallen asleep, she was ruined; her millions had all passed into the cash-boxes of the Black Band, and there only remained the estate of La Désirade, which was willed to Father Crabot on the one condition that he should there establish some such Christian enterprise as he might choose to select.

But these were merely the last convulsions of an expiring world. All Maillebois was now passing into the hands of those Socialists whom the pious dames of other times had pictured as bandits, cut-throats, and footpads. That whilom clerical centre had now gone so completely over to the cause of reason that not a single reactionary member remained in its Municipal Council. Both Philis, once the priests' mayor, and Darras, the so-called traitors' mayor, were dead, and the latter, who was remembered as a man of weak, timorous, hesitating mind, had been replaced by a mayor of great good sense and industrious energy; this being Jules Savin, the younger brother of the twins, those mediocrities, Achille and Philippe. Jules, after marrying a peasant girl named Rosalie Bonin, had worked most courageously, in fifteen years establishing an admirable model farm, which had revolutionised the agricultural methods of the region and greatly increased its wealth. He was now barely more than forty years old, and rather stubborn by nature, for he only yielded to substantial arguments which tended to the general good. And it was under his presidency that the Municipal Council at last found itself called upon to examine a scheme for offering some public reparation to Simon--that idea which had slumbered for a few years, and which now awoke once more.

The subject had frequently been mentioned to Marc, who, indeed, could never come to Maillebois without encountering somebody who spoke to him about it. In this respect he was particularly moved one day when he happened to meet Adrien Doloir, a son of his former pupil Auguste by his wife Angèle. Adrien, after studying successfully under Joulic, had become an architect of great merit, and though barely eight and twenty years of age, had been lately elected to the Municipal Council; of which, indeed, he was the youngest member, one whose schemes were said to be somewhat bold, though none the less practical.

'Ah! my dear Monsieur Froment, how pleased I am to meet you!' he exclaimed as he accosted Marc. 'It so happens that I wished to go over to Jonville to speak to you.'

Like all the young men of the new generation, who loved and venerated Marc as a patriarch, as one of the great workers of the heroic times, Adrien addressed him most deferentially, standing uncovered, with his hat in his hand. Personally, he had only been a pupil of Marc for a very brief period, when he was very young indeed; but his brother and his uncles had all grown up in the old master's class.

'What do you desire of me, my dear lad?' inquired Marc, who felt both brightened and moved whenever he met any of his former boys or their children.

'Well, it is like this. Can you tell me if it is true that the Simon family will soon return to Maillebois? It is said that Simon and his brother David have decided to quit the Pyrenees and settle here again.... Is it true? You must be well acquainted with their views.'

'Such is certainly their intention,' Marc responded with his pleasant smile. 'But I do not think one can expect them till next year; for, though they have found a purchaser for their marble quarry, they are to carry it on for another twelvemonth. Besides, a variety of matters will have to be settled, and they themselves cannot yet tell exactly how and when they will install themselves here.'

'But if we have only a year before us,' exclaimed Adrien with sudden excitement, 'we shall barely have the necessary time for the realisation of a plan I have formed.... I wish to submit it to you before doing anything decisive. What day would be convenient for me to call on you at Jonville?'

Marc, who intended to spend the day at Maillebois with his daughter Louise, pointed out that it would be preferable to profit by this opportunity, and Adrien assenting, it was eventually arranged that he should call at the latter's house in the afternoon. This house was a pleasant dwelling, built by Adrien himself on one of the fields of the farm which had belonged to the old Bongards, in the outskirts of Maillebois. They had long been dead, and the property had remained in the hands of Fernand, the father of Claire, to whom Adrien was married. Thus many memories arose in Marc's mind when, with a still firm and brave step, he walked past the old farm-buildings on his way to the architect's little house. Had he not repaired to that same spot forty years previously--on the very day, indeed, of Simon's arrest--with the object of collecting information in his friend's favour? In imagination Marc again accosted Bongard, the stoutly built and narrow-minded peasant, and his bony and suspicious wife, and found them both stubbornly determined to say nothing, for fear lest they might compromise themselves. He well remembered that he had been unable to extract anything from them, incapable as they were of any act of justice, since they knew nothing and would learn nothing, being, so to say, only so much brute matter steeped in a thick layer of ignorance.

With a sigh, Marc passed on and rang at the gate of Adrien's house. The young architect was awaiting him under an old apple tree, whose strong branches, laden with fruit, sheltered a few garden chairs and a table. 'Ah, master!' Adrien exclaimed, 'what an honour you do me by coming to sit here for a little while! But I have another favour to ask of you. You must kiss my little Georgette, for it will bring her good luck!'

