Chapter VIII: Book I: I (7)

Unfortunately the ceaseless inquiries, which both David and Marc prosecuted with discreet stubbornness, yielded no great result. They had resolved to keep a watch on the Brothers' school at Maillebois, and particularly on Brother Gorgias, whom they still suspected. But a month after the trial all three of the assistant Brothers, Isidore, Lazarus, and Gorgias, disappeared together, being sent to some other community at the other end of France. Brother Fulgence, the director, alone remained at Maillebois, where three new Ignorantines joined him. David and Marc could draw no positive conclusions from this incident, for the Brothers often went from one establishment to another. Besides, as all three assistants had been removed, it was impossible to tell to which one of them that removal was really due.

So far as Maillebois was concerned the worst result of Simon's condemnation had been the terrible blow dealt to the Communal school, from which several families had withdrawn their children in order to confide them to the Brothers, who had never previously known such great prosperity. Nowadays the victorious faces of priests, monks, and Brothers were met on all sides in the town; and the new master appointed to succeed Simon, a pale and puny little fellow named Méchain, seemed scarcely the man to resist that invading tide. He was said to be consumptive, and he certainly suffered a great deal from the severity of the winter, when he left his boys largely in the charge of Mignot, who, always at a loss when he was not guided, now took the advice of Mademoiselle Rouzaire. She was more than ever on the side of the clerical faction which at present reigned over the region; and thus she persuaded Mignot to take the boys to Mass, and even set up a large wooden crucifix in the classroom. These things were tolerated in official spheres, where it was thought, perhaps, that they might have a good effect on certain families and facilitate the return of children to the Communal school. But, as a matter of fact, all Maillebois was going over to the Clericals, and the crisis had become extremely serious.

Marc's desolation increased as he observed the spirit of ignorance enthroned over the region. Simon's name had become a bogie name; one could not mention it without driving people wild with rage and fear. They regarded it as an accursed name which brought misfortune--a name that summed up all human iniquity. Silence ought to be observed; no allusion, however slight, ought to be made to it, for otherwise one might draw the most dreadful catastrophes upon the country. A few men of sensible upright minds had certainly felt greatly disturbed since the trial, and had even admitted the possibility of the condemned man's innocence; but in presence of the furious wave of public opinion they no longer spoke; they even advised their friends to remain silent. What would be the use of protesting, of endeavouring to secure justice? Why should one expose oneself to utter ruin without rendering any practical help to anybody? At each indication furnished by circumstances Marc felt stupefied at finding everybody crouching in falsehood and error, as in some ever-growing pond of filthy, slimy, poisonous water. On various occasions he happened to meet Bongard the farmer, Doloir the mason, and Savin the clerk, and he quite understood that all three had been minded to withdraw their children from the Communal school and send them to the Brothers', and that if they had abstained from doing so it was only from some dim fear that they might thereby harm themselves with the authorities.

Bongard, who kept very quiet, at a loss whether to side with the priests or the government, ended, however, by relating that the Jews spread the cattle plague through the country, for his two children had seen a man throwing some white powder into a well. Doloir on his side talked of an international Jew syndicate which had been formed to sell France to Germany, and threatened to box the ears of Méchain, the new schoolmaster, if his boys, Auguste and Charles, should learn anything wrong at that Communal school where children were corrupted. Then Savin became more bitter than ever, haunted at times by the idea that if he vegetated it was because he had not joined the Freemasons, and at others covertly regretting that he had not openly become a partisan of the Church. At one moment also he declared the Simon affair to have been a comedy. One culprit had been sacrificed to save all the others and to hide what went on in every school of France, whether it were secular or religious. Thus, to save his children, Hortense, Achille, and Philippe, from perdition, he thought of removing them from school altogether, and allowing them to grow up as nature might direct.

Marc listened to it all, feeling quite upset and at a loss to understand how people of any sense could reach such a degree of aberration. There was something more than innate ignorance in such mentality. It had been created by the continuous working of all the stupid things which were currently said, by the growth of popular prejudices through the ages, by the virus of all the superstitions and legends which destroyed men's reason. And how was purification possible, how could one cure those poor ailing, intoxicated people and endow them with good health, intellectually and morally?

Marc experienced deep emotion one day when he went to buy a schoolbook of the Mesdames Milhomme, the stationers in the Rue Courte. Both of them were in the shop with their sons, Madame Alexander with Sébastien, and Madame Edouard with Victor. Marc was served by the latter lady, who, though she seemed taken aback when he suddenly entered, promptly recovered her assurance and frowned with an expression of harsh and egotistical determination. But Madame Alexandre had risen quivering, and under the pretence of making Sébastien wash his hands, she at once led him away. Marc was deeply stirred by that flight. It was a proof of what he suspected--the great perturbation that had reigned in that home ever since Simon, the innocent man, had been condemned. Would the truth ever come from that little shop then? He knew not, and, feeling more distressed than ever, he withdrew, after allowing Madame Edouard to tell him some extraordinary tales by way of masking her sister-in-law's weakness. An old lady customer of hers, she said, often dreamt of poor little Zéphirin, Simon's victim, who appeared to her, bearing a martyr's palm. And since the Brothers' school had been suspected by the freethinkers it had been granted the visible protection of Heaven, for on three different occasions surrounding buildings had been struck by lightning whereas the school had remained unharmed.

