That was also the opinion of the onlookers. Darras, the mayor, professed great esteem for the zealous and honest schoolmaster Simon. Mignot and Mademoiselle Rouzaire, although by no means fond of the Jews, shared the opinion that this one at all events strove by irreproachable conduct to obtain forgiveness for his birth. Father Philibin and Brother Fulgence on their side, in presence of the general sentiment of the others, affected neutrality, remaining apart and preserving silence, while with keen eyes they scrutinised people and things. The magistrates, thrown back on the theory of some stranger who must have entered and left the boy's room by the window, had to rest content with this first verification of the facts. Only one point as yet was clearly established, the hour of the crime, which must have been perpetrated between half-past ten and eleven o'clock. As for the crime itself it remained engulfed in darkness.

Leaving the authorities, who had certain details to settle, Marc, after embracing Simon in brotherly fashion, was desirous of going home to lunch. The scene between the husband and the wife had taught him nothing, for he well knew how tenderly they loved each other. But tears had come to his eyes, he had been deeply stirred by the sight of such dolorous affection.

Noon was about to strike at St. Martin's Church when he again found himself on the square, which was now blocked by such an increasing crowd that it was difficult for him to open a way. As the news of the crime spread, folk arrived from all directions, pressing towards the closed window, which the two gendarmes could hardly defend; and the horribly exaggerated accounts of the affair which circulated through the crowd raised its indignation to fever heat and made it growl wrathfully. Marc had just freed himself from the throng when a priest approached him and inquired:

'Have you come from the school, Monsieur Froment? Are all these horrible things which people are repeating true?'

The questioner was Abbé Quandieu, priest of St. Martin's, the parish church. Forty-three years old, tall and robust, the Abbé had a gentle, kindly face, with light blue eyes, round cheeks, and a soft chin. Marc had met him at Madame Duparque's, for he was the old lady's confessor and friend. And though the schoolmaster was not fond of priests he felt some esteem for this one, knowing that he was tolerant and reasonable—possessed, too, of more feeling than real mental ability.

In a few words Marc recounted the facts of the case, which were already sufficiently horrid.

'Ah, poor Monsieur Simon!' said the priest compassionately, 'how deeply grieved he must be, for he was very much attached to his nephew and behaved very well in regard to him! I have had proof of it.'

This spontaneous testimony pleased Marc, who remained conversing with the priest for another minute. But a Capuchin Father drew near, Father Théodose, the Superior of the little community attached to the neighbouring chapel. Superbly built, having also a handsome face with large ardent eyes, and a splendid dark beard, which rendered him quite majestic, Father Théodose was a confessor of repute, and a preacher of a mystical turn, whose glowing accents attracted all the devout women of Maillebois. Though he was covertly waging war against Abbé Quandieu, he affected in his presence the deferential manner of a younger and more humbly situated servant of Providence. He immediately gave expression to his emotion and his grief, for he had noticed the poor child, he said, at the chapel on the previous evening. So pious a child he was, a little angel with a cherub's fair curly locks. But Marc did not tarry to listen, for the Capuchin inspired him with unconquerable distrust and antipathy. So he turned his steps homeward; but all at once he was again stopped, this time by a friendly tap on the shoulder.

'What! Férou, are you at Maillebois?' he exclaimed. The man whom he addressed by the name of Férou was schoolmaster at Le Moreau, a lonely hamlet, some two and a half miles from Jonville. The little place had not even a priest of its own, but was looked after, from the religious standpoint, by the Jonville priest, Abbé Cognasse. Férou there led a life of black misery with his wife and his children, three girls. He was a big loosely-built fellow of thirty, whose clothes always seemed too short for him. His dark hair bristled on his long and bony head, he had a bumpy nose, a wide mouth, and a projecting chin, and knew not what to do with his big feet and his big hands.

'You know very well that my wife's aunt keeps a grocery shop here,' he answered. 'We came over to see her. But, I say, what an abominable business this is about the poor little hunchback! Won't it just enable those dirty priests to belabour us and say that we pervert and poison the young!'

Marc regarded Férou as a very intelligent, well-read man, whom a confined life full of privations had embittered to the point of violence and inspired with ideas of revenge. The virulence of the remark he had just made disturbed Marc, who rejoined: 'Belabour us? I don't see what we have to do with it.'

'Then you are a simpleton,' Férou retorted. 'You don't understand that species, but you will soon see the good Fathers and the dear Brothers, all the black gowns, hard at work. Haven't they already allowed it to be surmised that Simon himself strangled his nephew?'

At this Marc lost his temper. Férou's hatred of the Church led him too far.

'You are out of your senses,' said Marc. 'Nobody suspects, nobody for one moment would dare to suspect, Simon. All acknowledge his integrity and kindliness. Even Abbé Quandieu told me a moment ago that he had had proof of his fatherly treatment of the poor victim.'