Beside Adrien was Claire, his wife, a smiling blonde, scarcely in her twenty-fourth year, with a limpid face and eyes all intelligence and kindness. It was she who presented the little girl, a pretty child, fair like her mother, and already very knowing for her five years.

'You must remember, my treasure, that Monsieur Froment has kissed you, for it will make you glorious all your life!'

'Oh, I know, mamma! I often hear you talk of him,' said Georgette. 'It is as if a little of the sun came down to see me.'

At this the others began to laugh; but all at once Claire's father and mother, Fernand Bongard and his wife Lucille, made their appearance, having heard that the old schoolmaster intended to call, and wishing to show him some politeness. Although Fernand, with his hard nut, had been anything but a satisfactory pupil in bygone years, Marc was pleased to see him once more. The farmer, now near his fiftieth year, still looked very dull and heavy, as if he were scarcely awake, and his manner remained an uneasy one.

'Well, Fernand,' Marc said to him, 'you ought to be pleased; this has been a good year for the grain crops.'

'Yes, Monsieur Froment, there's some truth in that. But the year's never a really good one. When things go well in one respect they go badly in another. And, besides, I never had any luck, you know.'

His wife, whose mind was sharper than his, thereupon ventured to intervene. 'He says that, Monsieur Froment, because he always used to be the last of his class, and because he imagines that a spell was cast on him by some gipsy when he was quite a little child. A spell, indeed! As if there were any sense in such an idea! It would be different if he believed in the devil, for there is a devil sure enough. Mademoiselle Rouzaire, whose best pupil I was, showed him to me one day, a short time before my first Communion.'

Then, as Claire made merry over this statement, and even little Georgette laughed very irreverently at the idea of there being any such thing as a devil, Lucille continued: 'Oh! I know that you believe in nothing. None of the young folks of nowadays have any religious principles left. Mademoiselle Mazeline made strong-minded women of you all. Nevertheless, one evening, as I well remember, Mademoiselle Rouzaire showed us a shadow passing over the wall, and told us it was the devil. And it was, indeed!'

Adrien, somewhat embarrassed by his mother-in-law's chatter, now interrupted her, and addressed Marc on the subject of his visit. They had all seated themselves, Claire taking Georgette on her lap, while her father and mother kept a little apart from the others, the former smoking his pipe and the latter knitting a stocking.

'Well, master, this is the question,' said Adrien. 'Many young people of the district feel that great dishonour will rest on the name of Maillebois as long as the town has not repaired, as well as it can, the frightful iniquity which it allowed, and in which, indeed, it became an accomplice, when Simon was condemned. His legal acquittal does not suffice; for us--the children and grandchildren of the persecutors--it is a duty to confess and efface the transgression of our forerunners. Yesterday evening, at my father's house, on seeing my grandfather and my uncles there, I again asked them: "How was it that you ever allowed such stupid and monstrous iniquity, when the exercise of a little reason ought to have sufficed to prevent it?" And, as usual, they made vague gestures and answered that they did not know, that they could not know.'

Silence fell, and all eyes turned towards Fernand, who belonged to the incriminated generations. But he likewise rid himself of the question by taking his pipe from his mouth and gesticulating in an embarrassed way, while he remarked: 'Well, to be sure, we didn't know--how could we have known? My father and mother could scarcely sign their names, and they were not so imprudent as to meddle in their neighbours' affairs, for they might have got punished for it. And though I had learnt rather more than they had, I wasn't learned by any means; and so I distrusted the whole business, for a man does not care to risk his skin and his money when he feels he is ignorant.... To you young men nowadays it seems very easy to be brave and wise, because you've been well taught. But I should have liked to have seen you as we were--with no means of telling right from wrong, with our minds at sea amid a lot of affairs in which nobody could distinguish anything certain.'

'That's true,' said Lucille. 'I never thought myself a fool, but all the same I could not understand much of that business, and I tried not to think of it, for my mother was always repeating that poor folk ought not to meddle with the affairs of the rich, unless they wanted to get poorer still.'

Marc had listened with silent gravity. All the past came back: he heard old Bongard and his wife refuse to answer him, like the illiterate peasants they were, whose one desire was to continue toiling and moiling in quietude; and he also remembered Fernand's demeanour on the morrow of the trial at Rozan, when he had still shrugged his shoulders, still persisted in his desire to know nothing. How many years and what prolonged teaching of human reason and civic courage had been needed before a new generation had at last opened its eyes to truth, dared to recognise and admit it! And as Marc looked at Fernand he began to nod, as if to say that he thought the farmer's excuses good ones; for he was already inclined to forgive those persecutors whose ignorance had been the chief cause of their crime. And he ended by smiling at Georgette, in whom, on the other hand, the future seemed to be flowering, as she sat there with her beautiful eyes wide open and her keen ears on the alert, waiting, one might have thought, for some fine story.