Finally, apropos of some administrative affair, Marc had occasion to call on Darras, the Mayor, who had always been regarded as a Simonist, having openly displayed his sympathy with the prisoner at the time of the trial. But, after all, he was a functionary, and did not his position now compel him to observe complete neutrality? His discretion was increased by some little cowardice, a fear of coming into collision with the majority of the electors and of losing his position of mayor, of which he was so proud. So, when Marc's business was settled and the young man ventured to question him, he raised his arms to the ceiling despairingly. He could do nothing, he was bound by his position, particularly as the Clericals would certainly secure a majority in the municipal council at the next elections if the population were irritated any further. That disastrous Simon affair had given the Church a wonderfully favourable battlefield, where it gained the easiest victories over the poor ignorant multitude, poisoned with errors and lies. As long as that blast of dementia should continue blowing, one could attempt nothing, one must bow the head, and let the storm sweep on. Darras even exacted from Marc a promise that he would not repeat what he said to him. Then he escorted him to the door as a proof of his secret sympathy, and again implored him to remain silent and motionless until the advent of better times.

When Marc, as the result of such incidents, felt overcome with despair and disgust, there was only one spot where he found any comfort. That was the private room of Salvan, the Director of the Beaumont Training College. He visited Salvan frequently during the trying winter months, when his colleague Férou was starving at Le Moreux and contending against Abbé Cognasse. He spoke to his friend of the revolting wretchedness of the poor ill-paid schoolmaster, beside the prosperity of the fatly-kept priest. And Salvan admitted that such wretchedness was the cause of the discredit into which the position of elementary schoolmaster was fast falling. If students for the Training Colleges were only recruited with difficulty, it was because the paltry stipend of fifty-two sous a day, allowed a man when he became a titular head-master at thirty years of age, no longer tempted anybody. The peasants' sons who were anxious to escape the plough, and among whom both the Training Colleges and the Seminaries found most of their pupils, now preferred to go to the towns in search of fortune, to engage in commerce there, and even to become mere clerks. It was only exoneration from military service, obtained by signing a contract to follow the teaching profession for at least ten years, that still induced some of them to enter that calling, in which so little money and so few honours were to be won, whereas a deal of worry and a deal of scorn were to be expected by all.

Yet the recruiting of the Training Colleges was the great question, on which the education of the country, its very strength and salvation, depended. Co-equal with it in importance was that of the exact training to be given in those colleges to the schoolmasters of the future. It was necessary to animate them with the flame of reason and logic, to warm their hearts with the love of truth and justice. The recruiting depended entirely on the grant of higher remuneration to the profession, such reasonable remuneration as would enable a schoolmaster to lead a life of quiet dignity; whilst as for the training of the future teachers an entirely new programme was needed. As Salvan rightly said, on the value of the elementary master depended the value of elementary education, the mentality of the poorer classes, who formed the immense majority of the community. And beyond that matter there was that of the future of France. Thus the question became one of life or death for the nation.

Salvan's mission was to prepare masters for the liberating work which would be entrusted to them. But hitherto it had been impossible to create apostles such as were needed, men who based themselves solely on experimental methods, who rejected dogmas and mendacious legends, the whole huge fabric of error by which the humble of the world have been held in misery and bondage for ages. The existing masters were mostly worthy folk, Republicans even, quite capable of teaching reading, writing, arithmetic, and a little history, but absolutely incapable of forming citizens and men. In the disastrous Simon affair they had been seen passing almost entirely to the side of falsehood, because they lacked reasoning powers, method, and logic. They did not know how truth ought to be loved; it had sufficed them to hear that the Jews had sold France to Germany, and at once they had become delirious! Where then, ah! where was that sacred battalion of elementary schoolmasters which was to have taught the whole people of France by the sole light of certainties scientifically established, in order that it might be delivered from the darkness of centuries, and rendered capable, at last, of practising truth, and liberty, and justice?

One morning Marc received a letter in which Salvan begged him to call at the first opportunity. On the following Thursday afternoon the young man therefore repaired to Beaumont, to that Training College which he could never enter without a feeling of emotion, without memories and hopes arising in his mind. The director was awaiting him in his private room, a door of which opened into a little garden brightened already by the warm April sunshine.

'My dear friend,' said Salvan, 'this is why I sent for you. You are acquainted with the deplorable state of affairs at Maillebois. Méchain; the new master, whose appointment in such grave circumstances was a mistake, is not badly disposed; I even think that he is on our side; but he is weak, and in a few months' time he has allowed himself to be outflanked. Moreover, he is ill, and has applied for a change of appointment, wishing, if possible, to go to the south. What we need at Maillebois is a master of sterling good sense and strong will, one possessed of all the intelligence and energy necessitated by the present situation. And so there have been thoughts of you----'

'Of me!' cried Marc, taken aback by so sudden and unexpected an announcement.

'Yes; you alone are thoroughly acquainted with the district and the frightful crisis to which it is now a prey. Since the condemnation of poor Simon, the elementary school has been, so to say, accursed; it loses pupils every month, while the Brothers' school tends to take its place. Maillebois is now becoming a centre of Clericalism, low superstition, and reactionary stupidity, which will end by devouring everything if we do not resist. The population is already relapsing into the hateful passions, the foolish imaginings of nine hundred years ago, and we need an artisan of the future, a sower of the good crop to restore the Communal school to prosperity. So, as I said before, you were thought of----'

'But is it merely a personal desire that you are expressing, or have you been asked to consult me?' asked Marc, again interrupting.

