BOOK II (continued 3)

At these words, so suggestive of his profession, her rebellion became complete. 'Yes, for you I am always a foolish pupil who knows nothing and whose eyes require to be opened. But it is I who know where truth and justice are to be found. You have not the right to speak those words.'

'Not the right!'

'No; you have plunged into that monstrous error, that ignoble Simon affair, in which your hatred of the Church blinds you and urges you to the worst iniquity. When a man like you goes so far as to override all truth and justice in order to strike and befoul the ministers of religion, it is better to believe that he has lost his senses.'

This time Marc reached the root of the quarrel which Geneviève was picking with him. The Simon case lay beneath everything else, it was that alone which had inspired all the discreet and skilful manœuvring of which he beheld the effects. If his wife were enticed away from him at her relatives' home, if she were employed as a weapon to strike him a deadly blow, it was especially in order that an artisan of truth, a possible justiciary, might be smitten in his person. It was necessary to suppress him, for his destruction alone could ensure the impunity of the real culprits.

His voice trembled with deep grief as he answered: 'Ah! Geneviève, this is more serious. There will be an end to our home if we can no longer agree on so clear and so simple a question. Are you no longer on my side, then, in that painful affair?'

'No, certainly not.'

'You think poor Simon guilty?'

'Why, there is no doubt of it! The reasons you give for asserting his innocence repose on no foundation whatever! I should like you to hear the persons whose purity of life you dare to suspect! And as you fall into such gross error respecting a case in which everything is so evident, a case which is settled beyond possibility of appeal, how can I place the slightest faith in your other notions, your fanciful social system, in which you begin by suppressing religion?'

He had taken her in his arms again, and was holding her in a tight embrace. Ah! she was right. Their slowly increasing rupture had originated in their divergence of views on that question of truth and justice, in reference to which others had managed to poison her understanding. 'Listen, Geneviève,' he said; 'there is only one truth, one justice. You must listen to me, and our agreement will restore our peace.'

'No, no!'

'But, Geneviève, you must not remain in such darkness when I see light all around me; it would mean separation forever.'

'No, no, let me be! You tire me; I won't even listen.'

She wrenched herself from his embrace and turned her back upon him. He vainly sought to clasp her again, kissing her and whispering gentle words; she would not move, she would not even answer. A chill swept down on the conjugal couch, and the room seemed black as ink, dolorously lifeless, as if the misfortune which was coming had already annihilated everything.

From that time forward Geneviève became more nervous and ill-tempered. Much less consideration was now shown for her husband at her grandmother's house; he was attacked in her presence in an artfully graduated manner, as by degrees her affection for him was seen to decline. Little by little he became a public malefactor, one of the damned, a slayer of the God she worshipped. And the rebellion to which she was thus urged re-echoed in her home in bitter words, in an increase of discomfort and coldness. Fresh quarrels arose at intervals, usually at night, when they retired to rest, for in the daytime they saw little of each other, Marc then being busy with his boys and Geneviève being constantly absent, now at church, now at her grandmother's. Thus their life was gradually quite spoilt. The young woman showed herself more and more aggressive, while her husband, so tolerant by nature, in his turn ended by manifesting irritation.

'My darling, I shall want you to-morrow during afternoon lessons,' he said one evening.

'To-morrow? I can't come,' she replied; 'Abbé Quandieu will be expecting me. Besides, you need not rely on me for anything.'

'Won't you help me, then?'

'No, I detest everything you do. Damn yourself if you choose; but I have to think of my salvation.'

'Then each is to go his own way?'

'As you please.'

'Oh! darling, darling, is it you who speak like that? Are they going to change your heart after fogging your mind? So now you are altogether on the side of the corrupters and poisoners?'

'Be quiet, be quiet, you unhappy man! It is your work which is all falsehood and poison. You blaspheme; your justice and your truth are filthy; and it is the devil—yes, the devil—who teaches those wretched children of yours, whom I no longer even pity, for they must be stupid indeed to remain here!'

'My poor darling, how is it possible that you, once so intelligent, can say such foolish things?'

'When a man finds women foolish he leaves them to themselves.'

Thereupon, in his turn losing his temper, Marc, indeed, left her to herself, making no effort to win her back by a loving caress as in former days. It often happened that they were unable to get to sleep; they lay in bed, side by side, with their eyes wide open in the darkness, silent and motionless, as if the little space which separated them had become an abyss.

Marc was particularly afflicted by the growing hatred which Geneviève manifested against his school, against the dear children whom he so passionately strove to teach. At each fresh dispute she expressed herself so bitterly that it seemed as if she became jealous of the little ones when she saw him treat them so affectionately, endeavour so zealously to make them sensible and peaceable. At bottom, indeed, Geneviève's quarrel with Marc had no other cause; for she herself was but a child, one of those who needed to be taught and freed, but who rebelled and clung stubbornly to the errors of the ages. And in her estimation all the affection which her husband lavished on his boys was diverted from herself. As long as he should busy himself with them in such a fatherly fashion, she would be unable to conquer him, carry him away into the divine and rapturous stultification, in which she would fain have seen him fall asleep in her arms. The struggle at last became concentrated on that one point. Geneviève no longer passed the classroom without feeling an inclination to cross herself, like one who was utterly upset by the diabolical work accomplished there, who was irritated by her powerlessness to wrest from such impious courses the man whose bed she still shared.

Months, even years went by, and the battle between Marc and Geneviève grew fiercer. But no imprudent haste was displayed at the home of her relatives, for the Church has all eternity before her to achieve her ends. Besides, leaving on one side that vain marplot, Brother Fulgence, Father Théodose and Father Crabot were too skilled in the manipulation of souls to overlook the necessity of proceeding slowly with a woman of passionate nature, whose mind was an upright one when mysticism did not obscure and pervert it. As long as she should love her husband, as long as there should be no conjugal rupture, the work they had undertaken would not be complete. And it required a long time to uproot and extirpate a great love from a woman's heart and flesh in such wise that it might never grow again. Thus Geneviève was left in the hands of Abbé Quandieu, so that he might gently rock her to sleep before more energetic action was attempted. Meantime, the others contented themselves with watching her. It was a masterpiece of delicate, gradual, but certain spell working.