'And so, master,' Adrien resumed, 'my plan is a very simple one. As you are aware, some great improvements have been effected at Maillebois lately, with the view of rendering the old quarter of the town more salubrious. An avenue has replaced those sewers, the Rue Plaisir and the Rue Fauche, while on the site of the filthy Rue du Trou is a recreation-ground, which the children of the neighbourhood fill with their play and their laughter. Well, among the building land in front of that square is the very spot on which stood old Lehmann's wretched house, that house of mourning, which our forerunners used to stone. It is my idea, then, to propose to the Municipal Council the erection of a new house on that site--not a palace, but a modest, bright, cheerful dwelling, which might be offered to Simon, so that he might end his days in it encompassed by the respect and affection of everybody. The gift would have no great pecuniary value--it would simply represent delicate and brotherly homage.'

Tears had risen to the eyes of Marc, who was greatly touched by the kind thought thus bestowed on his old friend, the persecuted, innocent man.

'Do you approve of my idea?' inquired Adrien, who on his side was stirred by the sight of Marc's emotion.

The old schoolmaster rose and embraced him: 'Yes, my lad, I approve of it, and I owe you one of the greatest joys of my life.'

'Thank you, master. But that is not everything. Wait a moment. I wish to show you a plan of the house, which I have already prepared, for I should like to direct the work gratuitously, and I feel certain that I should find contractors and men prepared to undertake the building at very low rates.'

He withdrew for a moment, and on returning with the plan he spread it out upon the garden-table, under the old apple tree. And everybody approached and leant over to examine it. The house, such as it had been depicted, was, indeed, a very simple but also a very pleasant one, two storeys high, with a white frontage, and a garden enclosed by some iron railings. Above the entrance a marble slab was figured.

'Is there to be an inscription, then?' Marc inquired.

'Certainly; the house is intended for one. This is what I shall suggest to the Council: "Presented by the Town of Maillebois to Schoolmaster Simon, in the name of Truth and Justice, and in reparation for the torture inflicted on him." And the whole will be signed: "The Grandchildren of his Persecutors."'

With gestures of protest and anxiety Fernand and Lucille glanced at their daughter Claire. Surely that was going too far! She must not let her husband compromise himself to such a point! But Claire, who was leaning lovingly against Adrien's shoulder, smiled, and responded to the consternation of her parents by saying: 'I helped to prepare the inscription, Monsieur Froment; I should like that to be known.'

'Oh! I will make it known, you may depend on it,' Marc answered gaily. 'But the inscription must be accepted, and, first of all, there is the question of the house.'

'Quite so,' replied Adrien. 'I wished to show you my plan with the view of securing your approval and help. The question of the expense will hardly affect the Council. I am more apprehensive of certain scruples, some last attempts at resistance, inspired by the old spirit. Though the members of the Council are nowadays all convinced of Simon's innocence, some of them are timid men, who will only yield to the force of public opinion. And our Mayor, Jules Savin, has said to me, truly enough, that it is essential the scheme should be voted unanimously on the day it is brought forward.'

Then, as a fresh idea occurred to him, Adrien added: 'Do you know, master, as you have been good enough to come so far, you ought to cap your kindness by accompanying me to Jules Savin's at once. He was a pupil of yours, and I feel certain that our cause would make great progress if you would only have a short chat with him.'

'I will do so willingly,' Marc answered. 'Let us start; I will go wherever you like.'

Fernand and Lucille protested no longer. She had returned to her knitting, while he, pulling at his pipe, relapsed into the indifference of a dullard unable to understand the new times. Claire, however, suddenly had to defend the plan from the enterprising hands of little Georgette, who wished to appropriate 'the pretty picture.' Then, as Marc and Adrien made ready to go, there came more embraces, handshakes, and laughter.

The farm of Les Amettes, where Jules Savin resided, was on the other side of Maillebois, and in order to reach it Marc and the young architect had to pass the new recreation-ground. For a moment, therefore, they paused before the plot of land on which the architect proposed to build the projected house.

'You see,' said he, 'all the requirements for a house will be found united here----'

But he broke off on seeing a stout and smiling man approach him. 'Why, here's uncle Charles!' he exclaimed. 'I say, uncle, when we build the house for Simon the martyr, which I have told you about, you will undertake to provide all the locksmith's work at cost price, will you not?'