Salvan smiled: 'Oh! I am a functionary of no great importance; I can hardly hope to see all my personal desires accomplished. The truth is that I have been requested to sound you. It is known that I am a friend of yours. Le Barazer, our Academy Inspector, sent for me last Monday, and from our conversation sprang the idea of offering you the Maillebois school.'

Marc could not refrain from shrugging his shoulders.

'Oh! Le Barazer did not behave very bravely in Simon's case, I am aware of it,' Salvan continued. 'He might have done something. But we have to take men as they are. One thing which I can promise you is that if you do not find him exactly on your side, hereafter he will at least prove the hidden prop, the inert substance on which you may lean for support without fear. He always ends by getting the better of Prefect Hennebise, who is so dreadfully afraid of worries; and Forbes, the Rector, good man, is content to reign without governing. The dangerous party is that lay Jesuit Mauraisin, your Elementary Inspector, Father Crabot's friend, with whom Le Barazer thinks it more politic to behave gently. But come, surely the idea of battle does not frighten you!'

Marc remained silent, with downcast eyes, absorbed in anxious thoughts, assailed by doubt and hesitation. Then Salvan, who could read his mind and who, moreover, was acquainted with the drama of his home life, stepped forward and took his hands, saying with great feeling: 'I know what I am asking of you, my friend. I was a great friend of Berthereau, Geneviève's father, a man with a very free, broad mind, but at the same time a sentimental man who ended by accompanying his wife to Mass in order to please her. Later I acted as surrogate-guardian to his daughter, your wife, and I often visited the little house on the Place des Capucins, where Madame Duparque already reigned so despotically over her daughter, Madame Berthereau, and over her grandchild, Geneviève. Perhaps I ought to have warned you more than I did at the time of your marriage, for there is always some danger when a man like you marries a young girl who ever since infancy has been steeped in the most idolatrous of religions. But, so far, I have had no great occasion for self-reproach, for you are happy. Nevertheless, it is quite true that, if you accept the Maillebois appointment, you will find yourself in continual conflict with those ladies. That is what you are thinking of, is it not?'

Marc raised his head. 'Yes, I confess it, I fear for my happiness. As you know, I have no ambition. To be appointed at Maillebois would doubtless be desirable advancement; but I am perfectly content with my position at Jonville, where I am delighted to have succeeded and to have rendered some services to our cause. Yet now you wish me to quit that certainty, and jeopardise my peace elsewhere!'

A pause followed; then Salvan gently asked: 'Do you doubt Geneviève's affection?'

'Oh! no,' cried Marc; and after another pause and some little embarrassment: 'How could I doubt her, loving as she is, so happy in my arms?... But you can have no notion of the life we led with those ladies during the vacation, while I was busy with Simon's case. It became unbearable. I was treated as a stranger there; even the servant would not speak to me. And I felt as if I had been carried thousands of leagues away, to some other planet, with whose inhabitants I had nothing in common. Worst of all, the ladies began to spoil my Geneviève; she was relapsing into the ideas of her convent days, and she herself ended by growing frightened, and felt very happy when we found ourselves once more in our little nest at Jonville.'

He paused, quivering, and then concluded: 'No! no! Leave me where I am. I do my duty there: I carry out a work which I regard as good. It is sufficient for each workman to bring his stone for the edifice.'

Salvan, who had been pacing the room slowly, halted in front of the young man. 'I do not wish you to sacrifice yourself, my friend,' he said; 'I should regret it all my life if your happiness should be compromised, if the bitterness born of conflict should infect your hearth. But you are of the metal out of which heroes are wrought.... Do not give me an answer now. Take a week to think the matter over. Come again next Thursday; we will then have another chat, and arrive at a decision.'

Marc returned to Jonville that evening, feeling very worried. Ought he to silence his fears, which he scarcely dared to acknowledge to himself, and engage in a struggle with his wife's relations--a struggle in which all the joy of his life might be annihilated? He had decided at first that he would have a frank explanation with Geneviève; but afterwards his courage failed him, he foresaw only too well that she would simply tell him to act in accordance with his opinions and as his duty directed. Thus, assailed by increasing anguish of mind, discontented with himself, the young man did not speak to his wife of Salvan's offer. Two days went by amid hesitation and doubt; and then he ended by reviewing the situation and weighing the various reasons which might induce him to accept or refuse the Maillebois appointment.