Another affair helped to disturb Marc's home. He took a great deal of interest in Madame Férou, who had installed herself with her three daughters in a wretched lodging at Maillebois, where she had sought work as a seamstress while awaiting a summons from her husband, the dismissed schoolmaster, who had fled to Brussels to seek employment there. But the wretched man's endeavours had proved fruitless. He had found himself unable even to provide for his own wants; and tortured by separation, exasperated by exile, he had lost his head and returned to Maillebois with the bravado of one whom misery pursues and who can know no worse misfortune than that already befalling him. Denounced on the very next day, he was seized by the military authorities as a deserter, and Salvan had to intervene actively to save him from being incorporated at once in some disciplinary company. He was now in garrison in a little Alpine town, at the other end of France, while his wife and daughters, scarcely possessed of shelter and clothes, often found themselves without bread.

Marc also had exerted himself on Férou's behalf at the time of his arrest. He had then seen him for a few minutes and was unable to forget him. That poor, big, haggard fellow lingered in his mind like the victim, par excellence, of social abomination. Doubtless he had made his retention in office impossible, even as Mauraisin said; but how many excuses there were for this shepherd's son who had become a schoolmaster, who had been starved for years, who had been treated with so much scorn on account of his poverty, who had been cast to the most extreme views by his circumstances: he, a man of intelligence and learning, who found himself possessing nothing, knowing not one joy of life, whereas ignorant brutes possessed and enjoyed all around him. And the long iniquity had ended in brutal barrack-life far away from those who were dear to him, and who were perishing of misery.

'Is it not enough to goad one into turning everything upside down?' he had cried to Marc at their brief interview, his eyes flashing while he waved his long bony arms. 'I signed, it's true, a ten years' engagement which exempted me from barrack-life if I gave those ten years to teaching. And it's true also that I gave only eight years, as I was revoked for having said what I thought about the black-frocks' revolting idolatry! But was it I who cancelled my engagement? And after casting me brutally adrift, without any means of subsistence, isn't it monstrous to seize me and claim payment of my old debt to the army, in such wise that my wife and children must remain with nobody to earn a living for them? The eight years I spent in the university penitentiary, where a man who believes in truth is allowed neither freedom of speech nor freedom of action, were not enough for them! They insist on robbing me of two more years, on shutting me up in their gaol of blood and iron, and reducing me to that life of passive obedience which is the necessary apprenticeship for devastation and massacre, the mere thought of which exasperates me! Ah! it's too much. I've given them quite enough of my life, and they will end by maddening me if they ask me for more.'

Alarmed at finding him so excited, Marc tried to calm him by promising to do all he could for his wife and daughters. In two years' time he would be released, and then some position might be found for him, and he would be able to begin his life afresh. But Férou remained gloomy, and growled angry words: 'No, no, I'm done for. I shall never get through those two years quietly. They know it well, and it's to get the chance of killing me like a mad dog that they are sending me yonder.'

Then he inquired who had replaced him at Le Moreux, and on hearing that it was a man named Chagnat, an ex-assistant teacher at Brévannes, a large parish of the region, he began to laugh bitterly. Chagnat, a dusky little man with a low brow and retreating mouth and chin, was the personification of the perfect beadle—not a hypocrite like Jauffre, who made use of religion as a means to advancement, but a shallow-brained bigot, such a dolt indeed as to believe in any nonsensical trash that fell from the priest's lips. His wife, a huge carroty creature, was yet more stupid than himself. And Férou's bitter gaiety increased when he learnt that Mayor Saleur had completely abdicated in favour of that idiot Chagnat, whom Abbé Cognasse employed as a kind of sacristan-delegate to rule the parish on his behalf.

'When I told you long ago,' said Férou, 'that all that dirty gang, the priests, the good Brothers, and the good Sisters, would eat us up and reign here, you wouldn't believe me; you declared that my mind was diseased! Well, now it has come to pass; they are your masters, and you'll see into what a fine mess they will lead you. It disgusts one to be a man: a stray dog is less to be pitied. And as for myself I've had quite enough of it all. I'll bring things to an end if they plague me.'

Nevertheless Férou was sent off to join his regiment, and another three months went by, the wretchedness of his unhappy wife steadily increasing. She, once so fair and pleasant with her bright and fresh round face, now looked twice as old as she really was, aged betimes by hard toil and want. She still found very little work, and spent an entire winter month fireless, almost without bread. To make matters worse, her eldest daughter fell ill with typhoid fever, and lay perishing in the icy garret into which the wind swept through every chink in the door and window. Marc, who in a discreet way had already given alms to the poor woman, at last begged his wife to entrust her with some work.

Although Geneviève spoke of Férou even as those whom she met at her grandmother's house spoke of him, saying that he had blasphemously insulted the Sacred Heart and was a sacrilegist, she felt stirred by the story of his wife's bitter want. 'Yes,' she said to her husband, 'Louise needs a new frock; I have the stuff, and I will take it to that woman.'

'Thank you for her. I will go with you,' Marc replied.

On the following day they repaired together to Madame Férou's sordid lodging, whence her landlord threatened to expel her as she was in arrears with her rent. Her eldest daughter was now near her death; and when the Froments arrived she herself and her two younger girls were sobbing in heartrending fashion amid the fearful disorder of the place. For a moment Marc and Geneviève remained standing there, amazed and unable to understand the situation.

'You haven't heard it, you haven't heard it, have you?' Madame Férou at last exclaimed. 'Well, it's done now; they are going to kill him. Ah! he guessed it; he said that those brigands would end by having his skin.'

She went on speaking in a disjointed fashion amid her sobs, and Marc was thus able to extract from her the distressful story. Férou, as was inevitable, had turned out a very bad soldier, and unfavourably noted by his superiors, treated with the utmost harshness as a revolutionary, he had carried a quarrel with his corporal so far as to rush on the latter and kick and pommel him. For this he had been court-martialled, and they were now about to send him to a military bagnio in Algeria, where he would be drafted into one of those disciplinary companies, among which the abominable tortures of the old ages are still practised.

'He will never come back, they will murder him!' his wife continued in a fury. 'He wrote to bid me good-bye; he knows that he will soon be killed.... And what shall I do? What will become of my poor children? Ah! the brigands, the brigands!'

Marc listened, sorely grieved, unable to think of a word of consolation, whereas Geneviève began to show signs of impatience. 'But, my dear Madame Férou,' she exclaimed, 'why should they kill your husband? The officers of our army are not in the habit of killing their men. You increase your own distress by your unjust thoughts.'

'They are brigands, I tell you!' the unhappy woman repeated with growing violence. 'What! my poor Férou starved for eight years, discharging the most ungrateful duties, and he is taken for another two years and treated like a brute beast, simply because he spoke like a sensible man! And now what was bound to happen has happened; he is sent to the galleys, where they'll end by murdering him after dragging him from agony to agony! No, no, I won't have it! I'll go and tell them that they are all a band of brigands—brigands!'

