Truth [Vérité]

In this way sixteen years elapsed, bringing disaster. All moral and intellectual decline leads inevitably to material misery. There is no country where the Roman Church has reigned as absolute sovereign that is not now a dead country. Ignorance, error, and base credulity render men powerless. And what can be the use of exercising one's will, acting and progressing, if one be a mere toy in the hands of a Deity who plays with one according to his fancy? That Deity suffices, supplies the place of everything. At the end of such a religion of terrestrial and human nothingness, there is but stupidity, inertia, surrender into the hands of Providence, mere routine in the avocations of life, idleness, and want. Jauffre let his boys gorge themselves with Bible history and Catechism, while in their peasant families all ideas of any improved system of cultivating the land were regarded with increasing suspicion. They knew nothing of those matters, they would not learn. Fields remained unproductive, crops were lost for want of intelligent care. Then effort seemed excessive and useless, and the countryside became impoverished, deserted, though above it there still shone the all-powerful and fructifying sun—that ignored, insulted god of life.

The decline of Jonville had become yet more marked after Abbé Cognasse had prevailed on the weak Martineau to allow the parish to be dedicated to the Sacred Heart in a pompous and well-remembered ceremony. The peasants were still waiting for that Sacred Heart to bring them the wondrous promised harvests by dispelling the hailstorms and granting rain and fine weather in due season. By way of result one only found more imbecility weighing on the parish, a sleepy waiting for divine intervention, the slow agony of fanatical believers, in whom all power of initiative has been destroyed, and who, if their Deity did not nourish them, would let themselves starve rather than raise an arm.

During the first days that followed his return, Marc, on taking a few country walks with Geneviève, felt quite distressed by all the incompetency and neglect he beheld. The fields were ill-kept, the roads scarcely passable. One morning they went as far as Le Moreux, where they found Mignot installing himself in his wretched school, and feeling as grieved as they were that the district should have fallen into such a deplorable state.

'You have no idea, my friends,' said he, 'of the ravages of that terrible Cognasse. He exercises some little restraint at Jonville; but here, in this lonely village, whose inhabitants are too miserly to pay for a priest of their own, he terrorises and sabres everybody. Of late years, he and his creature Chagnat, while reigning here, virtually suppressed the Mayor, Saleur, who felt flattered at being re-elected every time, but who turned all the worries of his office over to his secretary, Chagnat, and by way of exhibiting his person, let himself be taken to Mass, though at heart he scarcely cared for the priests.... Ah! how well I now understand the torments of poor Férou, his exasperation, and the fit of lunacy which led to his martyrdom.'

With a quivering gesture Marc indicated that he was haunted by the thought of that unhappy man, struck down by a revolver-shot yonder, under the burning sun. 'When I came in just now, he seemed to rise before me. Famished, having only his scanty pay to provide for himself, his wife, and his children, he endured untold agony at feeling that he was the only intelligent, the only educated, man among all those ignorant dolts living at their ease, who disdained him for his poverty and feared him for his attainments, which humiliated them.... That explains, too, the power acquired by Chagnat over the Mayor, the latter's one desire being to live in peace on his income, in the somnolent state of a man whose appetite is satisfied.'

'But the whole parish is like that,' Mignot replied. 'There are no poor, and each peasant remains content with what he harvests, not in a spirit of wisdom, but from a kind of egotism, ignorance, and laziness. If they are perpetually quarrelling with the priest, it is because they accuse him of slighting them, of not giving them the Masses and other ceremonies to which they consider themselves entitled. Thanks to Chagnat, in his time something like an understanding was arrived at, and, indeed, all that was said and done here in honour of St. Antony of Padua can hardly be pictured.... But the result of Chagnat's régime is deplorable; I found the school as dirty as a cowshed; one might have thought that the Chagnats had lodged all the cattle of the district in it, and I had to engage a woman to help me to scour and scrape everything.'

Geneviève, meantime, had become dreamy; her glance seemed to wander away to far-off memories. 'Ah! poor Férou!' she murmured, 'I was not always kind to him and his family. That is one of my regrets. But how can one remedy so much suffering and disaster? We have so little power, we are still so few. There are times when I despair.' Then, suddenly waking up, as it were, and smiling, she nestled close to her husband and resumed: 'There, there, don't scold me, my dear, I did wrong to speak like that. But you must allow me enough time to become fearless and reproachless as you yourself are.... Come, it's understood, we are going to set to work, and we shall conquer.'

Thereupon they all became merry, and Mignot, who wished to escort his friends a little way, ended by accompanying them almost to Jonville. There, at the roadside, stood a large square building, a kind of factory, the branch establishment of the Good Shepherd of Beaumont, which had been promised at the time of the consecration of the parish to the Sacred Heart, and which had now been working for several years. The fine clerical folk had made a great noise about the prosperity which such an establishment would bring with it: all the daughters of the peasants would find employment and become skilful workwomen, there would be a great improvement in their morality, drones and gadabouts would be duly corrected, and the business might end by endowing the district with quite an industry.

The specialty of the Good Shepherd establishments was to provide the big drapery shops of Paris with petticoats, knickers, and chemises—the finest, most ornamental, and most delicate feminine body linen. At Jonville, under the superintendence of some ten sisters, two hundred girls worked from morning till night, trying their eyes over all that rich and fashionable underwear, which was often destined for strange festivities. And those two hundred little lingères constituted but a tiny fraction of all the poor hirelings who were thus exploited, for the Order had establishments from one to the other end of France; nearly fifty thousand girls toiled in its workshops, scantily paid, ill-treated, and ill-fed, while they earned for it millions of francs. At Jonville, there had been speedy disenchantment, none of the fine promises had been fulfilled, the establishment seemed a gulf which swallowed up the last energies of the region. The farms were raided and their women folk carried off, the peasants could no longer keep their daughters with them,—the girls all dreamt of becoming young ladies, of spending their days on chairs, engaged in light work. But they soon repented of their folly, for what with the long hours of enforced immobility, the exhausting strain of unremitting application, never was there more frightful drudgery; the stomach remained empty, the head became heavy, there was no time for sleep in summer, and there was no fire in winter. The place was a prison-house, where, under the pretext of practising charity, of promoting morality, woman was exploited in the most frightful manner, sweated in her flesh, stupefied in her intelligence, turned into a beast of burden, from whom the greatest gain possible was extracted. And scandals burst forth at Jonville; one girl nearly perished of cold and starvation, another became half mad, while another, turned out of doors penniless after years of crushing toil, rebelled, and threatened the good sisters with a sensational lawsuit.[1]

Marc, stopping short on the road, looked at the big factory, silent like a prison, deathly like a cloister, where so many young lives were wearing themselves away, nothing carolling, meanwhile, the happiness of fruitful work.

'One source of the Church's strength,' said he, 'a very simple matter in practice, is that she stoops to present-day requirements and borrows our own weapons to fight us. She manufactures and she trades; there is no object or article of daily consumption that she does not produce or sell, from clothes to liqueurs. Several Orders are merely industrial associations, which undersell other people, as they secure labour for next to nothing, and thus compete disloyally with our smaller producers. The millions of francs they gain go into the cash-boxes of the Black Band, supplying sinews for the war of extermination which is waged against us, swelling the thousands of millions which the Congregations possess already, and which may render them so redoubtable.'