Férou's lean and lanky figure was shaken by a convulsive laugh, his hair seemed to bristle yet higher on his equine head. 'Ah! it's too amusing,' he replied. 'So you fancy they will restrain themselves when a dirty Jew is in question? Does a dirty Jew deserve to have the truth told about him? Your friend Quandieu and all the others will say whatever may be desirable if it is necessary that the dirty Jew should be found guilty, thanks to the complicity of us others, the scamps who know neither God nor country, and who corrupt the children of France. For that is what the priests say of us—you know it well!'

Then as Marc, chilled to the heart, continued to protest, Férou resumed yet more vehemently: 'But you know what goes on at Le Moreux! I starve there, I'm treated with contempt, pressed down even lower than the wretched road-menders. When Abbé Cognasse comes over to say Mass he'd spit on me if he met me. And if I don't eat bread every day it's simply because I refused to sing in the choir and ring the church bell! You know Abbé Cognasse yourself. You have managed to check him at Jonville, since you contrived to get the mayor over to your side; but, none the less, you are always at war; he would devour you if you only gave him the chance. A village schoolmaster indeed! Why, he's everybody's beast of burden, everybody's lackey, a man without caste, an arrant failure; and the peasants distrust him, and the priests would like to burn him alive in order to ensure the undivided reign of the Church Catechism throughout the country!'

He went on bitterly, enumerating the sufferings of those damned ones, as he called the elementary teachers. He himself, a shepherd's son, successful at the village school which he had attended, and afterwards a student at the Training College, which he had quitted with excellent certificates, had always suffered from lack of means; for in a spirit of rectitude after some trouble with a shop girl at Maillebois, when he was assistant-master there, he had foolishly married her, although she was as poor as himself. But was Marc any happier at Jonville, even though his wife received frequent presents from her grandmother? Was he not always struggling with indebtedness, struggling too with the priest, in order to retain dignity and independence? True, he was seconded by Mademoiselle Mazeline, the mistress of the girls' school, a woman of firm sense, with an inexhaustible heart, who had helped him to win over the parish council and gradually the whole commune. But circumstances had been in his favour, and the example was perhaps unique in the department. On the other hand, the state of affairs at Maillebois completed the picture. There, on one side, one found Mademoiselle Rouzaire won over to the cause of the priests and the monks, learning to take her pupils to church, and fulfilling so well the office of the nuns that it had been considered unnecessary to install a nuns' school in the little town. Then, on the other hand, there was that poor fellow Simon, an honest man certainly, but one who, from fear of being treated as a dirty Jew, tried circumspection with everybody, allowing his nephew to be educated by the dear Brothers, and bowing down to the ground before all the rooks who infested the country.

'A dirty Jew!' cried Férou with emphasis, by way of conclusion. 'He is, and always will be, a dirty Jew. And to be both a schoolmaster and a Jew beats everything.... Ah! well, you'll see, you'll see!'

Then, with impetuous gestures which shook the whole of his big loose frame he took himself off and mingled with the crowd.

Marc had remained on the kerb of the footway, shrugging his shoulders and regarding Férou as a semi-lunatic, for the picture which he had drawn seemed to him full of exaggeration. But of what use was it to answer that poor fellow whose brain would soon be turned by ill luck? Yet Marc was haunted by what he had heard, and grew vaguely anxious as he resumed his walk towards the Place des Capucins.

It was a quarter past twelve when he reached the little house, and for a quarter of an hour the ladies had been awaiting him in the dining-room, where the table was already laid. This fresh delay had quite upset Madame Duparque. She said nothing, but the brusqueness with which she sat down and nervously unfolded her napkin denoted how culpable she considered this lack of punctuality.

'I must apologise,' the young man explained, 'but I had to wait for the magistrates, and there was such a crowd on the square afterwards that I could not pass.'

At this, although the grandmother was resolved on silence, she could not restrain an exclamation: 'I hope that you are not going to busy yourself with that abominable affair!'

'Oh!' Marc merely answered, 'I certainly hope I sha'n't have to do so—unless it be as a matter of duty.'

When Pélagie had served an omelet and some slices of grilled mutton with mashed potatoes, the young man related all that he had learnt. Geneviève listened to his story, quivering with horror and pity, while Madame Berthereau, who was also greatly moved, battled with her tears and glanced furtively at Madame Duparque, as if to ascertain how far she might allow her sensibility to go. But the old lady had relapsed into silent disapproval of everything which seemed to her contrary to her rule of life. She ate steadily, and it was only after a time that she remarked, 'I remember very well that a child disappeared at Beaumont during my youth. It was found under the porch of St. Maxence. The body was cut in quarters, and there was only the heart missing. It was said that the Jews required the heart for the unleavened bread of their Passover.'

Marc looked at her in amazement. 'You are not serious, grandmother: you surely don't believe such a stupid and infamous charge?'