'Well, I don't mind, my boy, if it pleases you,' said Charles Doloir. 'And I'll do it also for your sake, Monsieur Froment, for it pains me at times to think of how I used to worry you.'

Charles, after marrying Marthe Dupuis, his employer's daughter, had for a long time been managing the business. He had a son named Marcel, who was about the same age as Adrien, and who, having married a carpenter's daughter, Laure Dumont, had become a contractor for house carpentry.

'I am going to your father's,' Charles resumed, addressing his nephew; 'I have an appointment with Marcel about some work. Come with me, for if you build this house you will have some work to give them as well.... And you will come also, Monsieur Froment? It will please you, perhaps, to meet some more of your old pupils.'

'Yes, indeed it will,' Marc answered gaily. 'Besides, we shall be able to settle the specifications.'

'The specifications! Oh! we have not got to that point yet,' Adrien retorted. 'Moreover, my father isn't an enthusiast.... But no matter; I'll go to see him.'

Auguste Doloir, thanks to the friendly protection of Darras; the former mayor, had become a building contractor in a small way. After his father's death he had taken his mother to live with him, and since the demolition of the Rue Plaisir he had been residing in the new avenue, where he occupied a ground floor flanked by a large yard, in which he stored some of his materials. The lodging was very clean, very healthy, and full of sunlight.

When Marc found himself in the bright dining-room, face to face with Madame Doloir the elder, some more memories of the past returned to him. The old woman, now sixty-nine years old, had retained the demeanour of a good and prudent housewife, one who was instinctively conservative, and allowed neither her husband nor her children to compromise themselves by dabbling in politics. Marc also recalled her husband, Doloir the mason, that big, fair, ignorant fellow, good-natured in his way, but spoilt by barrack-life, haunted as he was by idiotic notions of the army being disorganised by those who knew no country, and of France being sold to the foreigners by the Jews. One day, unfortunately, he had been brought home dead on a stretcher, after falling from a scaffolding; and it seemed as if he had been drinking previously, though Madame Doloir would not acknowledge it, for she was one of those who never admit the existence of family failings.

On perceiving Marc she at once said to him: 'Ah! monsieur, we are no longer young; we are very old acquaintances indeed. Auguste and Charles were not more than eight and six years old when I first saw you.'

'Quite so, madame; I well remember it. I called on you, on behalf of my colleague Simon, to ask you to let your boys tell the truth if they should be questioned.'

At this, though the case was now such a very old one, Madame Doloir became grave and suspicious. 'That affair was no concern of ours,' she answered, 'and I acted rightly in refusing to let it enter our home, for it did great harm to many people.'

Charles, however, perceiving his brother Auguste in the yard with Marcel, ready for the appointment, now called him into the room: 'Come here a moment; I've brought somebody to see you. Besides, your son Adrien is here, and wants to give us an order.'

Auguste, who was as tall and sturdy as his father had been, pressed Marc's hand vigorously. 'Ah, Monsieur Froment,' said he, 'we often talk about you--Charles and I--when we remember our school-days! I was a very bad pupil, and I've regretted it at times. Yet I hope I haven't disgraced you too much; and, in any case, my son Adrien is becoming a man after your own heart.' Then he added, laughing: 'I know what Adrien's order is! Yes, indeed, the house which he wants to build for your friend Simon!... All the same, a house is perhaps a good deal to give to an ex-convict.'

In spite of the bantering _bonhomie_ of Auguste's tone, Marc felt grieved by that last remark. 'Do you still think Simon guilty?' he inquired. 'At one time you became convinced of his innocence. But you began to doubt it again after that monstrous trial at Rozan.'

'Well, of course, Monsieur Froment, one feels impressed when a man is found guilty by two juries in succession.... But no! I no longer say that he was the culprit. And besides, at bottom it is all one to us. We are even quite willing that a present should be made to him, if by that means the affair can be brought to an end once and for all, so that we shall never have it dinned into our ears again. Isn't that so, brother?'

'That's correct,' responded Charles. 'If those big fellows were listened to, we ourselves should be the only real criminals, on the ground that we tolerated the injustice. It vexes me. There must be an end to it all!'

The two cousins, Adrien and Marcel, who took an equally passionate interest in the affair, laughed triumphantly. 'So it is settled!' exclaimed Marcel, as he tapped his father on the shoulder. 'You will take charge of the locksmith's work, uncle Auguste of the masonry, and I of the timber work. In that way your share in the crime, as you put it, will be repaired. And we will never mention the matter to you again, we swear it!'