Geneviève and Mignot had listened thoughtfully. And a moment of anxious silence now followed amid the evening quietude, while the sunset cast a great pink glow on the closed and mournful factory of the Good Shepherd.

'Why, I myself seem to be despairing now!' Marc resumed gaily. 'They are still very powerful, it is certain. But we have a book on our side, the little book of elementary knowledge, which brings truth with it, and which will end by for ever overcoming the falsehoods they have circulated for so many centuries. All our strength is in that, Mignot. They may accumulate ruins here, they may lead poor ignorant folk backward, and destroy the little good done by us formerly; but it will suffice for us to resume our efforts to bring about progress by knowledge, and we shall regain the lost ground, and continue to advance until we at last reach the City of solidarity and peace. Their prison-house of the Good Shepherd will crumble like all others, their Sacred Heart will go whither all the gross fetiches of the dead religions have gone. You hear me, Mignot; each pupil in whom you instil a little truth will be another helper in the cause of justice. So to work, to work! Victory is certain, whatever difficulties and sufferings may be encountered on the road!'

That cry of faith and everlasting hope rang out across the quiet countryside amid the calm setting of the planet which foretold a bright to-morrow. And Mignot bravely returned to his task at Le Moreux, while Marc and Geneviève went homeward to begin their work at Jonville.

Arduous work it was, requiring much will and patience, for it was necessary to free Mayor Martineau, the parish council, and indeed the whole village from the hands of the priest, who was determined not to relax his hold. On hearing of Marc's appointment, Abbé Cognasse, instead of evincing any anger or fear of the redoubtable adversary who was being sent to face him, had contented himself with shrugging his shoulders and affecting extreme contempt. He said on all sides that this beaten man, this disgraced mediocrity, who had lost all honour by his complicity in the Simon case, would not remain six months at Jonville. His superiors had merely sent him there in order to finish him off, not wishing to execute him at one blow. In reality, no doubt, Abbé Cognasse scarcely felt at ease, for he knew the man he had to deal with—a man all calmness and strength, derived from his reliance on truth. And that the priest plainly scented danger was shown by the prudence and sangfroid which he himself strove to preserve, for fear of spoiling everything if he should yield to some of his customary fits of passion. Thus the unexpected spectacle of a superbly diplomatic Abbé Cognasse, who left to Providence the duty of striking down the enemy, was presented to the village. As his servant Palmyre, who with increasing age had become quite terrible, did not possess sufficient self-restraint to imitate his silent contempt, he scolded her in public when she ventured to declare that the new schoolmaster had stolen some consecrated wafers from the church at Maillebois for the purpose of profaning them in the presence of his pupils. That was not proved, said the Abbé, nor was there any proof of the story that hell had lent Marc a devil, who, on being summoned, stepped out of the wall and helped him with his class-work. Indoors, however, all was agreement between the priest and the servant, who both displayed extraordinary greed and avarice, the former picking up as many Masses as possible, the latter keeping the accounts, and growling angrily when money did not come in. With reference to Marc, then, there ensued, on the Abbé's part, a stealthy and venomous campaign, with the object of destroying both the master and his school, in order that he, Cognasse, might continue to reign over the parish.

Marc, on his side, behaved as if the Church and the priest did not exist. To win back Martineau, the council, and the inhabitants, he contented himself with teaching the truth, with promoting the triumph of reason over ridiculous dogmas, limiting himself strictly to his duties as a master, convinced as he was that the true and the good would prove victorious when he should have fashioned hearts and minds capable of will and understanding. He had necessarily resumed the duties of secretary at the parish office, but he there contented himself with discreetly advising Martineau, who at heart was well pleased by his return. The Mayor had already had a quarrel with his wife respecting the chanting of Mass, which chanting Abbé Cognasse had done away with now that Jauffre was no longer there. And there was also the ancient and everlasting quarrel about the church clock, which would not work. The first thing which showed that a change had taken place at Jonville was the vote of a sum of three hundred francs by the council for the purchase of a new clock which was fixed to the pediment of the parish offices. This seemed a very bold step to take, but it met with the approval of the villagers. They would at last know the correct time, which the rusty, old, worn-out clock of the church no longer gave. However, Marc avoided any semblance of triumph; he knew that years would be needed to regain all the lost ground. Each day would bring a little progress, and he patiently sowed the future, convinced that those peasants would come over to his side when they found in truth the one sole source of health, prosperity, and peace.

And now, for Marc and Geneviève, came fruitful years of work and happiness. He, in particular, had never felt so courageous and strong. The loving return of his wife, and the complete union which had followed it, brought him fresh power, for his life now accorded with his work. In former times he had greatly suffered at finding that, while he claimed to teach truth to others, he could not convince the companion of his life, the wife he loved, the mother of his children; and he had felt hampered in his task of wresting others from error when, from weakness or powerlessness, he tolerated error in his own home. But now he possessed irresistible strength, all the authority which comes to one from example, from the realisation of happiness at the family hearth through perfect agreement and a common faith. And what healthy delight there was in the prosecution of the same work by the husband and the wife, acting in conjunction one with the other, and yet freely, each retaining the exercise of his or her individuality! Moments of weakness still came occasionally to Geneviève, but Marc scarcely intervened; he preferred to let her regret and repair the errors arising from the past, of her own accord.

Every evening, when the boys and girls had gone home, the master and the mistress found themselves together in their little lodging, and talked of the children confided to them, taking account of the day's work, and coming to an understanding respecting the work of the morrow, though without binding themselves to identical programmes. Geneviève, being sentimentally inclined, endeavoured the more particularly to make sincere and happy creatures of her girls, trying to free them from the ancient slavery less by knowledge than by sense and love, for fear of casting them into pride and solitude. Marc, perhaps, would have gone further, and have fed both boys and girls on the same knowledge, leaving life to indicate the social rôle of each sex. Before long the great regret experienced by himself and his wife was that they did not direct a mixed school, like Mignot's at Le Moreux, whose population of little more than two hundred souls supplied scarcely a dozen boys and as many girls. At Jonville, which numbered nearly eight hundred inhabitants, the master had some thirty boys under him, and the mistress some thirty girls. Had they been united, what a fine class there would have been—Marc acting as director, and Geneviève as his assistant! Such indeed was their idea; had they been in authority they would no longer have separated the girls from the boys; they would have entrusted all those little folk to a married couple, a father and a mother, who would have educated and reared them one with the other as if they all belonged to their own family. They held that all sorts of advantages would result from such a course, a more logical apprenticeship of life, excellent emulation, more frank and gentle manners. In particular, the adjunction of the wife to the husband as an assistant seemed likely to prove fruitful in good results. Briefly, they would have liked to pull down the wall which separated their pupils from one another, in such wise as to have had but one school, a little miniature world in which he would have set his virility, she her tenderness, and what good work would they not then have accomplished, devoting themselves entirely to those little couples of the future!