Marc endeavoured to calm her. He, all kindliness and equity, was shocked by such excessive social iniquity. But what could those on whom it recoiled, the wife and children, do, crushed as they were beneath the millstone of tragic fate? 'Be reasonable,' said he. 'We will try to do something; we will not forsake you.'

But Geneviève had become icy cold. That wretched home where the mother was wringing her hands, where the poor puny girls were sobbing and lamenting, no longer inspired her with any pity. She no longer even saw the eldest daughter, wrapped in the shreds of a blanket and looking so ghastly as she gazed at the scene with dilated, expressionless eyes, unable even to weep, such was her weakness. Erect and rigid, still carrying the little parcel formed of the stuff for Louise's new frock, the young woman slowly said: 'You must place yourself in the hands of God. Cease to offend Him, for He might punish you still more.'

A laugh of terrible scorn came from Madame Férou: 'Oh! God is too busy with the rich to pay attention to the poor!' she cried. 'It was in His name that we were reduced to this misery, it is in His name that they are going to murder my poor husband!'

At this Geneviève was carried away by anger: 'You blaspheme! You deserve no help!' said she. 'If you had only shown a little religious feeling, I know persons who would have helped you already.'

'But I ask you for nothing, madame,' the poor woman answered. 'Yes, I know that help has been refused me because I do not go to confession. Even Abbé Quandieu, who is so charitable, does not dare to include me among his poor.... But I am not a hypocrite, I simply endeavour to earn my bread by work.'

'Well, then, apply for work to the wretched madmen who regard the priests and the officers as brigands!'

And thereupon Geneviève hurried away in a passion, carrying with her the stuff for her daughter's frock. Marc was obliged to follow her, though he quivered with indignation. And halfway down the stairs he could restrain himself no longer. 'You have just done a bad action!' he exclaimed.

'How?'

'How? A God of kindness would be charitable to all. Your God of wrath and punishment is but a monstrous phantasy.... It is not necessary that one should humble oneself to deserve assistance, it is sufficient that one should suffer.'

'No, no! Those who sin deserve their sufferings! Let them suffer if they persist in impiety. My duty is to do nothing for them.'

That same evening, when they were alone, the quarrel began afresh, and Marc, on his side, for the first time became violent, unable as he was to forgive Geneviève's lack of charity. Hitherto he had fancied that her mind alone was threatened, but was it not evident now that her heart also would be spoilt? And that night irreparable words were spoken, husband and wife realised what an abyss had been dug between them by invisible hands. Then both relapsed into silence in the black room full of grief and pain, and on the morrow they did not exchange a word.

Moreover, a source of constant disputes, one which was bound to make rupture inevitable, had now sprung up. Louise would be soon ten years old, and the question of sending her to Abbé Quandieu's Catechism classes, in order that she might be prepared for her first Communion, presented itself. Marc, after begging Mademoiselle Rouzaire to exempt his daughter from all religious exercises, had noticed that the schoolmistress took no account of his request, but crammed the child with orisons and canticles as she did with her other pupils. But he was obliged to close his eyes to it, for he realised that the schoolmistress was only too anxious to have a chance of appealing to Geneviève on the subject in order to create trouble in his home. When the Catechism question arose, however, he desired to act firmly, and watched for an opportunity to have a decisive explanation with Geneviève. That opportunity presented itself naturally enough on the day when Louise, returning from her lessons, said to her mother in her father's presence: 'Mamma, Mademoiselle Rouzaire told me to ask you to see Abbé Quandieu, so that he may put my name down for his Catechism class.'

'All right, my dear, I will go to see him to-morrow.'

Marc, who was reading, quickly raised his head: 'Excuse me, my dear, but you will not go to Abbé Quandieu.'

'Why not?'

'It is simple enough. I do not wish Louise to follow the Catechism lessons because I do not wish her to make her first Communion.'

Geneviève did not immediately lose her temper, but laughed as if with ironical compassion: 'You are out of your senses, my friend,' said she. 'Not make her first Communion indeed! Why in that case how would you find a husband for her? What a casteless, shameless position you would give her throughout her life! Besides, you allowed her to be baptised, you allowed her to learn her Bible history and prayers, so it is illogical on your part to forbid the Catechism and the Communion.'

Marc also kept his temper for the moment, and answered quietly: 'You are right, I was weak, and for that very reason I am resolved to be weak no longer. I showed all tolerance for your belief as long as the child remained quite young, and hung about your skirts. A daughter, it is said, ought to belong more particularly to her mother, and I am willing that it should be so until the time comes when the question of the girl's moral life, her whole future, presents itself. Surely the father then has a right to intervene?'

Geneviève waved her hand impatiently and her voice began to tremble as she answered: 'I wish Louise to follow the Catechism lessons, you don't wish her to do so. If we have equal rights over the child we may go on disputing for ever without reaching a solution. What I desire seems to you idiotic, and what you desire appears to me abominable.'

'Oh! what I desire, what I desire! My desire simply is that my daughter shall not be prevented from exercising her own free will later on.... The question now is to profit by her childishness in order to deform her mind and heart, poison her with lies, and render her for ever incapable of becoming human and sensible. And that is what I desire to prevent. But I do not wish to impose my will on her, I simply wish to ensure her the free exercise of her will at a later date.'

'But how do you provide for that? What is to be done with this big girl?'

'It is only necessary to let her grow up and to open her eyes to every truth. When she is twenty she will decide who is right—you or I; and if she should then think it sensible and logical she will revert to the Catechism and make her first Communion.'

At this Geneviève exploded: 'You are really mad! You say such absurd things before the child that I feel ashamed of you!'

Marc also lost patience. 'Absurd, my poor wife? It is your notions that are absurd! And I won't have my child's mind perverted with such absurdities.'

'Be quiet! be quiet!' she cried. 'You don't know what you wrench from me when you speak like that! Yes, you tear away all my love for you, all our happiness, which I should still like to save!... But how are we to agree if words no longer have the same meaning for us, if what you declare to be absurd is for me the divine and the eternal?... And is not your fine logic at fault? How can Louise choose between your ideas and mine if you now prevent me from having her instructed as I desire?... I do not prevent you from telling her whatever you wish, but I must be free to take her to the Catechism class.'