He pictured the little town. There was Darras the Mayor, who, although a good-natured man and one of advanced views, no longer dared to be openly just for fear of losing his official position, and placing his fortune in jeopardy. There were also all the Bongards, the Doloirs, the Savins, the Milhommes, all those folk of average intellect and morality who had favoured him with such strange discourses, in which cruelty was blended with imbecility; while behind them came the multitude, a prey to even more ridiculous fancies and capable of more immediate ferocity. The superstitions of savages prevailed among the masses, their mentality was that of a nation of barbarians, adoring fetiches, setting its glory in massacre and rapine, and displaying neither a shred of tolerance, nor of sense, nor of kindliness. But why did they remain steeped--at their ease, as it were--in all the dense filth of error and falsehood? Why did they reject logic, even mere reason, with a kind of instinctive hatred, as if they were terrified by everything that was pure, simple, and clear? And why, in the Simon case, had they given to the world the extraordinary and deplorable spectacle of a people paralysed in its sensibility and intelligence, determined neither to see nor to understand, but bent on enveloping itself in all possible darkness, in order that it might be unable to see, and free to clamour for death amid the black night of its superstitions and its prejudices? Those folk had assuredly been contaminated, poisoned; day by day newspapers like _Le Petit Beaumontais_ and _La Croix de Beaumont_ had poured forth the hateful beverage which corrupts and brings delirium. Poor childish minds, hearts deficient in courage, all the suffering and humble ones, brutified by bondage and misery, become an easy prey for forgers and liars, for those who batten upon public credulity. And ever since the beginning of time every Church and Empire and Monarchy in the world has only reigned over the multitude by poisoning it, after robbing and maintaining it in the terror and slavery of false beliefs.

But if the people had been poisoned so easily it must have been because it possessed no power of resistance. Poison, moral poison, acts particularly on the ignorant, on those who know nothing, those who are incapable of criticising, examining, and reasoning. Thus, beneath all the anguish, iniquity, and shame, one found ignorance--ignorance, the first and the only cause of mankind's long Calvary, its slow and laborious ascent towards the light through all the filth and the crimes of history. And assuredly, if nations were to be freed, one must go to the root of things--that root of ignorance; for once again it had been demonstrated that an ignorant people could not practise equity, that truth alone could endow it with the power of dispensing justice.

At that point of his reflections Marc felt very much astonished. How came it that the mentality of the masses was no higher than that of mere savages? Had not the Republic reigned for thirty years, and had not its founders shown themselves conscious of the necessities of the times by basing the state edifice on scholastic laws, restoring the elementary schools to honour and strength, and decreeing that education thenceforth should be gratuitous, compulsory, and secular? They must have fancied at that time that the good work was virtually done, that a real democracy, delivered from old-time errors and falsehoods, would at last sprout from the soil of France. But thirty years had elapsed, and any forward step that might be achieved seemed to be cancelled by the slightest public disturbance. The people of to-day relapsed into the brutish degradation, the dementia of the people of yesterday, amidst a sudden return of ancestral darkness. What had happened then? What covert resistance, what subterranean force was it that had thus paralysed the immense efforts which had been attempted to extricate all the humble and suffering ones from their slavery and obscurity? As Marc put this question to himself he at once saw the enemy arise--the enemy, the creator of ignorance and death, the Roman Catholic Church.

It was that Church which, with the patient tactics of a tenacious worker, had barred the roads, and gradually seized on all those poor dense minds which others had tried to wrest from its domination. She had always fully understood that she must remain the master of the educational system in order that she might create night and falsehood as she listed, if she desired to keep the bodies and souls of the masses in subjection. Thus it was on the battlefield of the schools that she had once again waged hostilities, displaying marvellous suppleness in her hypocritical craft, pretending even to be Republican, and availing herself of the laws of freedom to keep within the prison house of her dogmas and superstitions the millions of children whom those same laws had been devised to liberate. And all those children were young brains won over to error, future soldiers for the religion of spoliation and cruelty which reigned over the hateful society of the era.

The crafty old Pope was seen leading the campaign, that turning movement which was to drive the Revolution from its own land of France, and, in the name of liberty, filch and appropriate all its conquests. The founders of the existing _régime_, the early Republicans, in presence of the feigned disarming of the Church, had been simple-minded enough to regard themselves as victors, to lapse into tranquillity, and even to smile upon the priests. They celebrated a new spirit of concord and pacification, the union of all beliefs in one sole national and patriotic faith. As the Republic was triumphant, why should it not welcome all its children, even those who, again and again, had tried to throttle it? But, thanks to that benevolent grandeur of views, the Church went on prosecuting her subterranean march, the Congregations which had been expelled[4] came back one by one, the everlasting work of invasion and enthralment was pursued without an hour's rest. Little by little the colleges of the Jesuits, the Dominicans, and other Congregations peopled the civil service, the magistrature, and the army with their pupils and creatures, while the secular schools were dispossessed by those of the Brothers and Sisters. Thus, on suddenly awaking with a great start, the country had found itself once more in the hands of the Church, the best posts of its governmental organisation being held by the Church's men, while its future was pledged, since the children of the masses, the peasants, artisans, and soldiers of to-morrow were held beneath the rods of the Ignorantines.