But the regulations had to be observed, and Marc, on resuming his work, pursued the methods that he had followed at Maillebois for fifteen years. His class was smaller than it had been there, and his resources were more limited; but he had the satisfaction of being almost en famille, and his action became more direct and efficacious. After all, what did it matter if the number of pupils whom he fashioned into men was only a score or so? Had each schoolmaster in all the little villages followed Marc's example, so as to endow the nation with twenty just and sensible men, the result would have sufficed to make France the emancipator of the world. Another source of contentment for Marc was that he secured almost complete liberty of action from Mauraisin's successor, the new Elementary Inspector, M. Mauroy, to whom Le Barazer, whose friend he was, had discreetly given special instructions. The village was so small that Marc's doings could not attract much attention, and thus he was able to pursue his methods without any great interference. As a first step, he again got rid of all religious emblems, all pictures, copybooks, and books in which the supernatural was shown triumphant, and in which war, massacre, and rapine appeared as ideals of power and beauty. He considered that it was a crime to poison a lad's brain with a belief in miracles, and to set brute force, assassination, and theft in the front rank as manly and patriotic duties. Such teaching could only produce imbecile inertia, sudden criminal frenzy, iniquity, and wretchedness. Marc's dream, on the contrary, was to set pictures of work and peace before his pupils, to show sovereign reason ruling the world, justice establishing brotherliness among men, the ancient violence of warlike ages being condemned, and giving place to agreement among all nations, in order that they might arrive at the greatest possible happiness. And having rid his class of the poisonous ferments of the past, Marc particularly instructed his pupils in civic morality, striving to make each a citizen well informed about his country, and able to serve and love it, without setting it apart from the rest of mankind. Marc held that France ought no longer to dream of conquering the world by arms, but rather by the irresistible force of ideas, and by setting an example of so much freedom, truth, and equity, that she would deliver all other countries and enjoy the glory of founding with them the great confederation of free and brotherly nations.

For the rest, Marc tried to conform to the school programmes, though, as they were very heavy, he occasionally set them aside. Experience had taught him that learning was nothing if one did not understand what one learnt and if one could not put it to use. Accordingly, without excluding books, he gave great development to oral lessons, and, once again, he strove to rejuvenate himself, to share the pastimes of his pupils, and descend, as it were, to their mental level, in such wise that, like them, he seemed to be learning, seeking truth, and making discoveries. It was in the fields also that he explained to them how the soil ought to be cultivated, and he took them to carpenters, locksmiths, and masons in order that they might acquire correct ideas of manual work. In his opinion, moreover, it was fit that gymnastics should partake of the character of amusement, and thus playtime was largely devoted to bodily exercise. Again, Marc took on himself the office of a judge; he requested his boys to lay all their little differences before him, and he strove to make his decisions acceptable to all parties; for not only did he possess absolute faith in the beneficent power of truth upon young minds, but he was also convinced of the necessity of equity to content and ripen them. By truth and justice towards love: such was his motto. A boy to whom one never tells a falsehood, whom one treats invariably with justice, becomes a friendly, sensible, intelligent, and healthy man. And this was why Marc kept such a careful watch over the books which the curriculum compelled him to place in the hands of his pupils; for he well knew that the best of them, written with the most excellent intentions, were still full of ancient falsehoods, the great iniquities consecrated by history. If he distrusted phrases and words, the sense of which seemed likely to escape his little peasants, and endeavoured to interpret them in clear and simple language, he feared yet more the dangerous legends, the errors of articles of faith, the abominable notions set forth in the name of a mendacious religion and a false patriotism. There was often no difference between the books written by clerics for the Brothers' schools and those which university men prepared for the secular ones. The intentional errors contained in the former were reproduced in the latter, and it was impossible for Marc to refrain from intervening and refuting those errors by verbal explanations, since it was essentially his task to fight the Congregational system of teaching, that source of all falsehood and all misery.

For four years Marc and Geneviève worked on, modestly but efficaciously, silently accomplishing as much good as was possible in their little sphere. Generations of children followed one another; and to the master and the mistress it seemed that fifty years would have sufficed to rejuvenate the world, if each child, on reaching maturity, had contributed to it a little more truth and justice. Four years of effort had certainly not yielded a marked result, but many good symptoms were manifest; the future was already rising from the fruitful soil, sown so perseveringly.

Salvan, after being pensioned off, had ended by taking up his abode at Jonville, in a little house left him by a cousin. He lived there like a sage, with just enough money to provide for his wants and indulge in the cultivation of a few flowers. In his garden, under an arbour of roses and clematis, there was a large stone table, round which on Sundays he liked to assemble a few friends, former pupils of the Training College, who chatted, fraternised, and indulged together in fine dreams. Salvan was the patriarch of the gathering, which Marc joined every Sunday, his satisfaction being complete whenever he there met Joulic, his successor at Maillebois, from whom he obtained information about his old school. Joulic was a tall, slim, fair young man, gentle yet energetic, who had taken to the teaching profession by taste, and in order to escape the brutifying office life from which his father, a petty clerk, had suffered. One of Salvan's best pupils, he brought to his work a mind liberated from all absurd dogmas, won over entirely to experimental methods. And thanks to a great deal of shrewdness and quiet firmness, which had enabled him to avoid the traps set for him by the Congregations, he proved very successful at Maillebois. He had lately married a schoolmaster's daughter, a fair little creature, gentle like himself, and this had helped to make his school an abode of gaiety and peace.

One Sunday, when Marc reached Salvan's, he found Joulic already chatting with the master of the house at the stone table in the flowery arbour, and they, at the sight of him, at once made merry.

'Come on, my friend!' cried Salvan; 'here's Joulic telling me that some more boys have left the Brothers' school at Maillebois. People say that we are beaten, but we work on quietly, and our action spreads and triumphs more and more each year!'

'Yes,' Joulic added, 'everything is progressing at Maillebois, which once seemed to be the rotten borough of clericalism.... Brother Joachim, Fulgence's successor, is certainly a very clever man, as artful and as prudent as the other was wild and rough, but he cannot overcome the distrust of the families of the town—the turn which public opinion has taken against the Congregational schools, where the studies are indifferent and the morals doubtful. Simon may have been reconvicted, but, all the same, the ghost of Gorgias returns to the spot which he polluted, and his very defenders are haunted by the memory of his crime. And thus I recruit each boy who leaves the Ignorantines.'

Marc, who had now seated himself, laughed and thanked his young colleague. 'You don't know how much your news pleases me, my dear Joulic,' he replied. 'When I quitted Maillebois I left a part of my heart there, and I felt worried as to what might become of the work which I had been pursuing for fifteen years; but I have long ceased to feel any anxiety, knowing my old school to be in such capable hands as yours. Yes, if some of the poison which infected Maillebois has been eliminated, it is because the pupils who quit you, year by year, become men of sense and equity.... Ask your old master, Salvan, what he thinks of you.'