Marc was already weakening: 'I know the theory,' said he. 'The child enlightened by both the father and the mother, with the right of choosing between their views later on. But is that right left intact when a full course of religious training, aggravating the child's long Catholic heredity, deprives her of all power of thinking and acting freely? The father, who is so imperfectly armed, can do little when he talks truth and sense to a girl whose senses and whose heart are disturbed by others. And when she has grown up amid the pomps of the Church, its terrifying mysteries and its mystical absurdities, it is too late for her to revert to a little sense—her mind has been warped for ever.'

'If you have your right as a father,' Geneviève retorted violently, 'I have my right as a mother. You are not going to take my daughter from me when she is only ten years old and still has so much need of me. It would be monstrous! I am an honest woman, and I mean to make Louise an honest woman too.... She shall go to the Catechism class, and, if necessary, I myself will take her!'

Marc, who had risen from his chair, made a furious gesture of protest, but he had strength enough to restrain the violent, the supreme words which would have precipitated immediate rupture. What could he say, what could he do? As usual, he recoiled from the fearful prospect of seeing his home destroyed, his happiness changed into hourly torture. He still loved that woman who showed herself so narrow-minded and particularly so stubborn; there still lingered on his lips the taste of hers; and he could not forget, he could not obliterate, the happy days of their early married life, the powerful bond then formed between them, that child who was the flesh of their flesh, and now the cause of their quarrels. Like many others before him he felt he was driven into a corner, whence he could not extricate himself unless he took to brutal courses—tore the child from her mother's arms, and plunged the house into desolation and commotion every day. And there was too much gentleness, too much kindness, in his nature; he lacked the cold energy that was requisite for a struggle in which his own heart and the hearts of those he loved must bleed. On that field then he was foredoomed to defeat.

Louise had listened in silence, without moving, to the dispute between her father and mother. For some time past, whenever she had seen them thus at variance, her large brown eyes had glanced from one to the other with an expression of sad and increasing surprise.

'But, papa,' she now said, amid the painful silence which had fallen, 'why don't you wish me to go to the Catechism class?'

She was very tall for her age, and had a calm and gentle face, in which the features of the Duparques and the Froments were blended. Though she was still only a child, she displayed keen intelligence, and a thirst for information which constantly impelled her to ply her father with questions. And she worshipped him, and showed also great affection for her mother, who attended to all her wants with a kind of loving passion.

'So you think, papa,' she resumed, 'that if things which are not reasonable are told me at the Catechism class I shall accept them?'

Marc, in spite of his emotion, could not help smiling. 'Reasonable or not,' said he, 'you must of necessity accept them.'

'But you will explain them to me?'

'No, my dear; they are, and must remain, unexplainable.'

'But you explain to me everything I ask you when I come back from Mademoiselle Rouzaire's and haven't understood some lesson.... It is thanks to you that I am often the first of my class.'

'If you came back from Abbé Quandieu's there would be nothing for me to explain to you,' Marc answered, 'for the essential characteristic of the pretended truths of the Catechism is that they are not accessible to our reason.'

'Ah! how funny!'

For a moment Louise remained silent, in meditation, her glance wandering far away. Then, still with a pensive expression on her face, she slowly gave utterance to her thoughts. 'It's funny; when things haven't been explained to me and I don't understand them I recollect nothing about them, it is as if they didn't exist. I close my eyes and see nothing. Everything is black. And then, however much I may try, I'm the last of the class.'

She looked charming with her serious little face, well balanced as she already was, going instinctively towards all that was good, clear, and sensible. Whenever an attempt was made to force into her head things whose sense escaped her, or which seemed to her to be wrong, she smiled in a quiet way and passed them by.

But Geneviève now intervened, saying with some irritation, 'If your father cannot explain the Catechism to you I will do so.'

At this Louise immediately ran to kiss her mother as if she feared she had offended her: 'That's it, mamma, you will hear me my lessons. You know that I always try my best to understand.' And, turning towards her father, she gaily resumed, 'You see, papa, you may as well let me go to the Catechism, particularly as you say yourself that one ought to learn everything, so that one may be the better able to judge and choose.'

Then, once again, Marc gave way, having neither the strength nor the means to act otherwise. He reproached himself with his weakness; but such was his craving for affection that it was impossible for him to be otherwise than weak when he thought of his devastated home where the struggle each day became more painful.

The rupture was soon to be precipitated, however, by a final incident. Years had elapsed since Marc's arrival at Maillebois, and there had been all sorts of changes among his pupils. Sébastien Milhomme, his favourite, now fifteen years of age, was by his advice preparing himself for admission into the Training College of Beaumont, having secured his elementary certificate already in his twelfth year. Four other boys had left the school with similar certificates—the two Doloirs and the twin Savins. Auguste Doloir had now embraced his father's calling as a mason, while his brother Charles had been apprenticed to a locksmith. As for Savin, he had declined to follow Marc's advice and make schoolmasters of his sons, for he did not wish to see them starve, said he, in an ungrateful calling which everybody held in contempt. So he had proudly placed Achille with a process-server and was looking about him for some petty employment which would suit Philippe.

Meantime, the hard-headed Fernand Bongard had quietly returned to his father's farm to till the ground, having failed to gain a certificate, though in Marc's hands he had acquired more understanding than his parents possessed. As for the girls who had quitted Mademoiselle Rouzaire, Angèle Bongard, who was more intelligent than her brother, had duly carried a certificate to the farm, where, like the shrewd ambitious young person she was, quite capable of keeping accounts, she dreamt of improving her position. Then Hortense Savin, still without a certificate at sixteen years of age, had become a very pretty brunette, extremely devout and sly. She had remained a Handmaiden of the Virgin, and her father dreamt of a fine marriage for her, though there were rumours of a mysterious seduction, the consequences of which she each day found it more difficult to hide.

Of course several new boys had come to Marc's school, replacing their elders there. There was another little Savin, Jules, whom Marc remembered having seen as an infant at the time of the Simon case; and there was another little Doloir, Léon, born subsequent to the affair, and now nearly seven years old. Later on the children's children would be coming to the school, and if Marc were left at his post perhaps he would teach them also, thus facilitating another step to humanity, ever on the march towards increase of knowledge.

But Marc was particularly concerned about one of his new boys, one whom he had greatly desired to have at the school. This was little Joseph, Simon's son, who had now almost completed his eleventh year. For a long time Marc had not dared to expose him to the taunts and blows of the other boys. Then, thinking that their passions had calmed down sufficiently, he had made the venture, applying to Madame Simon and the Lehmanns, and promising them that he would keep a good watch over the lad. For three years now he had had Joseph in the school, and, after defending him against all sorts of vexations, had prevailed on the other boys to treat him with some good fellowship. Indeed, he even made use of the lad as a living example when seeking to inculcate principles of tolerance, dignity, and kindness.