She turned her cold, clear eyes on him, and, instead of giving a direct answer, she said: 'It is simply an old recollection which came back to me.... Of course I accuse nobody.'

At this Pélagie, who had just brought the dessert, ventured to join in the conversation with the familiarity of an old servant: 'It is quite right of madame to accuse nobody, and others ought to follow madame's example. The neighbourhood has been in a state of revolution since this morning. You can have no idea of the frightful stories which are being told. Just now, too, I heard a workman say that the Brothers' school ought to be burnt down.'

Deep silence followed those words. Marc, struck by them, made a gesture, then restrained himself, like one who prefers to keep his thoughts to himself. And Pélagie continued: 'Madame will let me go to the distribution of prizes this afternoon, I hope? I don't think my nephew Polydor will have a prize; but it would please me to be present. Those good Brothers! It won't be a happy festival for them, falling on the very day when one of their best pupils has been killed!'

Madame Duparque nodded assent to the servant's request, and the conversation was then turned into another channel. Indeed the end of the meal was brightened somewhat by the laughter of little Louise, who gazed in astonishment at the grave faces of her father and her mother, who usually smiled so brightly. This led to some relaxation of the tension, and for a moment they all chatted in a cordial, intimate way.

The distribution of prizes at the Brothers' school that afternoon roused great emotion. Never before had the ceremony attracted such a throng. True, the circumstance that it was presided over by Father Philibin, the prefect of the studies at the College of Valmarie, made it particularly notable. The rector of that College, Father Crabot, who was famous for his society influence and the powerful part he was said to play in contemporary politics, also attended, desirous as he was of giving the Brothers a public mark of his esteem. Further, there was a reactionary deputy of the department, Count Hector de Sanglebœuf, the owner of La Désirade, a splendid estate of the environs, which, with a few millions, had formed the marriage portion of his wife, a daughter of Baron Nathan, the great Jew banker. However, that which excited everybody, and which drew to the usually quiet and deserted Place des Capucins such a feverish crowd, was the monstrous crime discovered in the morning, the murder of one of the Brothers' pupils under the most abominable circumstances.

And it seemed as if the murdered boy were present, as if only he were there, in the shady courtyard where the platform was set up beyond the serried rows of chairs, while Father Philibin spoke in praise of the school, of its director, the distinguished Brother Fulgence, and of his three assistants, Brothers Isidore, Lazarus, and Gorgias. The haunting sensation became yet more intense when the prize-list was read by the last-named, a thin, knotty man, showing a low, harsh brow under his frizzy black hair, a big nose projecting like an eagle's beak between his prominent cheek-bones, and thin lips which in parting revealed wolf-like teeth. Zéphirin had been the best scholar of his class, every prize of which he had won. Thus his name recurred incessantly, and Brother Gorgias, in his long black cassock, on which the ends of his neck-band showed like a splotch of white, let that name fall from his lips in such slow lugubrious fashion that on each occasion a quiver of growing intensity sped through the assembled throng. Every time the poor little dead boy was called he seemed to rise up to receive his crown and his gilt-edged book. But, alas! crowns and books alike formed an increasing pile on the table; and nothing could be more poignant than the silence and the void to which so many prizes were cast, the prizes of that model pupil who had vanished so tragically, and whose lamentable remains were lying only a few doors away. At last the emotion of the onlookers became too great to be restrained; sobs burst forth while Brother Gorgias continued to call that name with a twitching of the upper-lip, habitual to him, which disclosed some of the teeth on the left side of his mouth amid an involuntary grimace-like grin, suggestive of both scorn and cruelty.

The function ended amid general uneasiness. However fine might be the assembly which had hastened thither to exalt the Brothers, anxiety increased, disquietude swept over all, as if some menace had come from afar. But the worst was the departure amid the murmurs and the covert curses of numerous groups of artisans and peasants gathered on the square. The abominable stories of which Pélagie had spoken circulated through that quivering crowd. A horrid story which had been stifled the previous year, the story of a Brother whom his superiors had conjured away to save him from the Assize Court, was repeated. All sorts of rumours had been current since that time, rumours of abominations, of terrified children who dared not speak out. Naturally there had been much enlargement of those mysterious rumours as they passed from mouth to mouth; and the indignation of the folk assembled on the square came from the revival of them which was prompted by the murder of one of the Brothers' pupils. Accusations were already taking shape, words of vengeance spread around. Would the guilty one again be allowed to escape? Would that vile and bloody den never be closed? Thus, as the fine folk departed, and particularly when the robes of the monks and the cassocks of the priests were seen, fists were stretched out, and menaces of death arose: the whole of one group of onlookers pursuing with hisses Fathers Crabot and Philibin as they hurried away, pale and anxious; while Brother Fulgence ordered the school-gates to be strongly bolted.