But Joulic with a gesture curtailed Marc's praises. 'No, no,' said he, 'I am only a pawn in the great battle. If I am worth anything I owe it to my training, so that the chief merit belongs to our master. Besides, I am not alone at Maillebois; I derive the most precious help, I will even say the greatest support, from Mademoiselle Mazeline. She has often consoled and encouraged me. You cannot imagine how much moral energy that gentle and sensible woman possesses. A large part of our success is due to her, for it is she who has gradually won family people over to our cause by turning out so many good wives and mothers.... When a woman personifies truth, justice, and love, she becomes the greatest power in the world——'

Joulic paused, for at that moment Mignot made his appearance. Those Sunday meetings brought delightful relaxation to Marc's former assistant, who cheerfully walked the two and a half miles which separated Le Moreux from Jonville. Having caught Joulic's last words, he at once exclaimed: 'Ah! Mademoiselle Mazeline—do you know that I wanted to marry her? I never mentioned it, but I may admit it now.... It is all very well to say that she is plain; but at Maillebois, on seeing how good and sensible, how admirable she was, I dreamt of her. And one day I told her of my idea. You should have seen how moved she was—grave, yet smiling, quite sisterly! She explained her position to me, saying that she was too old—already five and thirty, just my own age. Besides, she added, her girls had become her family, and she had long renounced all idea of living for herself.... Yet I fancy that my proposal stirred up some old regrets.... Briefly, we continued good friends, and I decided to remain a bachelor, though this occasionally embarrasses me at Le Moreux, on account of my girl pupils, who would be better cared for by a woman.'

Then he, also, gave some good news of the state of feeling in his parish. All the crass ignorance and error, which Chagnat had voluntarily allowed to accumulate there, were beginning to disappear. Saleur, the Mayor, had experienced great trouble with his son, Honoré, whom he had sent to the Lycée of Beaumont, where he had been stuffed by the chaplain with as much religious knowledge as he would have acquired in a seminary—in such wise that, after being appointed to the management of a little Catholic bank in Paris, he had come to grief there by practices which had nearly landed him in a criminal court. Since then his father, the ex-grazier, who at heart had never liked the priests, never wearied of denouncing what he called the Black Band, exasperated as he was by the downfall of his son, which had quite upset his comfortable life as an enriched peasant. And thus, at each fresh quarrel with Abbé Cognasse, he sided with schoolmaster Mignot, carrying the parish council with him, and threatening to have nothing more to do with the Church if the priest should still treat the inhabitants as a subjugated flock. Indeed, never before had that lonely sluggish village of Le Moreux so freely granted admittance to the new ideas. In part this was due to the better position which the schoolmasters had secured of recent years. Various laws had been passed improving their circumstances, and the lowest annual salaries were now fixed at twelve hundred francs without any deductions.[2] It had not been necessary to wait long for the result of this change. If Férou, ill-paid, ragged, and wretched, had formerly incurred the contempt of the peasantry on being compared by them with Abbé Cognasse, who waxed fat on surplice-fees and presents, and was therefore honoured and feared, Mignot, on the contrary, being able to live in a dignified way, had risen to his proper position—that is the first. Indeed, in that century-old struggle between the Church and the school, the whole region was now favouring the latter, whose victory appeared to be certain.

'My peasants are still very ignorant,' Mignot continued. 'You cannot imagine what a sluggish spot Le Moreux is, all numbness and routine. The peasants have lands of their own, they have never lacked bread, and they would submit to be fleeced as in former times rather than turn to anything novel and strange.... But there is some change all the same; I can see it by the way they take off their hats to me, and the more and more preponderating position which the school assumes in their estimation. And, by the way, this morning, when Abbé Cognasse came over to say Mass, there were just three women and a boy in the church. When the Abbé went off he banged the vestry door behind him, threatening that he wouldn't come back any more, as it was useless for him to walk all that distance for nobody.'

Marc began to laugh. 'Yes,' said he, 'I've heard that the Abbé is getting surly again at Le Moreux. Here he still restrains himself, and strives to win the battle by diplomatic artfulness, particularly with the women, for his superiors have taught him, no doubt, that one is never beaten so long as one has the women on one's side. I have been told that he frequently goes to Valmarie to see Father Crabot, and it is surely there that he acquires that unctuous, caressing way with the ladies which surprises one so much in a rough, brutal man of his stamp. When he again loses his temper, as he will some day, it will be all over.... Besides, things are quite satisfactory at Jonville. We gain a little ground every year; the parish is regaining prosperity and health. In consequence of the recent scandals the peasants no longer allow their daughters to work at the factory of the Good Shepherd. And it seems that the parish council—Martineau at the head of it—greatly regrets its imbecility in having allowed Abbé Cognasse and Jauffre to dedicate Jonville to the Sacred Heart. I am on the lookout for an opportunity to efface that remembrance, and I shall end by finding one.'

There came a short pause. Then Salvan, who had listened complacently, said, by way of conclusion, in his quiet, cheerful manner: 'All that is very encouraging. Maillebois, Jonville, and Le Moreux are advancing towards those better times for which we have battled. The others thought they would conquer us, exterminate us for ever, and indeed, for months, it seemed as if we were dead; but now comes the slow awakening, the seed has germinated in the ground; it was sufficient for us to resume our work in silence, and the good grain grows and flowers once more. And now nothing will hinder the future harvest. The fact is that we have been on the side of truth, which nothing can destroy, nothing arrest in its splendour.... No doubt, things are not quite satisfactory at Beaumont. The sons of Doutrequin, that old Republican of the heroic times who lapsed into clericalism, have obtained advancement, and Mademoiselle Rouzaire still gorges her girls with Bible history and Catechism. But even public feeling at Beaumont is beginning to change. Moreover, Mauraisin has not succeeded at the Training College. Some of the students have told me jocularly that my ghost appears to him there, and paralyses him with fear. The fact is that the impulse had been given, and he has found it impossible to stop the emancipation of the schoolmaster. I even hope that we shall soon be rid of him.... And a very hopeful symptom is that, behind Maillebois, Jonville, and Le Moreux, there are other small towns and villages, nearly all in fact, where the schoolmaster is defeating the priest, and setting the secular school erect on the ruins of the Congregational school. Reason is triumphing, and justice and truth are slowly increasing their sphere of conquest at Dherbecourt, Juilleroy, Rouville, and Les Bordes. It is a general awakening, an irresistible movement, carrying France towards her liberating mission.'

'But it is your work!' cried Marc with sudden enthusiasm. 'There is a pupil of yours in each of the localities you have named. They are the children of your heart and mind; it was you who sent them as missionaries into lonely country districts to diffuse the new gospel of truth and justice. If people are at last awaking, returning to manly dignity, becoming an equitable, free, and healthy democracy, it is because a generation of your pupils is now installed in our classrooms, instructing the young, and making true citizens of them. You are the good workman; you realised that no progress is possible save by reason and knowledge.'

Then Joulic and Mignot seconded Marc with similar enthusiasm: 'Yes, yes, you have been the father, we are your children! The country will only be worth what the schoolmasters may make it, and the schoolmasters themselves can only be worth what the training colleges have made them.'

Salvan, who seemed very moved, protested with modest bonhomie. 'Men like me, my friends? Why, there are some everywhere; there will be plenty when they are allowed to act. Le Barazer helped me a great deal by keeping me at my post, and not tying me down too much. What I did? Why, Mauraisin himself is almost obliged to do the same, for the evolution carries him on; the work, once begun, never stops. And you'll see, Mauraisin's successor will turn out even better masters than those who passed through my hands.... One thing which delights me, and which you have not mentioned, is that nowadays students are recruited much more easily for the training colleges. What made me most anxious in former times was the distrust, the contempt into which the teaching profession had fallen, ill-paid, unhonoured as it was. But since the salaries have been increased, now that real honour attaches to the humblest members of the profession, candidates arrive from all quarters, so that one is able to pick and choose, and form an excellent staff.... And if I have rendered any services you may be sure that, on seeing my work continued and fulfilled, I feel rewarded beyond all my hopes. At present I desire to remain a mere spectator of things; I applaud your efforts, and live happily in my little garden, delighted to be forgotten by everybody—excepting you, my lads.'