Joseph was a very handsome boy, in whom his mother's beauty was blended with his father's intelligence; and the dreadful story of his father's fate, with which it had been necessary to acquaint him, seemed to have ripened him before his time. Usually grave and reserved, he studied with a sombre ardour, intent on being always the first of his class, as if, by that triumph, to raise himself above all outrage. His dream, his express desire, which Marc encouraged, was to become a schoolmaster, for in this he boyishly pictured a kind of revanche and rehabilitation. No doubt it was Joseph's fervour, the passionate gravity of that clever and handsome boy, which the more particularly struck little Louise, whose senior he was by nearly three years. At all events she became his great friend, and they were well pleased whenever they found themselves together.

At times Marc kept Joseph after lessons, and at times also his sister Sarah came to fetch him. Then, if Sébastien Milhomme, as was sometimes the case, happened to be at Marc's, a delightful hour was spent. The four children agreed so well that they never quarrelled. Sarah, whom her mother feared to confide to others as she did her boy, was, at ten years of age, a most charming child, gentle and loving; and Sébastien, five years her elder, treated her with the playful affection of an elder brother. Geneviève alone manifested violent displeasure when the four children happened to meet in her rooms. She found in this another cause for anger with her husband. Why had he brought those Jews into their home? There was no need for her daughter to compromise herself by associating with the children of that horrid criminal who had been sent to the galleys! Thus this also helped to bring about quarrels in the home.

At last came the fated catastrophe. One evening, when the four young people were playing together after lessons, Sébastien suddenly felt ill. He staggered as if intoxicated, and Marc had to take him to his mother's. On the morrow the boy was unable to leave his bed, a terrible attack of typhoid fever prostrated him, and for three weeks his life hung in the balance. It was a frightful time for his mother, Madame Alexandre, who remained at his bedside, no longer setting foot in the shop downstairs. Moreover, since the Simon affair she had gradually withdrawn from it, leaving her sister-in-law, Madame Edouard, to conduct the business in accordance with their joint interests. As a matter of fact, Madame Edouard, who was the man in their partnership, was designated for the directorship by the triumph of the clerical party. The custom of the secular school was sufficiently insured by the presence of Madame Alexandre behind her, and for her own part she intended to increase her business among the devotees of the town with the help of her son Victor, who had lately left the Brothers' school.

He was now a big, squarely-built youth of seventeen, with a large head, a harsh face, and fierce eyes. He had failed to secure an elementary certificate, having always shown himself an execrable pupil; and he now dreamt of enlisting and becoming a general as in the old days, when he had played at war with his cousin Sébastien, taken him prisoner, and pommelled him passionately. Meantime, as he was not old enough for soldiering, he lived in idleness, making his escape from the shop as often as possible—for he hated having to stand behind a counter and sell paper and pens—and roaming through Maillebois in the company of his old schoolfellow Polydor, the son of Souquet the road-mender, and the nephew of Pélagie, Madame Duparque's servant.

Polydor, a pale and artful youth, whose taste for idleness was extraordinary, desired to become an Ignorantine by way of flattering the inclinations of his aunt, from whom he thereby extracted little presents. Moreover, by embracing this religious calling he would not have to break stones on the roads as his father did, and, in particular, he would escape barrack-life, the thought of which quite horrified him. Though in other respects Victor and Polydor had different tastes, they were in full agreement as to the delight of roaming about from morn till night with their hands in their pockets, to say nothing of their goings on with the little hussies of the factory quarter of the town, whom they met in the fields near the Verpille. In this wise, Victor being always out and about, and Madame Alexandre remaining beside her son, Madame Edouard, since Sébastien had fallen so seriously ill, found herself quite without assistance in the shop, where she busied herself with her customers and gaily counted up her takings, which were often large.

Marc went every evening to ascertain the condition of his pupil, and thus he became a daily spectator of a heartrending drama—the bitter grief of a mother who saw death taking her son a little further from her every hour. That gentle, fair, pale-faced Madame Alexandre, who had loved her husband passionately, had been leading a cloistered life, as it were, ever since his death, all her restrained passion going to that son of hers, who was fair and gentle like herself. Fondled, almost spoilt by that loving mother, Sébastien regarded her with a kind of filial idolatry, as if she were a divine mother whom he could never requite for all her delightful gifts. They were united by a strong, a powerful bond of tender affection, one of those infinite affections in which two beings mingle and blend to such a point that neither can quit the other without wrenching away his or her heart.

When Marc reached the little dark, close room over the stationery shop, he often found Madame Alexandre forcing back her tears and striving to smile at her son, who lay there already emaciated and burning with fever.

'Well, Sébastien, are you better to-day?' the master would ask.

'Oh! no, Monsieur Froment, I'm no better at all—no better at all.'

He could scarcely speak, his voice was faint, his breath came short. But the red-eyed, shuddering mother exclaimed gaily: 'Don't listen to him, Monsieur Froment, he is much better, we shall pull him through it.'

When, however, she had escorted the schoolmaster to the landing, and stood there with him after closing the door of the room, she broke down.

'Ah! God, he is lost, my poor child is lost! Is it not abominable, so strong and handsome as he was! His poor face is reduced to nothing; he has only his eyes left! Ah! God, God, I feel I shall die with him.'

But she stifled her cries, roughly wiped away her tears, and put on her smile once more before returning to the chamber of suffering where she spent hours and hours, without sleep, without help, ever fighting against death.

One evening Marc found her sobbing on her knees beside the bed, her face close pressed to the sheets. Her son could no longer hear or see her. Since the previous night he had been overpowered by his malady, seized with delirium. And now that he had neither ears to hear her nor eyes to see her, she abandoned herself to her frightful grief, and cried it aloud: 'My child, my child! What have I done that my child should be stolen from me? So good a son, who was all my heart as I was his! What can I have done then? What can I have done?'

She rose and, grasping Marc's hands, pressed them wildly. 'Tell me, monsieur, you who are just,' said she. 'Is it not impossible to suffer so much, to be stricken like this if one be free from all blame?... It would be monstrous to be punished when one has done no wrong. Is it not so? This, then, can only be an expiation, and if that were true, ah! if I knew, if I knew it were so!...'

She seemed a prey to some horrible struggle. For some days past anguish had been making her restless. Yet she did not speak out that evening; it was only on the morrow that, on Marc's arrival, she hastened towards him, as if carried away by an eager desire to have it all over. In the bed near her lay Sébastien, scarce able to breathe.