[Footnote 4: This is not an allusion to the recent expulsions of the religious Orders, but to those carried out a score of years ago.--_Trans._]

Marc, as it happened, witnessed on the Sunday an extraordinary spectacle which fully confirmed his impressions. He was still deep in thought, still unable to make up his mind to accept Salvan's offer. And having gone to Maillebois that Sunday in order to see David, he afterwards came upon a remarkable religious ceremony, which _Le Croix de Beaumont_ and _Le Petit Beaumontais_ had been announcing in flamboyant articles for a fortnight past, in such wise that all the devotees of the region were in a fever of excitement over it. The question was one of a superb reliquary, containing a fragment of the skull of St. Antony of Padua, a perfect treasure, for the purchase of which as much as ten thousand francs, it was said, had been subscribed by some of the faithful, who had presented it to the Capuchin Chapel. For the inauguration of the reliquary at the feet of the statue of the Saint there was to be a grand solemnity, which Monseigneur Begerot had consented to adorn with his presence. It was the Bishop's graciousness in this respect which impassioned everybody; for none had forgotten how he had formerly supported Abbé Quandieu, the parish priest, against the efforts of the Capuchins to gain all the faithful and all the money of the region to themselves. Besides, he had always been regarded as a thorough Simonist. Yet he had now consented to bestow on the Capuchins and their trade a public mark of his sympathy; and it followed that he must have submitted to very powerful influences, for it was extraordinary that after an interval of only a few months he should give the lie to all his previous actions, and resign himself to a course which must have been painful indeed to a man of so much culture and gentle good sense.

Attracted by curiosity, Marc repaired with the crowd to the chapel, where during the next two hours he beheld the strangest things possible. The trade which the Maillebois Capuchins carried on with their St. Antony of Padua had become very considerable, amounting to some hundreds of thousands of francs every year, collected in little sums, varying from one franc to ten. Father Théodose, the superior, whose fine apostolic head sent all the lady devotees into raptures, had proved himself to be an inventor and manager of great genius. He had devised and organised the democratic miracle, the domestic, every-day miracle such as was within the reach of the humblest purses. At the outset St. Antony's statue in the chapel had been a somewhat paltry one, and the Saint had busied himself with little else than the finding of lost things, his old-time specialty. But after a few successes of this kind, as money began to flow in, Father Théodose by a stroke of genius extended the sphere of the Saint's miraculous action, applying it to all the needs and desires of his steadily increasing customers. The sick who were afflicted with incurable maladies, those also who merely suffered from head or stomach ache; the petty shopkeepers who were in embarrassed circumstances, who lacked the money to honour their acceptances, or who did not know how to get rid of damaged goods; the speculators who had embarked in shady undertakings and who feared the loss of their fortunes and their liberty; the mothers who were in despair at finding no husbands for their plain and dowerless daughters; the poor devils out of work, who were weary of seeking employment, and who felt that only a prodigy could enable them to earn their bread; the heirs who were anxious with respect to the sentiments of an ailing grandparent, and who desired the help of Heaven to ensure them a bequest; the idle schoolboys, the hare-brained school girls, all the dunces who were certain to fail at their examinations if Providence did not come to their assistance; all the sorry weaklings, destitute of will, incapable of effort, who, regardless of work and common sense, awaited some undeserved success from a superior power--all these might address themselves to St. Antony, confide their case to him, and secure his all-powerful intercession with the Deity, the chances of success in their favour being six to four, according to careful statistics which had been prepared!

So everything was organised in a lavish way. The old statue was replaced by a new one, very much larger and gilded far more profusely; and collection boxes were set up on all sides--collection boxes of a new pattern, each having two compartments, one for money gifts and the other for letters which were addressed to the Saint, and which specified the nature of the applications. It was of course allowable to give no money; but it was remarked that the Saint granted only the prayers of those who bestowed at least some small alms. In the result a tariff was established, based on experience--so Father Théodose asserted--one franc and two francs given being for little favours, five francs and ten francs when one was more ambitiously inclined. Besides, if the applicant did not give enough, the Saint soon made it known by failing to intervene, and it then became necessary to double and treble one's alms. Those customers who desired to delay payment until the miracle was accomplished ran the risk of never securing a favour at all. Moreover, the Saint retained all freedom of action, choosing the elect as he pleased, and rendering accounts to none. Thus the whole affair was a gamble, a kind of divine lottery, in which one might draw a good or a bad number; and it was this very circumstance which impassioned the masses among whom the gambling instinct is so keen. They rushed upon the collection boxes and gave their franc, their two francs, or their five francs, all aflame with the hope that they would perhaps secure a big prize, some illicit and unhoped-for gain, some fine marriage, some diploma, some huge bequest. Never had there been a more impudent attempt to brutify the public, a more shameless speculation on human stupidity and the instincts of idleness and covetousness, one which destroyed all self-reliance and spread broadcast the idea of achieving success by chance alone without the slightest show of merit.[5]

[Footnote 5: M. Zola's account of the worship of St. Antony is strictly accurate. Can one wonder that the Government of the Republic should have decided to expel from France some of the bandits who, masquerading under the guise of monks, initiated this colossal fraud? The idea of it sprang from their keen jealousy of the wealth of the Assumptionist Fathers whom they found raking in money at Lourdes by the aid of bogus miracles. They carried the miracle craze further by diffusing the worship of St. Antony throughout France, preying on all the credulous with the most astounding impudence.--_Trans._]