He ceased speaking, and a thrill of feeling passed through the others as they sat there at the large stone table in the arbour, balmy with the perfume of the roses, while from the verdant garden, from the whole stretch of country around them, infinite serenity was wafted.

Every year since her parents had removed to Jonville, Louise had spent the vacation with them. Her brother Clément would now soon be ten years old, and Marc still kept him in his school, giving him that elementary education which he would have liked to have seen generalised, applied to all the children of the nation to whatever class they might belong, in order that one might have based upon it, in accordance with the tastes and talents of the pupils, a system of general and gratuitous secondary education. If his own tastes should be shared by his son, he intended to prepare him for the Training College of Beaumont, for the great national work of salvation would lie in the humble village schools for many years longer. Louise also had disinterestedly set her ambition upon becoming an elementary teacher. And, indeed, on quitting the school of Fontenay with the necessary certificates, she was, to her great delight, appointed assistant to her former and well-loved mistress, Mademoiselle Mazeline, at Maillebois.

At that time Louise was nineteen years of age. Salvan had intervened with Le Barazer to secure her appointment, which passed virtually unnoticed. The times were changing more and more; the period of delirium—when the mere names of Simon and Froment had sufficed to raise a tempest—was quite over. And this emboldened Le Barazer, six months later, to appoint Simon's son Joseph as assistant to Joulic. Joseph, it should be said, had made his début at Dherbecourt after quitting the Training College two years previously with an excellent record. As advancement his transfer to Maillebois was of little account, but it was a somewhat bold action to place him in a school where his presence implied at least some preliminary rehabilitation of his father. For a moment there was a slight outcry, the Congregations tried to stir up the parents of the town; but the new assistant soon won their favour, for he behaved very discreetly, gently, yet firmly, in all his intercourse with the children.

One incident which at that time plainly indicated the change in public opinion was the little revolution that took place at the Milhommes' stationery shop. One day Madame Edouard, so long the absolute mistress of the establishment, disappeared into the back shop, where Madame Alexandre had remained so many years. And Madame Alexandre took her place at the counter and served the customers. Nobody mistook the meaning of that revolution,—the customers were changing, the secular school was triumphing over its Congregational rival, and thus, in the interests of the business, Madame Edouard, like a good trader, made way for her sister-in-law. It must be said, too, that Madame Edouard now had some great worries with her son Victor, who, entering the army after his departure from the Brothers' school, and reaching the rank of sergeant, had lately been compromised in a very unpleasant affair; whereas Madame Alexandre had every right to be proud of her son Sébastien, who had been one of Simon's and Marc's best pupils, then Joseph's companion at the Training College, and was now, for three years past, assistant-master at Rouville. Indeed, all those young folk, Sébastien, Joseph, and Louise, after growing up together, had at last reached active life, bringing with them broad minds, ripened early in the midst of tears, to continue the bitterly-contested work of their elders.

A year went by. Louise was now twenty, and, repairing to Jonville every Sunday, spent the day with her parents. She then often met Joseph and Sébastien, who had remained great friends and were very fond of visiting their former masters, Marc and Salvan. It also frequently happened that Joseph was accompanied by his sister Sarah, who was well pleased to spend a day in the open air among her best friends. For three years past she had been residing with her grandparents, the Lehmanns, displaying so much activity and skill that a little prosperity had returned to the dismal shop in the Rue du Trou. Customers had returned to it, and Sarah, retaining the connection formed with some of the large Paris clothiers, had recruited several work girls and banded them together in a kind of co-operative group. Madame Lehmann had lately died, however, and her husband, now seventy-five years old, lingered on with only one regret, which was that his age deprived him of all hope of ever witnessing Simon's rehabilitation. Every year he spent a week or two with Simon, David, and Rachel among the Pyrenees, and returned home well pleased to have found them working quietly in their lonely retreat, but also very sad when he realized that they would know no real happiness as long as the monstrous proceedings of Rozan should remain unrevised. Sarah had tried to induce the old man to stay with the others in the south, but he obstinately returned to the Rue du Trou, under the pretence of making himself useful there by superintending the workroom. And, as it happened, this circumstance enabled the girl to take an occasional holiday when, on accompanying her brother Joseph to Jonville, she chanced to feel somewhat tired.

The reunion of the young people at Jonville, the days they spent there so gaily, brought about the long-foreseen marriages. At first it was a question of Sébastien marrying Sarah, which surprised nobody; though it was regarded as an indication of the changing times that young Milhomme should marry Simon's daughter not only with the consent of his mother but also with the approval of Madame Edouard, his aunt. A little later, when the wedding was postponed for a few months in order that it might coincide with that of Louise and Joseph, a little excitement arose at Maillebois, for this time the proposed union was one between the condemned man's son and the daughter of his most valiant defender. But the idyl of their love, which was the outcome of the old bitter battle and all the heroism that had been displayed in it, touched many a heart, and even tended to pacify the onlookers, though all were curious to learn how Louise's marriage would be regarded by her great-grandmother, Madame Duparque, who, for three years past, had not quitted her little house on the Place des Capucins. And, indeed, the marriage was postponed for another month in order that Madame Duparque might come to some decision respecting it.

Though Louise was now twenty years old, she had not made her first Communion, and it had been settled that only the civil ceremony should be performed at her wedding with Joseph, as at that of Sébastien with Sarah. Anxious as she was for an interview with Madame Duparque, the girl wrote her an entreating letter; but all in vain, for she did not even receive an answer. The old lady's door had not been opened to Geneviève and her children since they had returned to Marc. For nearly five years now the great-grandmother had clung to her fierce oath that she would cast off all her relatives and live cloistered, alone with God. Geneviève, touched by the thought of that woman of fourscore years leading in solitude a life of gloom and silence, had made a few attempts at a rapprochement, but they had been savagely, obstinately repulsed. Nevertheless, Louise desired to make a last attempt, distressed as she was at not having the approval of all her kinsfolk in her happiness.

One evening, then, at sunset, she repaired to the little house, which was already steeped in the dimness of twilight. But, to her astonishment, on pulling the bell-knob, she heard no sound; it seemed as if somebody had cut the wire. Gathering courage, she then ventured to knock, at first lightly, and then loudly; and at last she heard a slight noise, the board of a little judas cut in the door, as in the door of a convent, having been pulled aside.

'Is it you, Pélagie?' Louise inquired. 'Is it you? Answer me!'

It was only with difficulty, after placing her ear close to the judas, that she at last heard the servant's deadened and almost unrecognisable voice: 'Go away, go away,' Pélagie answered; 'madame says that you are to go away at once!'

'Well, no, Pélagie, I won't go away,' Louise promptly retorted. 'Go back and tell grandmother that I shall not leave the door until she has come and answered me herself.'