Marc, out of curiosity, had watched the scene from a window of Madame Duparque's little house, and, becoming keenly interested in it, he had even gone for a moment to the threshold, in order that he might see and hear the better. How ridiculous had been Férou's prophecy that the Jew would be saddled with the crime, that the rancorous black gowns would make a scapegoat of the secular schoolmaster! Far from things taking that course, it seemed as though they might turn out very badly for the good Brothers. The rising wrath of the crowd, those menaces of death, indicated that matters might go very far indeed, that the popular anger might spread from the one guilty man to the whole of his congregation, and shake the very Church itself in the region, if indeed the guilty man were one of its ministers. Marc questioned himself on that point but could form no absolute conviction; indeed, even suspicion seemed to him hazardous and wrong. The demeanour of Father Philibin and Brother Fulgence had appeared quite natural, full of perfect tranquillity. And he strove to be very tolerant and just, for fear lest he might yield to his impulses as a freethinker delivered from belief in dogmas. All was dark in that terrible tragedy, and he resolved to wait until he should learn more.

But while he stood there he saw Pélagie returning in her Sunday-best, accompanied by her nephew, Polydor Souquet, a lad of eleven, who carried a handsomely bound book under his arm.

'It's the good conduct prize, monsieur!' exclaimed the servant proudly. 'That is even better than a prize for reading or writing, is it not?'

The truth was that Polydor, sly but torpid, astonished even the Brothers by his prodigious idleness. He was a pale, sturdy boy, with very light hair and a long dull face. The son of a road-mender addicted to drink, he had lost his mother at an early age, and lived chancewise nowadays while his father broke stones on the roads. Hating every kind of work, terrified particularly by the idea of having to break stones in his turn, he allowed his aunt to indulge in the dream of seeing him become a Brother, invariably agreeing with everything she said, and often visiting her in her kitchen, in the hope thereby of securing some dainty morsel.

Pélagie, however, in spite of her delight, was affected by the uproar on the square. She at last looked round, quivering, and cast a glance of fury and defiance at the crowd. 'You hear them, monsieur!' she exclaimed. 'You hear those anarchists! The idea of it! Such devoted Brothers, who are so fond of their pupils, who look after them with such motherly care! For instance, there's Polydor. He lives with his father on the road to Jonville, nearly a mile away. Well, last night, after that ceremony, for fear of a mishap, Brother Gorgias accompanied him to his very door. Is that not so, Polydor?'

'Yes,' the boy answered laconically in his husky voice.

'Yet folk insult and threaten the Brothers!' the servant resumed. 'How wicked! You can picture poor Brother Gorgias taking that long walk in the dark night, in order that nothing might befall this little man! Ah! it's enough to disgust one of being prudent and kind!'

Marc, who had been scrutinising the boy, was struck by his resolute taciturnity, by the hypocritical somnolence in which he seemed to find a pleasant refuge. He listened no further to Pélagie, to whose chatter he never accorded much attention. But on returning to the little drawing-room, where he had left his wife reading while Madame Duparque and Madame Berthereau turned to their everlasting knitting for some religious charities, he felt anxious, for he perceived that Geneviève had laid her book aside, and was gazing with much emotion at the tumult on the square. She came to him, and with an affectionate impulse, fraught with alarm, looking extremely pretty in her agitation, she almost threw herself upon his neck.

'What is happening?' she asked. 'Are they going to fight?'

He began to reassure her; and all at once Madame Duparque, raising her eyes from her work, sternly gave expression to her will: 'Marc, I hope that you will not mix yourself up in that horrid affair. What madness it is to suspect and insult the Brothers! God will end by avenging His ministers!'

II

Marc was unable to get to sleep that night, for he was haunted by the events of the day—by that monstrous, mysterious, puzzling crime. Thus, while Geneviève, his wife, reposed quietly beside him, he dwelt in thought upon each incident of the affair, classified each detail, striving to pierce the darkness and establish the truth.

Marc's mind was one that sought logic and light. His clear and firm judgment demanded in all things a basis of certainty. Thence came his absolute passion for truth. In his eyes no rest of mind, no real happiness, was possible without complete, decisive certainty. He was not very learned, but such things as he knew he wished to know completely, in order that he might have no doubt of the possession of the truth, experimental truth, established for ever. All unrest came to an end when doubt ceased; he then fully recovered his spirits, and to his passion for the acquirement of truth was added one for imparting it to others, for driving it into the brains and hearts of all. His marvellous gifts then became manifest; he brought with him a methodical power which simplified, classified, illumined everything. His quiet conviction imposed itself on his hearers, light was shed on dim notions, things seemed easy and simple. He instilled life into the driest subjects. He succeeded in imparting a passionate interest even to grammar and arithmetic, rendering them as interesting as stories to his pupils. In him one really found the born teacher.