Marc understood by the feverish enthusiasm of the groups around him that the business would spread still further and contaminate the whole region, thanks to that chiselled, gilded, silver reliquary, in which a fragment of St. Antony's skull was enshrined. This was Father Théodose's last device in response to the competition which other religious Orders had started at Beaumont, with a great swarming of statues and collection boxes, in order that the public might try their luck with other miracle-working saints. Mistakes would now be impossible, he alone possessed the sacred fragment of bone, and he alone would be able to supply the miracle gamblers with the very best chances of success. Posters covered the walls of the chapel, a new prospectus guaranteed the absolute authenticity of the relic, set forth that the tariffs would not be increased in spite of the new advantages offered, and carefully regulated operations in order that no recrimination might ensue between the Saint and his customers. The first thing, however, which struck Marc painfully was the presence of Mademoiselle Rouzaire, who had brought the girls of the Communal school to the ceremony as if their attendance were a part of the curriculum. And he was stupefied when at the head of the girls he saw the tallest of them carrying a religious banner of white silk embroidered with gold. But Mademoiselle Rouzaire made no secret of her sentiments. Whenever one of her pupils competed for a certificate she sent her not only to take Communion, but to place two francs in one of St. Antony's collection boxes, in order that the Deity might facilitate her examination. When the pupil was more stupid than usual she even advised her to put five francs into the box, as the Saint would assuredly have extra trouble in her case. She also made her pupils keep diaries in which they had to record their sins day by day, and distributed good marks to them for attendance at Mass. Singular indeed was the secular Communal school kept by Mademoiselle Rouzaire!

The little girls ranged themselves on the left side of the nave, while the little boys of the Brothers' school installed themselves on the right, in the charge of Brother Fulgence, who, as usual, made no end of fuss. Father Crabot and Father Philibin, who had wished to honour the ceremony with their presence, were already in the choir. Perhaps they were further desirous of enjoying their victory over Monseigneur Bergerot, for everybody knew how the Rector of Valmarie had helped to glorify the worship of St. Antony of Padua, in such wise that it was a triumph to have compelled the Bishop to make due amends for his severity of language respecting 'base superstition.' When Monseigneur Bergerot entered the chapel, followed by Abbé Quandieu, Marc felt confused, almost ashamed for them, such dolorous submission, such enforced relinquishment did he detect beneath their grave pale countenances.

The young man easily guessed what had happened, how the dementia, the irresistible onrush of the devout, had ended by sweeping the Bishop and the priest from the positions they had originally taken up. Abbé Quandieu had long resisted, unwilling as he was to lend himself to what he regarded as idolatry. But at sight of the scandal occasioned by his demeanour and the solitude growing around him, he had been seized with anguish, wondering if religion would not suffer from his uncompromising attitude, and at last resigning himself to the painful duty of casting the holy mantle of his ministry over the new and pestilential sore. One day he had carried the story of his doubts, his struggles, his defeat to Monseigneur Bergerot, who like him was vanquished, who like him feared some diminution of the power of the Church if it should confess its follies and its flaws. And the weeping Bishop had embraced the priest and promised to attend the ceremony which was to seal the reconciliation with the Capuchins and their allies. Keen suffering must have come to them from their powerlessness, from their enforced cowardice; and they must have suffered yet more bitterly at seeing their ideal soiled, their faith made a mere matter of barter. Ah! that Christianity, so pure at its advent, a great cause of brotherhood and deliverance, and even that Catholicism which had winged its flight so boldly and proved itself so powerful an instrument of civilisation, in what mud would both expire, if they must be thus allowed to sink to the vilest trading, to become the prey of the basest passions, mere things to be bought and sold, instruments for the diffusion of brutishness and falsehood! Worms were gathering in them, as in all old things, and soon would come rottenness, final decomposition, which would leave nought save a little dust and mouldiness behind.

The ceremony proved a triumphal one. A constellation of candles glittered around the reliquary which was blessed and censed. There were orisons and addresses, and canticles chanted amid the mighty strains of the organ. Several ladies were taken ill, one of Mademoiselle Rouzaire's little girls had to be led away, so oppressive became the atmosphere. But the delirium of the congregation reached a climax when Father Théodose, having ascended the pulpit, recited the Saint's miracles: one hundred and twenty-eight lost objects duly found; fifty doubtful commercial transactions brought to a good issue; thirty tradespeople saved from bankruptcy by the sudden sale of old goods stored away in their shops; ninety-three sick people, paralytic, consumptive, affected with cancer or with gout, restored to health; twenty-six young girls married although they were portionless; thirty married women becoming the mothers of boys or girls, according to their choice; three hundred clerks placed in good offices with the salaries they desired; six inheritances acquired suddenly and against all hopes; seventy-seven pupils, girls and boys, successful at their examinations, although their teachers had foretold the contrary; and all sorts of other favours and graces, conversions, illicit unions transformed into lawful ones, unbelievers dying converted, lawsuits gained, unsaleable lands suddenly disposed of, houses let after remaining tenantless for ten years! And ardent covetousness convulsed the throng at each fresh announcement of a miracle, till at last a clamour of satisfied passion greeted the enumeration of each favour, which Father Théodose announced from the pulpit in a thundering voice. It all ended in an attack of veritable dementia, the whole congregation rising and howling, stretching forth convulsive hands as if to catch one or another of those great lottery prizes that rained down from heaven.

Angered and disgusted, Marc was unable to remain there any longer. He had seen Father Crabot await a benevolent smile from Monseigneur Bergerot, then hold with him a friendly conversation, which everybody remarked. Meantime Abbé Quandieu was smiling also, though a twitch of pain lurked round his lips. The sacrifice was consummated. The victory of the Brothers and the monks, the triumph of the Catholicism of idolatry, servitude, and annihilation would prove complete. The young man felt stifled in that atmosphere, so he left the chapel to seek the sunshine and the pure air.