The girl remained waiting for ten minutes, or perhaps a quarter of an hour. From time to time she knocked again—not angrily, but with respectful, solicitous persistence. And all at once the judas was re-opened, but this time in a tempestuous fashion, and a rough, subterranean voice called to her: 'What have you come here for? You wrote to me about a fresh abomination, a marriage, the very shame of which might well suffice to kill me! What is the use of speaking of it? Are you even fit to marry? Have you made your first Communion? No, eh? You amused yourself with me, you were to have made it when you were twenty years old; but to-day, no doubt, you have decided that you will never do so.... So it is useless for you to come here. Be off, I tell you, I am dead to you!'

Louise, quite upset, shuddering as if she had felt an icy breath from the grave sweeping across her cheek, had barely time to cry: 'Grandmother, I will wait a little longer; I will come back in a month's time!' Then the judas was shut violently, and the little dim and silent house became quite deathly in the darkness, which had now gathered all around.

During the previous five years Madame Duparque had gradually relinquished all intercourse with the world. At first, on the morrow of Madame Berthereau's death and Geneviève's departure, she had contented herself with ceasing to receive her relations, restricting herself to the society of a few pious friends of her own sex, and of the priests and other clerics whom she had made her familiars. Among these was Abbé Coquard, who had succeeded Abbé Quandieu at St. Martin's. He was a rigid man, full of a sombre faith, and it delighted Madame Duparque to hear the threats which he addressed to the wicked—threats of hell with its consuming flames, its red forks, and its boiling oil. Thus, morning and evening she was seen repairing now to the parish church, now to the Capuchin Chapel, in order to attend the various offices and ceremonies. But as time went by she went out less and less, and at last a day came when she ceased to cross her threshold. It was as if she were gradually sinking into gloom and silence, burying herself by slow degrees. One day even the shutters of her house, which had still been opened every morning and closed at night, remained closed, the façade becoming blind, as it were, the house dead, neither a glimmer nor a breath of life emanating from it any more. One might have thought that it was abandoned, uninhabited, if sundry frocks and gowns had not been seen slipping through the doorway at nightfall. They were the gowns of Abbé Coquard, Father Théodose, and at times—so people said—Father Crabot, who thus paid the old lady friendly visits. Her little fortune, now a matter of two or three thousand francs a year, which she had arranged to leave, one half to the College of Valmarie, the other to the Capuchin Chapel, hardly sufficed to explain the fidelity of her clerical friends. Their visits must also have been due in part to her exacting and despotic nature, which overcame the most powerful, and in part to their apprehensions of some deed of mystical madness, of which they knew her to be capable. It was said, too, that she had obtained an authorisation to hear Mass and take the Communion at home; and this, no doubt, explained why she no longer set foot out of doors. By the force of her piety she had compelled even the Deity to come to her house, in order that she might be spared the affliction of going to His; for the idea of seeing the streets and the people in them, of again setting her eyes on that abominable age in which Holy Church was agonising, had become such torture to her that she had caused her shutters to be nailed in position, and every chink in the woodwork to be stopped up, in order that no sound or gleam of the world might again reach her.

This was the supreme crisis. She spent her days in prayer. She was not content with having broken off all intercourse with her impious and accursed relations, she asked herself if her own salvation were not in danger through having incurred, perhaps, some responsibility in the damnation of her kinsfolk. She was haunted by a recollection of Madame Berthereau's sacrilegious revolt on her death-bed, and believed that unhappy woman to be not merely in purgatory, but in hell. Then, too, came the thought of Geneviève, whom the demon had assailed so terribly, and who had gone back to her errors like a dog to his vomit. And, finally, there was Louise, the pagan, the godless creature, who had rejected even the gift of the Divine Body of Jesus. Those two—Geneviève and Louise—belonged, both in body and in spirit, to the devil; and if Madame Duparque caused Masses to be said and candles burnt for the repose of her dead daughter's soul, she had abandoned those who still lived to the just wrath of her God of anger and punishment. But, at the same time, her anguish remained extreme; she wondered why Heaven had thus stricken her in her posterity, and strove to interpret this visitation as a terrible trial, whence her own holiness would emerge dazzling and triumphant. The confined, claustral life she led, entirely devoted to religious practices, seemed to her to be necessary reparation, for which she would be rewarded by an eternity of delight. In this wise she expiated the monstrous sinfulness of her descendants, those women guilty of free thought, who, in three generations, had escaped from the Church and ended madly by putting their belief in a religion of human solidarity. Thus, wishing to redeem the apostasy of her grandchildren, Madame Duparque set all her pride in humbling herself, in living for God alone, in seeking to slay what little womanliness still lingered in her; for it was from that womanliness that her condemned descendants had sprung.

So stern and sombre was her ardour that she wearied the few clerics who alone now linked her to the world. She was conscious of the decline of the Church; she could detect the collapse of Catholicism under the efforts of those diabolical times from which she had withdrawn by way of protest against Satan's victory—as if, indeed, she denied that victory by not beholding it. And in her opinion her renunciation, her fancied martyrdom, might perhaps impart new vigour to the soldiers of religion. She would have liked to have seen them as ardent, as resolute, as fierce as she herself was, encasing themselves in the rigidity of dogmas, carrying fire and sword into the midst of the unbelievers, and aiding the great Exterminator to conquer His people by dint of thunderbolts. She never felt satisfied; she found Father Crabot, Father Théodose, even the sombre Abbé Coquard, altogether too lukewarm. She accused them of compounding with the hateful worldly spirit of the times, and of completing the ruin of the Church with their own hands by adapting religion to the tastes of the day. She dictated their duty to them, preached a campaign of frankness and violence, unhinged as she was, thrown into extreme exaltation by her lonely life, and ever athirst with some supreme longings in spite of all the penitence heaped upon her.

Father Crabot was the first to grow tired of that strange penitent, who, at eighty-three years of age, treated herself so harshly, and bore herself like a despairing prophetess, whose uncompromising Catholicism was really a condemnation of the long efforts made by his own Order to humanise the terrible Deity of the stakes and the massacres. Thus the Jesuit allowed long intervals to elapse between his discreet visits, and, finally, he altogether ceased to call, being of opinion, no doubt, that the legacy he had hoped to receive for Valmarie would not be sufficient compensation for the dangers he might incur with a woman whose soul was ever in a tempest. A few months later Abbé Coquard likewise withdrew, not because he had any cowardly fears of being compromised, but because each of his discussions with the old lady degenerated into a horrible battle. Eager and despotic like herself, the Abbé was bent on retaining all his power and authority as a priest; and one day, when Madame Duparque began to thunder in the name of God, reproaching him with inaction, in such wise that he appeared to be a mere transgressing sinner, he became quite angry, for he declined to accept such a reversal of their respective positions. Then, for nearly another year, only Father Théodose's frock was to be seen slipping into the little, silent, closed house of the Place des Capucins.

Father Théodose, no doubt, regarded Madame Duparque's little fortune as worth taking, for the times were hard with poor St. Antony of Padua. In vain did the Capuchin scatter prospectuses broadcast; money did not now flow into the collection boxes as it had done in the happy days when, by a stroke of genius, he had induced Monseigneur Bergerot to bless one of the saint's bones. In those days the miracle lottery had put people into quite a fever; the sick, the idle, and the poor had all dreamt of winning happiness from heaven in return for an investment of twenty sous; whereas, now that a little sense and truth were spreading through the district, thanks to the secular schools, the base commerce of the Capuchin Chapel stood revealed in all its shameful imbecility.