'Listen, Monsieur Froment,' said she, 'I must confess myself to you. The doctor has just left, my son is dying, only a prodigy can save him.... And now my fault stifles me. It seems to me that it is I who am killing my son—I who am punished by his death for having made him speak falsely long ago, and for having clung so stubbornly to that falsehood later on, in order to have peace and quietness in my home, when another, an innocent man, was suffering the worst torture.... Ah! for many, many days the struggle has been going on within me, lacerating my heart!'

Marc listened, amazed, not daring as yet to give a meaning to her words.

'You remember, Monsieur Froment,' she resumed, 'you remember that unhappy man Simon, the schoolmaster who was condemned for the murder of little Zéphirin. For more than eight years he has been in penal servitude, and you have often told me of all he suffered yonder, horrible things which made me feel quite ill.... I should have liked to speak out—yes, I swear it! I was often on the point of relieving my conscience, for remorse haunted me so dreadfully.... But cowardice came over me; I thought of my son's peace, of all the worries I should cause him.... Ah! how stupid, how foolish I was; I remained silent for the sake of his happiness, and now death is taking him from me—taking him, it's certain, because I wrongly remained silent!'

She paused, gesticulating wildly, as if Justice, the eternal, were falling on her like a thunderbolt.

'And so, Monsieur Froment, I must relieve my mind. Perhaps there is still time—perhaps Justice will take pity on me if I repair my fault.... You remember the writing slip, and the search which was made for another copy of it. On the day after the crime Sébastien told you that he had seen one in the hands of his cousin Victor, who had brought it from the Brothers' school; and that was true. But that same day we were frightened to such a point that my sister-in-law compelled my son to tell a falsehood by saying that he had made a mistake.... A long while afterwards I found that slip forgotten in an old copybook which Victor had given to Sébastien, and later Sébastien, who felt worried by his falsehood, acknowledged it to you. When he came home and told me of his confession, I was filled with alarm, and in my turn I lied—first of all to him, saying, in order to quiet his scruples, that the paper no longer existed, as I had destroyed it. And that assuredly is the wrong-doing for which I am punished. The paper still exists; I never dared to burn it; some remaining honesty restrained me. And here, here it is, Monsieur Froment! Rid me of it, rid me of that abominable paper, for it is that which has brought misfortune and death into the house!'

She hastened to a wardrobe, and from under a pile of linen she drew Victor's old copybook, in which the writing slip had been slumbering for eight years past. Marc looked at it, thunderstruck. At last, there was the document which he had believed to be destroyed, there was the 'new fact' which he had sought so long! The slip he held appeared to be in all respects similar to the one which had figured at the trial. There were the words 'Aimez vous les uns les autres'; there was the illegible paraph recalling the one which the experts had pretended to identify with Simon's initials; and it was difficult to contend that the slip had not come from the Brothers' school, for Victor himself had copied it in his book, a whole page of which was filled with the words inscribed on it. But all at once Marc was dazed. There, in the left-hand corner of the slip—the corner missing in the copy which had been used in evidence at the trial—was an imprint, quite plain and quite intact, of the stamp with which the Brothers stamped everything belonging to their school. A sudden light was thus shed on the affair: somebody had torn away the corner of the copy found in Zéphirin's room in order to annihilate the stamp and put Justice off the scent.

Quivering with excitement, carried away by gratitude and sympathy, Marc grasped the poor mother's hands. 'Ah, madame,' he exclaimed, 'you have done a great and worthy action, and may death take pity and restore your son to you!'

At that moment they perceived that Sébastien, who had given no sign of consciousness since the previous evening, had just opened his eyes and was looking at them. They felt profoundly stirred. The ailing lad evidently recognised Marc, but he was not yet free from delirium. 'What beautiful sunshine, Monsieur Froment,' he stammered in a faint voice. 'I'll get up and you'll take me with you. I'll help you to give lessons.'

His mother ran to him and kissed him wildly. 'Make haste to get well, make haste to get well, my boy! Neither of us must ever more tell a falsehood, we must be always good and just!'

As Marc quitted the room he found that Madame Edouard, hearing a noise, had come upstairs. The door having remained open she had witnessed the whole scene, and had seen him place her son's old copybook and the slip in the inner pocket of his coat. She followed him down the stairs in silence, but when they reached the shop she stopped him, saying, 'I am in despair, Monsieur Froment. You must not judge us severely; we are only two poor lone women, and find it difficult indeed to earn a little competence for our old age.... I don't ask you to give me that paper back. You are going to make use of it, and I cannot oppose you: I understand it fully. Only this is a real catastrophe for us.... And again, do not think me a bad woman if I try to save our little business.'

Indeed she was not a bad woman; it merely happened that she had no faith, no passion, apart from the prosperity of that humble stationery business. She had already reflected that if the secular school should gain the day, it would merely be necessary for her to retire into the background and allow Madame Alexandre to direct the shop. Nevertheless, this was hardly a pleasant prospect, given her business instincts and her fondness for domineering over others. So she strove to lighten the catastrophe as far as possible.

'You might content yourself with utilising the slip, without producing my son's copybook,' said she. 'Besides, it has just occurred to me that you might arrange a story and say, for instance, that I happened to find the slip and gave it to you. That would show us in a suitable rôle, and we could then openly pass over to your side, with the certainty that you would be victorious.'

In spite of his emotion Marc could not refrain from smiling. 'It is, I think, madame, easiest and most honourable to tell the truth,' said he. 'Your rôle will nevertheless remain praiseworthy.'

At this she seemed to feel somewhat reassured. 'Really,' she replied, 'you think so? Of course I ask nothing better than that the truth should become known if we do not have to suffer from it.'

Marc had complaisantly taken the copybook and the slip from his pocket in order to show her exactly what he was carrying away. And she was telling him that she fully recognised both book and slip when, all at once, her son Victor came in from some escapade, accompanied by his friend Polydor Souquet. While twisting about and laughing over some prank known to themselves alone, the two young fellows glanced at the copy-slip, and Polydor at once expressed the liveliest surprise.

'Hallo!' he exclaimed, 'the paper!'

But when Marc quickly raised his head, struck as he was by that exclamation, and divining that a little more of the truth lurked behind it, the youth reassumed his usual sleepy, hypocritical expression and tried to recall his words.

'What paper? Do you know it, then?' Marc asked him.

'I? No.... I said the paper because—because it is a paper.'