But St. Antony of Padua pursued him even across the square outside. Groups of female devotees were chattering together, even as the women gamblers had chattered in the old days while loitering near the doors of the lottery offices.

'As for me,' said one very fat and doleful woman, 'I never have any luck; I never win at any game. And perhaps that's why St. Antony does not listen to me. I gave forty sous on three occasions, once for my goat which was ailing, but all the same it died; the next time for a ring I lost, and which I never found; and then, the third time, for some potatoes which were rotting, but it was no good, I couldn't find a buyer for them. Ah! I am really unlucky and no mistake!'

'You are too patient, my dear,' a little dark wizened old woman answered. 'As for me, when St. Antony won't lend ear, I make him listen.'

'But how, my dear?'

'Oh! I punish him. For instance, there was that little house of mine which I couldn't let because people complain that it's too damp and that children get ill and die there. Well, I gave three francs, and then I waited. Nothing, not a sign of a tenant! I gave three francs a second time, and still there was no result. That made me cross and I hustled the statuette of the Saint which stands on the chest of drawers in my bedroom. As he still did nothing for me, I turned his face to the wall to let him reflect. He spent a week like that, but still nothing came of it, for it did not humiliate him sufficiently. I had to think of something else; I felt quite furious, and I ended by tying him to a cord and lowering him into my well, head downwards. Ah! my dear, he then understood that I was bound to have the last word with him; for he hadn't been in the well two hours when some people called and I let them my little house.'

'But you pulled him out of the well?'

'Oh! at once. I set him on the drawers again, after wiping him quite clean and apologising to him.... We are not on bad terms together on account of that affair, oh! dear no; only, do you see, when one has paid one's money, one ought to be energetic.'

'All right, my dear, I'll try.... I have some worries with the Justice of the Peace, so I will go inside and give two francs. And if the Saint doesn't help me to win the suit, I will show him my displeasure.'

'That's it, my dear! Tie a stone to his neck, or wrap him up in some dirty linen. He doesn't like that at all. It will make him do the right thing.'

Marc could not help smiling in spite of his bitter feelings. He continued listening, and heard a group of serious looking men--among whom he recognised Philis, the Municipal Councillor and clerical rival of Mayor Darras--deploring the fact that not a parish of the _arrondissement_ had yet consecrated itself to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. That was another clever invention, more dangerous still than the base trafficking in St. Antony of Padua. True, the poorer classes as yet remained indifferent to it, as it lacked the attraction of a miraculous and a gambling element. None the less, there was a grave peril in that idolatrous worship of the Sacred Heart, a real, red, bleeding heart torn away amid a last palpitation, and portrayed like the heart of some animal in a butcher's shop. The endeavour was to make that gory picture the emblem of modern France, to print it in purple, to embroider it in silk and gold on the national flag, so that the whole country might become a mere dependency of the Church which invented that repulsive fetich worship. Here again one found the same manœuvre, the same attempt to lay the grip of priestcraft on the nation, to win over the multitude by means of superstition and legend, in the hope of steeping it once more in ignorance and bondage. And in the case of the Sacred Heart, as in that of St. Antony of Padua, it was particularly the Jesuits who were at work, disorganising the olden Catholicism with their evil power, and reducing religion to a level with the carnal practices of savage tribes.

Marc hurried away. He again felt suffocated, he longed for solitude and space. Geneviève, desirous of spending an afternoon with her parents, had accompanied him to Maillebois that Sunday. Madame Duparque, being attacked by gout, was confined to her arm-chair, and had been prevented therefore from attending the ceremony at the chapel. As Marc no longer visited his wife's relations, he had agreed with Geneviève that he would meet her outside the railway station in time for the four o'clock train. It was now scarcely more than three, and so he walked mechanically to the tree-planted square where the railway station stood, and sank upon a bench there amid the solitude. He was still pondering, still absorbed in a great, decisive, mental battle.

All at once light flashed upon his mind. The extraordinary spectacle he had just beheld, the things he had seen and heard, filled him with glowing certainty. If the nation were passing through such a frightful crisis; if it were becoming divided into two hostile Frances, ready to devour one another, it was simply because Rome had carried her battle into French territory. France was the last great Roman Catholic power that remained;[6] she alone still possessed the men and the money, the strength needed to impose Roman Catholicism on the world. It was logical, therefore, that her territory should have been chosen for the supreme battle of Rome, who was so frantically desirous of recovering her temporal power, as that alone could lead her to the realisation of her ancient dream of universal domination. Thus all France had become like those frontier plains, those fertile ploughlands, vineyards, and orchards where two armies meet and contend to decide some mighty quarrel. The crops are ravaged by cavalry charges, the vineyards and orchards are ripped open by galloping batteries of artillery; shells blow up the villages, grape-shot cuts down the trees, and changes the plain into a lifeless desert. And, in like way, the France of to-day is devastated and ruined by the warfare which the Church there wages against the Revolution, an exterminating warfare without truce or mercy, for the Church well understands that, if she does not slay the Revolution, by which is symbolised the spirit of liberty and justice, the Revolution will slay her. Thence comes the desperate struggle on every field, among every class--a struggle poisoning every question that arises, fomenting civil war, transforming the motherland into a field of massacre, where perhaps only ruins will soon remain. And therein lies the mortal danger, a certainty of death if the Church should triumph and cast France once more into the darkness and wretchedness of the past, making of her also one of those fallen nations which expire in the misery and nothingness with which Roman Catholicism has stricken every land where she has reigned.