He had discovered that he possessed that teaching gift at the time when, already possessed of a bachelor's degree, he had come to Beaumont to finish his apprenticeship as a lithographic draughtsman in the establishment of Messrs. Papon-Laroche. Entrusted with the execution of many school diagrams, he had exercised his ingenuity in simplifying them, creating perfect masterpieces of clearness and precision, which had revealed to him his true vocation, the happiness that he found in teaching the young.

It was at Papon-Laroche's establishment also that he had first met Salvan, now Director of the Training College, who, observing his bent, had approved of the course he took in yielding to it completely, and becoming what he was to-day—a humble elementary schoolmaster who, convinced of the noble usefulness of his duties, was happy to discharge them even in a small and lonely village. Marc's affection for those whose narrow and slumbering minds required awakening and expansion had decided his career. And, in the discharge of his modest functions, his passion for truth increased, becoming a more and more imperious craving. It ended indeed by constituting the ratio of his health, his very life, for it was only by satisfying it that he enjoyed normal life. When it escaped him, he fell into anguish of spirit, consumed by his desire to acquire and possess it wholly, in order that he might communicate it to others, failing which he spent his days in intolerable suffering, often physical as well as mental.

From this passion assuredly sprang the torment which kept Marc awake that night by the side of his sleeping wife. He suffered from his ignorance, his failure to penetrate the truth respecting the murder of that child. He was not confronted merely by an ignoble crime; he divined behind it the existence of dark and threatening depths, some dim but yawning abyss. Would his sufferings continue then as long as he should not know the truth, which perchance he might never know? for the shadows seemed to increase at each effort that he made to dissipate them. Mastered by uncertainty and fear, he ended by longing for daybreak, in order that he might resume his investigations. But his wife laughed lightly in her sleep; some happy dream, no doubt, had come to her; and then the terrible old grandmother seemed to rise up before the young man's eyes, and repeat that he must on no account meddle in that horrible affair. At this the certainty of a conflict with his wife's relations appeared to him, and brought his hesitation and unhappiness to a climax.

Hitherto he had experienced no serious trouble with that devout family whence he, who held no religious belief whatever, had taken the young girl who had become his wife, his life's companion. He did not carry tolerance so far as to follow his wife to Mass, as Berthereau had done, but he had allowed his daughter Louise to be baptised, in order that he might have some peace with the ladies. Besides, as his wife in her adoration for him had ceased to follow the religious observances of her Church soon after the marriage, no quarrel had yet arisen between them. Occasionally he remarked in Geneviève some revival of her long Catholic training, ideas of the absolute which clashed with his own, superstitions which sent a chill to his heart. But these were merely passing incidents; he believed that the love which bound him to his wife was strong enough to triumph over such divergencies; for did they not soon find themselves in each other's arms again, even when they had momentarily felt themselves to be strangers, belonging to different worlds?

Geneviève had been one of the best pupils of the Sisters of the Visitation; she had quitted their establishment with a superior certificate, in such wise that her first idea had been to become a teacher herself. But there was no place for her at Jonville, where the excellent Mademoiselle Mazeline managed the girls' school without assistance; and, naturally enough, she had been unwilling to quit her husband. Then household duties had taken possession of her; now, also, she had to attend to her little girl; and thus all thought of realising her early desire was postponed, perhaps for ever. But did not this very circumstance make their life all happiness and perfect agreement, far from the reach of storms?

If, from concern for their future happiness, the worthy Salvan, Berthereau's faithful friend, to whom the marriage was due, had for a moment thought of trying to check the irresistible love by which the young people were transported, he must have felt reassured on finding them still tenderly united after three years of matrimony. It was only now while the wife dreamt happily in her slumber that the husband for the first time experienced anxiety at the thought of the case of conscience before him, foreseeing, as he did, that a quarrel might well arise with his wife's relations, and that all sorts of unpleasant consequences might ensue in his home, should he yield to his imperative craving for truth.

At last, however, he dozed off and ended by sleeping soundly. In the morning, when his eyes opened to the clear bright light, he felt astonished at having passed through such a nightmare-like vigil. It had assuredly been caused by the haunting influence of that frightful crime, to which, as it happened, Geneviève, still full of emotion and pity, was the first to refer again.

'Poor Simon must be in great distress,' she said. 'You cannot abandon him. I think that you ought to see him this morning and place yourself at his disposal.'

Marc embraced her, delighted to find her so kind-hearted and brave. 'But grandmother will get angry again,' he replied, 'and our life here will become unbearable.'

Geneviève laughed lightly, and gently shrugged her shoulders. 'Oh! grandmother would quarrel with the very angels,' she retorted. 'When one does half what she desires, one does quite enough.'

This sally enlivened them both, and, Louise having awoke, they spent a few delightful moments in playing with her in her little cot.