Marc could draw nothing further from him. As for Victor, he continued to sneer as if he were amused to find that old affair cropping up once more. Ah! yes, the copy-slip which he had brought home from school one day long ago, and which that little fool Sébastien had made such a fuss about! But Madame Edouard still felt ashamed, and when Marc withdrew she accompanied him outside to beg him to do all he could to spare them worry. She had just thought of General Jarousse, their cousin, who would certainly not be pleased if the affair were revived. He had formerly done them the great honour to call on them and explain that when one's country might suffer from the truth being made known it was infinitely preferable and far more glorious to tell a lie. And if General Jarousse should be angered, whatever would she do with her son Victor, who relied on his relative's protection to become a general in his turn?

That evening Marc was to dine at Madame Duparque's, whither he still repaired at times, as he was unwilling that Geneviève should always go alone. Polydor's exclamation still haunted him, for he felt that the truth lurked behind it; and it so happened that when he reached the ladies' house, with Geneviève and Louise, he caught sight of the young fellow whispering eagerly to his aunt Pélagie in the kitchen. Moreover, the ladies' greeting was so frigid that Marc divined in it some threat. During the last few years Madame Berthereau, Geneviève's mother, had been declining visibly, ever in an ailing state, full also of a kind of despairing sadness amid her resignation. But Madame Duparque, the grandmother, though she was now seventy-one, remained combative, terrible, implacable in her faith. In order that Marc might fully understand for what exceptional reasons she thought it right to receive him, she never invited anybody else when he dined at her house. By this course she hoped also to make him understand that his position was that of a pariah, and that it was impossible to ask honest folk to meet him.

That evening, then, as on previous occasions, silence and embarrassment reigned during the meal, and by the hostile demeanour of the others, and particularly by the brusqueness of Pélagie, who served at table, Marc became fully convinced that some storm was about to burst on him. Until the dessert was served, however, Madame Duparque restrained herself like a bourgeoise intent on playing her part as mistress of the house correctly. At last, when Pélagie came in with some apples and pears, she said to her: 'You may keep your nephew to dinner, I give you permission.'

The old servant in her scolding, aggressive voice replied: 'Ah! the poor boy needs to recruit himself after the violence that was done him this afternoon.'

At this Marc suddenly understood everything. The ladies had been made acquainted with his discovery of the copy-slip by Polydor, who, for some reason which remained obscure, had hastened to tell everything to his aunt.

'Oh, oh!' said Marc, who could not help laughing, 'who was it that wanted to do violence to Polydor? Was it I, by chance, when the dear boy ventured to bamboozle me so pleasantly by feigning stupidity at Mesdames Milhommes' this afternoon?'

Madame Duparque, however, would not allow such a serious matter to be treated in that ironical fashion. She proceeded to unbosom herself without any show of anger, but in that rigid, cutting manner of hers which suffered no reply. Was it possible that the husband of her dear Geneviève still thought of reviving the abominable affair of that man Simon, that vile assassin, who had been so justly condemned, who deserved no pity whatever, and who ought indeed to have been guillotined? True, there was a monstrous legend of his innocence which evil-minded folk hoped to make use of in order to shake religion and hand France over to the Jews. And now, after obstinately searching among all that filth, Marc pretended that he had found the proof, the famous new fact, which had been announced so many times already. A fine proof indeed, a strip of paper, which had come nobody knew whence nor how, the invention of a pack of children who either lied or were mistaken!

'Grandmother,' Marc quietly answered, 'it was agreed that we should not speak of those matters any more. I have not ventured to make the slightest allusion to them; it is you who begin again. But what good can a dispute do? My conviction is absolute.'

'And you know the real culprit, and you intend to denounce him to justice?' asked the old lady, quite beside herself.

'Certainly.'

At this Pélagie, who was beginning to clear away, could not restrain herself. 'In any case it isn't Brother Gorgias, I can answer for that!' she suddenly cried.

Marc, enlightened by these words, turned towards her. 'Why do you say that?' he asked.

'Because on the evening of the crime Brother Gorgias accompanied my nephew Polydor to his father's, on the road to Jonville, and got back to the school before eleven o'clock. Polydor and other witnesses testified to that at the trial.'

Marc was still gazing fixedly at the old woman, but his mind was busy at work. That which he had long suspected was becoming a moral certainty. He could picture the Brother accompanying Polydor, then returning homeward, pausing before Zéphirin's open window, and talking to the boy. At last he climbed over the low window bar, the better perhaps to see the pictures which the lad had set out on his table. Then, however, came the horrid impulse, abominable madness... and, the child strangled, the murderer fled by the window, which he still left wide open. It was from his own pocket that he had taken that copy of Le Petit Beaumontais to use it as a gag, never noticing in his perturbation that the copy-slip was with the newspaper. And on the morrow, when the crime was discovered, it was Father Philibin, who, finding himself unable to destroy the slip, as Mignot had seen it, had been obliged to content himself with tearing away the corner on which the stamp was impressed, thus at all events removing all positive proof of the place whence the slip had come.

Slowly and gravely Marc answered Pélagie: 'Brother Gorgias is the culprit, everything proves it, and I swear it is so!'

Indignant protests arose around the table. Madame Duparque was stifling with indignation. Madame Berthereau, whose mournful eyes went from her daughter to her son-in-law, whose rupture she sorely dreaded, made a gesture of supreme despair. And while little Louise, who paid great attention to her father's words, remained there quietly, never stirring, Geneviève sprang to her feet and quitted the table, saying:

'You would do better to hold your tongue! It will soon be quite impossible for me to remain near you: you will end by making me hate you!'

Later that same evening, when Louise had gone to sleep and the husband and the wife also lay in bed, there came a moment of profound silence in their dark room. Since dinner neither had spoken to the other. But Marc was always the first to try to make friends, for he could not bear the suffering which their quarrels brought him. Now, however, when he gently sought to embrace Geneviève, she nervously pushed him away, quivering as if with repulsion.

'No: let me be!'

Hurt by her manner, he did not insist. And the silence fell heavily again. At last she resumed: 'There is one thing I have not yet told you.... I believe that I am enceinte.'

At this, full of happy emotion, her husband drew near to her again, anxious to press her to his heart. 'Oh! my dear, dear wife, what good news! Now we shall indeed belong to each other once more.'

But she freed herself from his clasp with even more impatience than before, as if his presence near her brought her real suffering. 'No, no, let me be,' she repeated; 'I am not well. I sha'n't be able to sleep; it fidgets me to feel you stirring near me.... It will be better to have two beds if things go on like this.'