[Footnote 6: Austria, the reader may be reminded, is in great straits, held together merely by the prestige of its reigning monarch; Italy is hostile to the temporal claims of the papacy; Spain has been killed by its priests; Portugal slumbers in insignificance; even the prosperity of Belgium has been largely affected by the blighting influence of its religious Orders.--_Trans._]

Reflections, which previously had filled Marc with much perplexity, now came to him afresh, illumined by new light. He pictured the subterranean work of the Church during the last fifty years: the clever manœuvres of the Teaching Orders to win future power by influencing the children; and the policy followed by Leo XIII., his crafty acceptance of the Republic for the sole purpose of worming his way into it and subduing it. But if the France of Voltaire and Diderot, the France of the Revolution and the Three Republics, had become the poor, misled, distracted France of to-day, which almost reverted to the past instead of marching towards the future, it was more particularly because the Jesuits and the other teaching Orders had set their grip on the children, trebling the number of their pupils in thirty years, spreading their powerful establishments over the entire land. And, all at once, impelled thereto by events, and compelled moreover to take up position, the triumphant Church unmasked her work, and defiantly acknowledged that she meant to be the sovereign of the nation.

All the various conquests hitherto achieved arose before the scared eyes of the onlookers: The high positions in the army, the magistrature, the civil and political services were in the hands of men formed by the Church; the once liberal, unbelieving, railing middle class had been won back to the retrograde Church-spirit from the fear of being dispossessed by the rising tide of the masses; the latter themselves were poisoned with gross superstitions, held in crass ignorance and falsehood in order that they might remain the human cattle whom the master fleeces and slaughters. And the Church, no longer hiding her designs, impudently pursued her work of conquest, setting up St. Antony's collection boxes with a great display of puffery on all sides, distributing flags adorned with the gory emblem of the Sacred Heart to the villages, opening congregational schools in competition to every secular one, and even seizing on the latter, where the teachers often became creatures of her own, and did her work either from cowardice or interest.

She, the Roman Catholic Church, was now openly at war with civil society. She raised money expressly to carry on her work of conquest; many of the religious congregations had taken to industry and trade; one alone, that of the Good Pastor, realising some twelve millions of francs profit[7] every year by exploiting the forty-seven thousand work-girls who slaved in its two hundred and seven establishments. And the Church sold all kinds of things: alcoholic liqueurs and shoes, medicines and furniture, miraculous waters and embroidered nightgowns for women of bad character. She turned everything into money, she levied the heaviest tribute on public stupidity and credulity by her spurious miracles and her everlasting exploitation of religion. Her wealth amounted to thousands of millions of francs, her estates were immense, and she disposed of enough ready cash to buy parties, hurl them one upon the other, and triumph amid the blood and ruin of civil war. The struggle appeared terrible and immediate to Marc, who had never previously felt how very necessary it was that France should slay that Church if she did not wish to be slain by her.

[Footnote 7: $2,316,000.]

All at once the Bongards, the Doloirs, the Savins, the Milhommes seemed to appear before him; he could hear them stammering the paltry excuses that came from cowardly hearts and poisoned minds, seeking refuge in ignorance and fear-fraught egotism. They represented France, the scared, brutified masses, handed over to prejudice and clerical imbecility. To rot the people more quickly anti-Semitism had been invented, that revival of religious hate by which too it was hoped to win over even unbelievers who had deserted the Church. But to hurl the people against the Jews and to exploit its ancestral passions was only a beginning; at the end lay a return to slavery, a plunge into darkness and ancient bondage. And to-morrow there would be Bongards, Doloirs, Savins, and Milhommes of a still lower type, more stupefied, more steeped in darkness and falsehood than those of to-day, if the children should still be left in the hands of the Brothers and the Jesuits, on the forms of the many Congregational schools.

It would not be sufficient to close those schools; it was also necessary to purify the Communal schools, which the stealthy work of the Church had ended by affecting, paralysing secular education, and installing reactionary masters and mistresses among the teachers, who by their lessons and their examples perpetuated error. For one man like Férou, so intelligent and brave, even if maddened by misery, for one woman like Mademoiselle Mazeline, all heart and reason, how many disturbingly worthless ones there were--how many, too, who were badly disposed, who went over to the enemy and did the greatest harm! There were Mademoiselle Rouzaires, who from ambition sided with the stronger party and carried their interested clericalism to excess; there were Mignots drifting, allowing themselves to be impelled hither and thither by those around them; there were Doutrequins, honest old Republicans, who had become anti-Semites and reactionaries from an error of patriotism; and behind all these appeared the entire elementary staff of the country, disturbed, spoilt, losing its way, and liable to lead the children confided to it, the generations of which the future would be compounded, to the bottomless pit. Marc felt a chill at his heart as he thought of it. Never before had the peril threatening the nation seemed to him so imminent and so redoubtable.