For a time, it is true, another stroke of genius on the part of Father Théodose, the creation of some wonderful mortgage bonds on heaven, had again stirred the souls of the humble and the suffering, who, as life below proved so cruel to them, hungered for felicity beyond the grave. Then, during several months, the money of dupes had flowed in; all the savings hidden in old stockings had been brought forth by believers anxious to secure the chance of a little peace in the Unknown. But finally, being confronted by growing incredulity, Father Théodose had found it difficult to place his remaining bonds, and had thereupon planned a third stroke of genius—this time the invention of some private, reserved gardens in the ever-flowery Fields of the Blessed. According to him there were to be some delightful little nooks in Eternity, garnished with roses and lilies of the very best varieties, under foliage set out to please the eyes, and near springs which would be particularly pure and fresh. And thanks once more to the decisive intervention of St. Antony of Padua, one might book those little nooks in advance, thereby ensuring to oneself the eternal enjoyment of them. Naturally, the booking was very expensive if one desired something spacious and comfortable, though there were indeed gardens at all prices, which varied in accordance with site, charm, and proximity to the abodes of the angels. Two old ladies, it appeared, had already bequeathed their fortunes to the Capuchins in order that the miracle-working saint might reserve for them two of the best gardens that were still vacant, one being in the style of an old French park, whereas the other was more of the 'romantic' type, with a maze and a waterfall. And it was also said that Madame Duparque had in a like way made her choice, this being a golden grotto on the slope of an azure mount, among clumps of myrtle bushes and oleanders.

Father Théodose, then, alone continued to visit the old lady, putting up with her fits of temper, and returning to the house even after she had driven him from it in exasperation at finding him so lukewarm and resigned to the triumph of the Church's enemies. And the Capuchin had actually ended by securing a latch-key in order that he might enter the house whenever he pleased, instead of having to ring the bell again and again, for poor Pélagie had become extremely deaf. It was also at this same moment that the two women, the two recluses as they may be called, cut the bell wire; for of what use was it to retain that connecting link with the outer world? The only living being whom they now received had a key to admit himself, and by cutting the wire they were spared the nervous starts that came upon them whenever they heard that jangling bell which they did not wish to answer. Pélagie, indeed, had become as fierce and as maniacal as her mistress. She had begun by curtailing her chats in the tradespeople's shops, scarcely speaking to anybody when she went out, but gliding swiftly past the houses like a shadow. Next, she had decided to go shopping twice a week only, in this wise condemning her mistress and herself to live on stale bread and a few vegetables—such fare as might have suited a pair of hermits in the desert. And now the few tradespeople came themselves to the house at nightfall on Saturday evenings, and left their goods at the doorway in a basket, which they found waiting for them on the ensuing Saturday, with the money due to them wrapped in a scrap of newspaper.

At the same time Pélagie had one great worry—her nephew Polydor, who had entered a Beaumont monastery in a menial capacity, and who came and made frightful scenes with her whenever he wished to extort money. He alarmed the old woman to such a degree that she did not even dare to leave him at the door, for she felt sure that on some pretext or other he would collect a crowd and force his way in. And when she had admitted him, she trembled still more; for she knew that he was a man to deal her a nasty blow should she refuse to give him a ten-franc piece. For many long years she had caressed the dream of employing all her savings—some ten thousand francs, scraped together copper by copper—to procure some happiness in the other world; and if the little treasure was still carefully hidden away inside her palliasse, this was because she hesitated as to the best, the most efficacious mode of investment. Should she found a perpetual Mass for the repose of her soul, or should she book one of Father Théodose's reserved gardens, a modest little nook in heaven, by the side of her mistress's lordly grotto? And she was still hesitating in this respect when misfortune fell upon her.

One night, when she had been obliged to admit Polydor, the rascal did not murder her, but rushed in turn upon every article of furniture in her garret, finally ripping up the palliasse and fleeing with the ten thousand francs, while Pélagie, whom he had thrust aside and who had fallen beside the bed, groaned with despair at seeing that bandit—who was of her own flesh and blood—make off with the blessed money which St. Antony of Padua was to have given her back in eternal delight. Would she be damned, then, as she no longer possessed the wherewithal to speculate in the miraculous lottery? Such was the shock the old woman experienced that two days later she died; and it was Father Théodose who found her, already stark and cold, in her bare and dirty garret, to which he climbed in his surprise and anxiety at discovering her nowhere else. He was obliged to attend to everything—declare the death, make arrangements for the funeral, and busy himself as to how the last remaining inmate of the little house would live now that she had nobody left to serve her.

For several weeks past Madame Duparque, whose legs had become too feeble to support her weight, had taken to her bed, in which, however, she remained in a sitting posture, erect and tall, though withered. Little breath was left her, yet she still seemed to reign despotically over that silent, dark, and empty house, whence she had driven all her kith and kin, and where the only creature, the domestic animal, whom she had been willing to tolerate, had just died. When Father Théodose, on returning from Pélagie's funeral, tried to ascertain Madame Duparque's intentions with respect to her future mode of life, he could not even extract an answer from her. Greatly embarrassed, he insisted, and offered to send her a sister, pointing out that it was impossible for her to attend to any household duties as she could not even leave her bed. But she at once flew into a temper, growled like some mighty animal stricken unto death and unwilling to be disturbed in its final hour. Vague charges gurgled in her throat; they were all cowards, all traitors to their God, all egotists who abandoned the Church in order that the vaults might not fall upon their heads! Thereupon Father Théodose, in his turn growing exasperated, left her, deciding that he would return the following morning to see if she had become more reasonable.

A night and a day elapsed, for the Superior of the Capuchins was only able to return at dusk, four and twenty hours later. During that night and day, then, Madame Duparque remained alone, absolutely alone, behind the nailed shutters, the carefully closed doors and windows of her dark room, where neither a sound nor a ray of light from the outer world penetrated. She herself had willed it thus, severing all carnal ties with her relations, withdrawing from the world in protest against the hateful society of the times in which sin had proved triumphant. And, after giving herself wholly to the Church, she had gradually become disgusted with its ministers—those priests who lacked all militant faith, those monks who had no heroic bravery, but who were all worldly men bent on personal enjoyment. Thus she had dismissed them also, and now she remained alone with her Deity—an implacable and stubborn Deity, who ruled with absolute, exterminating, and vengeful power. All light and all life had departed from that cold, dismal, fast-closed, and tomb-like house, where there only remained a feeble octogenarian woman, sitting up in bed, gazing into the black darkness, and waiting for her jealous God to carry her away, in order that lukewarm souls might have an example of a really pious end. And when Father Théodose presented himself at the house at dusk he found, to his intense surprise, that the door would not open, that it resisted all his efforts. The key turned readily enough in the lock, and it seemed, therefore, that the door must have been bolted. But who could have bolted it? There was nobody inside except the ailing woman, who could not leave her bed. The Capuchin then made fresh attempts, but in vain; and at last, feeling frightened, unwilling to incur any further responsibility, he hastened to the Town Hall to explain the matter to the authorities. A messenger was at once sent to Mademoiselle Mazeline's for Louise; and, as it happened, Marc and Geneviève were there, having come over from Jonville as the news of Pélagie's death had made them feel anxious.