Then Marc resolved to go out and resume his inquiry directly after breakfast. While he was dressing, he thought the matter over quietly and sensibly. He was well acquainted with Maillebois and the characteristics of its two thousand inhabitants, divided into petty bourgeois, petty shopkeepers, and workmen; the latter, some eight hundred in number, being distributed through the workshops of some four or five firms, all of which were prosperous, thanks to the vicinity of Beaumont. Being nearly equally divided, the two sections of the population fought strenuously for authority, and the Municipal Council was a faithful picture of their differences, one half of it being Clerical and Reactionary, while the other was Republican and Progressive. As yet only a very few Socialists figured in the population, lost among all the folk of other views, and they were quite without influence. Darras, the Mayor and building contractor, was certainly a declared Republican, and even made a profession of anti-clericalism. But, owing to the almost equal strength of the two parties in the council, it was only by a majority of two votes that he, rich and active, with about a hundred workpeople under his orders, had been preferred to Philis, a retired tilt and awning maker, with an income of from ten to twelve thousand francs a year, who led the stern confined life of a militant Clerical, interested in nothing beyond the observance of the narrowest piety. Thus Darras was compelled to observe extreme prudence, for the displacement of a few votes would unseat him. Ah! if there had been only a substantial Republican majority behind him, how bravely he would have supported the cause of liberty, truth, and justice, instead of practising, as he was reduced to do, the most diplomatic 'opportunism.'

Another thing known to Marc was the increasing power of the Clerical party, which seemed likely to conquer the whole region. For ten years the little community of Capuchins established in the old convent, a part of which it had surrendered to the Brothers of the Christian Schools, had carried on the worship of St. Antony of Padua with ever-increasing audacity, and also with such great success that the profits were enormous.[1] While the Brothers, on their side, derived advantage from this success, which brought them many pupils and thus increased the prosperity of the schools, the Capuchins worked their chapel as one may work a distillery, and sent forth from it every kind of moral poison. The Saint stood on a golden altar, ever decked with flowers and ablaze with lights, collection boxes appeared on all sides, and a commercial office was permanently installed in the sacristy, where the procession of clients lasted from morn till night. The Saint did not merely find lost things,—his specialty in the early days of his cultus,—he had extended his business. For a few francs he undertook to enable the dullest youths to pass their examinations, to render doubtful business affairs excellent, to exonerate the rich scions of patriotic families from military service, to say nothing of performing a multitude of other equally genuine miracles, such as healing the sick and the maimed, and according a positive protection against ruin and death, in the last respect going indeed so far as to resuscitate a young girl who had expired two days previously. Naturally enough, as each new story circulated, more and more money flowed in, and the business spread from the bourgeois and shopkeepers of Reactionary Maillebois to the workmen of Republican Maillebois, whom the poison ended by infecting.

It is true that, in his Sunday sermons, Abbé Quandieu, priest of St. Martin's, the parish church, forcibly pointed out the danger of low superstition; but few people listened to him. Possessed of a more enlightened faith than that of many priests, he deplored the harm which the rapacity of the Capuchins was doing to religion. In the first place they were ruining him; the parish church was losing many sources of revenue, all the alms and offerings now going to the convent chapel. But his grief came largely from a higher cause; he experienced the sorrow of an intelligent priest who was not disposed to bow to Rome in all things, but who still believed in the possible evolution amid the great modern democratic movement of an independent and liberal Church of France. Thus he waged war against those 'dealers of the Temple' who betrayed the cause of Jesus; and it was said that Monseigneur Bergerot,[2] the Bishop of Beaumont, shared his views. But this did not prevent the Capuchins from increasing their triumphs, subjugating Maillebois and transforming it into a holy spot, by dint of their spurious miracles.

Marc also knew that, if Monseigneur Bergerot was behind Abbé Quandieu, the Capuchins and the Brothers possessed the support of Father Crabot, the all-powerful Rector of the College of Valmarie. If Father Philibin, the Prefect of the Studies there, had presided at the recent prize-giving at the Brothers' school, it had been by way of according to the latter a public mark of esteem and protection. The Jesuits had the affair in hand, as folk of evil mind were wont to say. And Simon, the Jew schoolmaster, found himself caught amid those inextricable quarrels, alone in a region swept by religious passion, at a dangerous moment, when the victory would be won by the most impudent. Men's hearts were perturbed; a spark would suffice to fire and devastate all minds. Nevertheless the Communal school had not lost a pupil as yet; its attendances and successes equalled those of the Brothers' school; and this comparative victory was undoubtedly due to the prudent skill displayed by Simon, who behaved cautiously with everybody, and who moreover was supported openly by Darras, and covertly by Abbé Quandieu. But the rivalry of the two schools would undoubtedly lead to the real battle, the decisive assault which must come sooner or later; for these two schools could not possibly live side by side, one must end by devouring the other. And the Church would be unable to subsist should she lose the privilege of teaching and enslaving the humble.

That morning, during breakfast with the ladies in the dismal little dining-room, Marc, already oppressed by his reflections, felt his discomfort increase. Madame Duparque quietly related that if Polydor had secured a prize the previous day, he owed it to a pious precaution taken by his aunt Pélagie, who had thoughtfully given a franc to St. Antony of Padua. On hearing this, Madame Berthereau nodded as if approvingly, and even Geneviève did not venture to smile, but seemed interested in the marvellous stories related by her grandmother. The old lady recounted a number of extraordinary incidents, how lives and fortunes had been saved, thanks to presents of two and three francs bestowed on the Saint by the medium of the Capuchins' Agency. And one realised how—one little sum being added to another—rivers of gold ended by flowing to their chapel, like so much tribute levied on public suffering and imbecility.

However, that morning's number of Le Petit Beaumontais, printed during the night, had arrived, and Marc was well pleased when, at the end of a long article on the crime of Maillebois, he found a paragraph containing a very favourable mention of Simon. The schoolmaster, who was esteemed by everybody, had received, it was said, the most touching assurances of sympathy in the great misfortune which had befallen him. This note had evidently been penned by some correspondent the previous evening, after the tumultuous departure from the distribution of prizes which had indicated in which direction the wind was likely to blow. Indeed, nobody could have mistaken the public hostility against the Brothers; and all the vague rumours, all the horrid stories hushed up in the past, aggravated that hostility, in such wise that one was threatened with some abominable scandal in which the whole Catholic and Reactionary party might collapse.

Thus Marc was surprised at the lively and even triumphant demeanour of Pélagie when she came in to clear the breakfast table. He lingered there on purpose to draw her out.

'Ah! there's good news, monsieur,' said she; 'I learnt something, and no mistake, when I went on my errands this morning! I knew very well that those anarchists who insulted the Brothers yesterday were liars.'

Then she recounted all the tittle-tattle of the shops, all the gossip she had picked up on the foot-pavements whilst going from door to door. Amid the oppressive horror, the disturbing mystery that had weighed upon the town for four and twenty hours, the wildest fancies had been gradually germinating. It seemed as if some poisonous vegetation had sprung up during the night. At first there were only the vaguest suppositions; then explanations, suggested chancewise, became certainties, and doubtful coincidences were transformed into irrefutable proofs. And a point to be remarked was that all these stealthy developments, originating nobody knew how or where, but spreading hour by hour, and diffusing doubt and uneasiness, turned in favour of the Brothers and against Simon.

'It is quite certain, you know, monsieur,' said Pélagie, 'that the schoolmaster cared very little for his nephew. He ill-treated him; he was seen doing so by people who will say it. Besides, he was vexed at not having him in his school. He was in no end of a passion when the lad took his first Communion; he shook his fist at him and blasphemed.... And, at all events, it is very extraordinary that the little angel should have been killed only a little while after he had left the Holy Table, and when God was still within him.'

A pang came to Marc's heart; he listened to the servant with stupefaction. 'What do you mean?' he at last exclaimed. 'Are people accusing Simon of having killed his nephew?'

'Well, some don't scruple to think it. That story of going to enjoy himself at Beaumont, then missing the train at half-past ten, and coming back on foot seems a strange one. He reached home at twenty minutes to twelve, he says. But nobody saw him, and he may very well have returned by train an hour earlier, at the very moment when the crime was committed. And when it was over he only had to blow out the candle, and leave the window wide open in order to make people suppose that the murderer had come from outside. At about a quarter to eleven Mademoiselle Rouzaire, the schoolmistress, distinctly heard a sound of footsteps in the school, moans and calls too, and the opening and shutting of doors——'

'Mademoiselle Rouzaire!' cried Marc. 'Why, she did not say a word of that in her first evidence. I was present!'

'Excuse me, monsieur, but at the butcher's just now Mademoiselle Rouzaire was telling it to everybody, and I heard her.'

The young man, quite aghast, allowed the servant to continue:

'Monsieur Mignot, the assistant-master, also says that he was greatly surprised at the head-master's sound sleep in the morning. And, indeed, it is extraordinary that one should have to go and awaken a man on the day when a murder is committed in his house. It seems too that he wasn't the least bit touched; he merely trembled like a leaf, when he saw the little body.'

Marc again wished to protest; but Pélagie, in a stubborn, malicious way, went on: 'Besides, it was surely he, for a copy-slip which came from his class was found in the child's mouth. Only the master could have had that slip in his pocket—is that not so? It is said that it was even signed by him. At the greengrocer's too I heard a lady say that the police officials had found a number of similar slips in his cupboard.'

This time Marc retorted by stating the facts, speaking of the illegible initials on the slip, which Simon declared had never been in his hands; though, as it was of a pattern in common use, one might have found it in any school. However, when Pélagie declared that overwhelming proofs had been discovered that very morning during the search made by the officials in Simon's rooms, the young man began to feel exceedingly disturbed, and ceased to protest, for he realised that in the frightful confusion which was spreading through people's minds all arguments would be futile.