A tragical business followed. The whole family repaired to the Place des Capucins. As the door would not yield, a locksmith was sent for, but he declared he could do nothing, for assuredly the bolts were fastened. It therefore became necessary to send for a mason, who, with his pick, unsealed the door hinges set in the stone work. At each blow the silent house re-echoed like a closed vault. And when the door had been torn down it was with a quiver that Marc and Geneviève, followed by Louise, re-entered that family abode whence they had been banished. An icy dampness reigned there; it was only with difficulty that they managed to light a candle. And upstairs, in the bed, they found Madame Duparque, still in a sitting posture, propped up by pillows, but quite dead, with a large crucifix between her long, thin, shrivelled hands.

In a superhuman effort she had assuredly found the supreme energy to leave her bed, crawl down the stairs, and shoot the bolts in order that no living soul, not even a priest, might disturb her in her last communion with God. And then she had crawled upstairs again, and had died there. When Father Théodose saw her he fell on his knees, shuddering, and stammering a prayer. He was distraught, for he detected in that death not merely the end of a terrible old woman, raised to a fierce grandeur, as it were, by her uncompromising faith, but also the end of all superstitious and mendacious religion. And Marc, in whose arms Geneviève and Louise had sought a refuge, seemed to feel a great gust sweeping by, as though eternal life were springing from that death.

When the family, after leaving the funeral arrangements to Abbé Coquard, made a search in the old lady's drawers, they found nothing—neither will nor securities of any kind. It could not be said that Father Théodose had purloined any property, for he had not returned to the house. Was it to be assumed, then, that the old lady had previously handed her securities to him or to another? Or had she destroyed them, unwilling that her relatives should benefit by her fortune? The mystery was never solved, not a copper was ever found. Only the little house remained, and it was sold, the proceeds being given to the poor at the request of Geneviève, who said that in taking that course she was certainly doing what her grandmother would have desired.

In the evening, after returning from the funeral, Geneviève cast her arms round her husband's neck, and made him a frank confession: 'If you only knew!' said she. 'I was beset again when I heard that grandmother was all alone, so bravely and loftily adhering to her stubborn faith.... Yes, I asked myself if my place were not beside her, and if I had done right in leaving her.... But what can you expect, dear? I shall never be quite cured. In the depths of my being I shall always retain a little of my old belief.... Yet, what a frightful death that was! And how right you are in asking that people should live as they ought to; that women should be liberated, set in their right position as the equals and companions of men, and that life should partake of all that is good and true and just!'

A month later the two long-deferred weddings at last took place. Louise was married to Joseph, Sarah to Sébastien; and in those espousals Marc perceived a beginning of victory. The good crop, sown with so much difficulty in the midst of persecution and outrage, was germinating and growing already.

II

Years went by, and Marc continued his work, sturdy yet at sixty years of age, and as passionately attached to truth and justice as he had been at the outset of the great struggle. And one day, when he happened to go to Beaumont to call on Delbos, the latter suddenly said to him: 'By the way, my dear fellow, I have had a strange encounter.... The other evening, at dusk, while I was returning home I noticed a man of about your age, looking wretched and ravaged, walking ahead of me along the Avenue des Jaffres.... And, all at once, in the blaze of light coming from the confectioner's shop at the corner of the Rue Gambetta, it seemed to me that I recognised our Gorgias.'

'Eh, our Gorgias?'

'Why, yes, Brother Gorgias, not wearing an Ignorantine's cassock, but a greasy frock-coat, and slipping alongside the walls, with the suspicious gait of an emaciated old wolf.... He must have come back secretly, and must be living in some dark nook or other, still trying to frighten and exploit his old accomplices.'

Marc, whom the announcement had greatly surprised, remained full of doubt. 'You must have been mistaken,' said he; 'Gorgias attaches too much value to his skin to return to Beaumont and run the risk of being sent to the galleys—that is whenever the discovery of a new fact may enable us to apply for the quashing of the Rozan judgment.'

'It is you who are mistaken, my friend,' Delbos answered. 'Our man has nothing more to fear. According to our law of limitation there can be no public action in a criminal matter after the expiration of ten years, and so, even nowadays, little Zéphirin's murderer can walk the streets in the daylight without any fear of arrest.... However, I may have been deceived by a mere resemblance; and in any case the return of Gorgias can have no interest for us, for you agree with me, do you not, that we can derive nothing useful from him?'

'No, nothing whatever. He lied so much at the time of the affair that if he should say anything now he would certainly lie again.... The long-sought truth can never come to us from him.'

In this wise, at long intervals, Marc called upon Delbos in order to chat with him about that everlasting Simon case, which, after the lapse of so many years, still remained like a cancer gnawing at the heart of the country. People might deny its existence, believe it to be dead, cease to speak of it, but nevertheless it still stealthily prosecuted its ravages, like some secret venom poisoning life. Twice a year David quitted his lonely retreat in the Pyrenees and came to Beaumont in order to confer with Delbos and Marc; for, in spite of the pardon granted to his brother, he had not for an hour relinquished his hope of eventual acquittal and rehabilitation. They, David, Delbos, and Marc, were convinced that the monstrous verdict would be some day set aside, and that the affair would end by the victory of the innocent. But, even as in previous years, after the judgment of the Court of Cassation, they found themselves struggling amidst an intricate network of falsehoods. After hesitating for a time as to which scent they might best follow, they had decided to investigate a second crime committed by ex-President Gragnon, a crime which they had already suspected at Rozan, and of which they were now convinced.

Gragnon, at the time of the Rozan proceedings, had repeated his illegal communication trick. On this second occasion, however, he had availed himself, not of one of Simon's letters with a forged postscript and paraph, but of a confession alleged to have been written by the workman who was said to have made a false stamp for the Maillebois schoolmaster—this confession having been handed, it was alleged, to one of the nuns of the Beaumont hospital by the workman in question when he was near his death. Assuredly Gragnon had walked about Beaumont with that confession in his pocket, speaking of it as a thunderbolt which he would hurl at the Simonists if they drove him to extremities, showing it also, or causing it to be shown, to certain members of the jury, those who were pious and weak-minded, but at the same time affecting a keen desire to save the holy nun to whom the confession had been given from being publicly mixed up in such a scandal. And this explained everything. The abominable behaviour of the jury in reconvicting the innocent prisoner became excusable. Those men of average intelligence and honesty had been deceived like the jurors of Beaumont, and had yielded to motives which had remained secret. Marc and David well remembered that they had heard some juryman ask certain questions which had then seemed to them ridiculous. But they now understood that this juryman had referred to the terrible document which Gragnon had stealthily hawked about, and of which it was not prudent to speak plainly. Delbos therefore busied himself with that new fact, that second criminal communication, which, if proved, would entail the immediate annulment of the proceedings at Rozan. But, unfortunately, nothing could be more difficult to prove, and for years Delbos and his friends had striven vainly. Only one hope remained to them: a juror, a retired medical man, named Beauchamp, had acquired a certainty that the workman's alleged confession was simply a gross forgery. In a measure things repeated themselves, as is not infrequently the case in real life, Beauchamp being assailed by remorse like his predecessor, architect Jacquin. He himself, it is true, was not a clerical, but he had an extremely devout wife and did not wish to plunge her into desolation by relieving his conscience. Thus it was necessary to wait.[1]