'You see, monsieur,' Pélagie continued, 'one can expect anything when one has to deal with a Jew. As the milkman said to me just now, those folk have no real family ties, no real country; they carry on dealings with the devil, they pillage people, and kill just for the pleasure of doing evil. And you may say what you like, you won't prevent people from believing that that Jew needed a child's life for some dirty business with the devil, and cunningly waited till his nephew had taken his first Communion in order that he might pollute and murder him while he was stainless and full of perfume from the presence of the Host.'

It was the charge of ritual murder reappearing, that haunting charge transmitted through the ages and reviving at each catastrophe, relentlessly pursuing those hateful Jews who poisoned wells and butchered little children.

On two occasions Geneviève, who suffered when she saw how Marc was quivering, had felt desirous of interrupting and joining in his protests. But she had restrained herself from fear of irritating her grandmother, who was evidently well pleased with the servant's gossip, for she nodded approval of it. In fact, Madame Duparque regarded it as a victory; and, disdaining to lecture her son-in-law, whom she deemed already vanquished, she contented herself with saying to the ever-silent Madame Berthereau: 'It is just like that dead child who was found many years ago in the porch of St. Maxence. A woman in the service of some Jews narrowly escaped being sentenced in their place, for only a Jew could have been the murderer. When one frequents such folk one is always exposed to the wrath of God.'

Marc preferred to make no rejoinder; and almost immediately afterwards he went out. But his perturbation was extreme, and a doubt came to him. Could Simon really be guilty? The suspicion attacked him like some evil fever contracted in a pernicious spot; and he felt a need of reflecting and recovering his equilibrium before he called upon his colleague. So he went off along the deserted road to Valmarie, picturing, as he walked, all the incidents of the previous day, and weighing men and things. No, no! Simon could not be reasonably suspected. Certainties presented themselves on all sides. First of all, such a horrible crime on his part was utterly illogical, impossible. He was assuredly healthy in body and mind, he had no physiological flaws, his gentle gaiety denoted the regularity of his life. And he had a wife of resplendent beauty whom he adored, beside whom he lived in loving ecstasy, grateful to her for the handsome children who had sprung from their affection and had become their living love and worship. How was it possible to imagine that such a man had yielded to a fit of abominable madness a few moments before rejoining his well-loved spouse and his little children slumbering in their cots? Again, how simple and truthful on the previous day had been the accents of that man who was exposed to the scrutiny of so many enemies, who loved his calling to the point of heroism, who made the best of his poverty without ever uttering a word of complaint!

The account he had given of his evening had been very clear, his wife had confirmed his statements respecting the time of his return, none of the information that he had furnished seemed open to doubt. And if some obscure points remained, if that crumpled copy-slip found with a number of Le Petit Beaumontais constituted an enigma as yet unravelled, reason at least indicated that the culprit must be sought elsewhere; for Simon's nature and life, the very conditions in which he lived, showed that he could have had nothing to do with the crime. On that point Marc experienced a feeling of certainty, based on reason, on truth itself, which remains unshakable when once it is established by observation and the deductions that facts supply.

Thus the young man's conviction was formed; there were certain ascertained facts to which he would bring everything else back, and, although every error and falsehood might be launched, he would brush all assertions aside if they did not agree with such truths as were already known and demonstrated.

Serene once more, relieved of the burden of his doubts, Marc returned to Maillebois, passing the railway station at the moment when some passengers were alighting from a train which had just arrived. Among those who emerged from the station he perceived the Elementary Education Inspector of the arrondissement, handsome Mauraisin, as he was called, a very dark, foppish little man of thirty-eight, whose thin lips and whose chin were hidden by a carefully kept moustache and beard, while glasses screened his eager eyes. Formerly a professor at the Beaumont Training College, Mauraisin belonged to that new generation, the Arrivistes, who are ever on the lookout for advancement, and who always place themselves on the stronger side. He, it was said, had coveted the directorship of the Training College, which had fallen to Salvan, whom he pursued with covert hatred, but very prudently, for he was aware of Salvan's great credit with Le Barazer, the Academy Inspector,[3] on whom he himself depended. Besides, in presence of the equality of the forces which were contending for supremacy in his arrondissement, Mauraisin, in spite of his personal preferences for the clericals, the priests, and monks, whom he regarded as 'devilish clever,' had been skilful enough to refrain from declaring himself too openly. Thus, when Marc perceived the Elementary Inspector, it was allowable for him to fancy that Le Barazer, with whose good nature he was acquainted, had despatched his subordinate to the assistance of Simon in the terrible catastrophe which threatened to sweep the schoolmaster of Maillebois and his school away.