Not another word passed between them. They lapsed into silence, speaking neither of the Simon affair nor of the tidings which Geneviève had so abruptly announced. Only the sound of their heavy breathing was to be heard in the dark and lifeless room. Neither was asleep, but neither could penetrate the other's anxious, painful thoughts; it was as if they inhabited two different worlds, parted by a distance of many thousand leagues. And vague sobs seemed to come from far away, from the very depths of the black and dolorous night, bewailing the death of their love.

IV

After a few days' reflection Marc made up his mind and requested David to meet him one evening at the Lehmanns' in the Rue du Trou.

For nearly ten years the Lehmanns had been living in their dim and damp little house, amid public execration. When, as sometimes happened, bands of clericals and anti-Semites came down and threatened the shop, they hastily put up the shutters and continued working by the smoky light of two lamps. All their Maillebois customers, even their co-religionists, having forsaken them, they were dependent on the piece-work they did for Paris clothiers dealing in ready-made goods. And that hard and ill-paid work kept old Lehmann and his mournful wife bent on their board for fourteen hours a day, and yielded scarcely enough money to provide food for themselves, Rachel, and her children, all of whom were huddled there in dismal distress, without a joy or a hope in life. Even now, after so many years, passing pedestrians spat on their doorstep to show how fully they loathed and hated that filthy den, whither, so the legend ran, Simon the murderer had brought Zéphirin's blood, while it was still warm, to use it in some vile deed of witchcraft. And nowadays to that abode of intense wretchedness and deep, cloistered grief came Simon's letters, briefer and more infrequent than formerly, yet still and ever telling the tale of the innocent man's long agony.

Those letters alone had the power of stirring Rachel into life, of drawing her from the torpor and resignation in which she spent most of her days. Her once beautiful countenance was now but a ruin, ravaged by her tears. She lived only for her children: Sarah, whom she still kept beside her, fearing to expose her to the insults of the malicious, and Joseph, whom Marc defended at the school. The dreadful story of their father's fate had long been hidden from them, but it had been necessary to tell them the truth at last, partly in order to spare them much painful doubt and cogitation. Nowadays, whenever a letter arrived from the penal settlement yonder, it was read in their presence; and those bitter trials inculcated virility of nature in them, and helped to ripen their budding minds. After each perusal their mother took them in her arms, repeating that nowhere under the skies was there a more honest, a more noble, a loftier-minded man than their father. She swore to them that he was innocent, she told them of the awful martyrdom he endured, she prophesied to them that he would some day be freed, rehabilitated, and acclaimed; and she asked them to love and revere him when that day should dawn, to encompass him with a worship whose sweetness might enable him to forget his many years of torture.

And yet would the unhappy man live until that day of truth and justice? It was a miracle that he had not succumbed already, among the brutes who crucified him. To survive, he had needed an extraordinary amount of moral energy, the frigid power of resistance, the well-balanced logical temperament with which nature had fortunately endowed him. Still, his last letters gave cause for increasing anxiety, he was evidently at the end of his strength, quite overcome. And Rachel's fears reached such a point that, without pausing to consult anybody, she, usually so languid, repaired one morning to La Désirade to see Baron Nathan, who was then staying there with the Sanglebœufs. She took with her the last letter she had received from her husband in order to show it to the Baron, meaning to beg him—triumphant Jew that he was, one of the gold-kings of the world—to exert his great influence in order to obtain a little pity for the poor, wretched, crucified Jew who was suffering yonder. And she came home in tears, shuddering, as if she had just left some dazzling and fearsome place. She could hardly remember what had happened. The Baron, the bloated renegade, had received her with a stern countenance, as if angered by her audacity. Perhaps it was his daughter, a white-faced, frigid lady, whom she had found with him. She could not tell exactly how they had got rid of her, but it was with words of refusal, such as might have been addressed to a beggar. Then she had found herself outside again, half-blinded by the wealth accumulated at that splendid abode of La Désirade, with its sumptuous reception-rooms, its running waters, and its white statues. And since that fruitless attempt she had relapsed into the mournful, waiting attitude of former days, ever garbed in black, like a living statue of mutely protesting grief in the midst of persecution.

The only person on whom Marc relied in that home of wretchedness and suffering was David, whose mind was so clear, whose heart was so upright and so firm. Ever since the condemnation of Simon Marc had seen him striving, evincing neither impatience, nor weakness, nor despair, despite all the difficulties of his task. Indeed, David's faith remained entire; he was convinced of his brother's innocence, and felt certain that he would some day prove it. He had understood at the outset that he would need some money to achieve his task, and he had arranged his life accordingly. He outwardly resumed the direction of the sand and gravel pits, which he had leased from Baron Nathan, in such wise that everybody believed that he conducted the business personally; but in reality the chief responsibility fell upon his foreman, who was devoted to him. And the profits, being handled prudently, sufficed for David's other work, his real mission, the investigations which he carried on so discreetly. Some people, who believed him to be a miser, accused him of earning large sums of money, and yet giving no help to his sister-in-law, who shared the wretched home of the Lehmanns, where incessant toil led only to a life of privations. At one moment also an attempt was made to dispossess David of his sand and gravel pits, the Sanglebœufs threatening him with an action-at-law, which was evidently prompted by Father Crabot. The Jesuit, indeed, was conscious of the stealthy, underhand efforts which that silent but active man was making, and would have liked to drive him from the district, or at least to cripple his resources. But David fortunately held a thirty years' lease from Baron Nathan, and thus he was still able to carry on the business which ensured him the money he needed.

His principal efforts had been long concentrated on the illegal communication which President Gragnon was said to have made to the jurors in their retiring room, when the proceedings in Simon's trial were over. After interminable inquiries David had collected enough information to picture the scene in its broad lines: the jurors, assailed by certain scruples, had sent for the presiding judge in order to question him about the penalties their verdict might entail; and the judge, in order to silence their scruples, had shown them an old letter of Simon's, which had been placed in his hands a moment previously. This letter, an insignificant note to a friend, acquired importance from the fact that it was followed by a postscript, signed with a paraph identical with the one which figured on the incriminating copy-slip. This singular document, produced at the last moment without the knowledge of the prisoner or his counsel, had assuredly led to the verdict of 'Guilty.' But how was David to establish all this? How could he induce one of the jurors to testify to the facts, the revelation of which would have brought about an immediate revision of the proceedings, particularly if—as David felt convinced—the postscriptum of the letter and its initialling were forgeries? He had long endeavoured to act, through others, on the foreman of the jury, Architect Jacquin, a devout and very upright Catholic; and he believed that he had lately disturbed that man's conscience by acquainting him with the illegality of the judge's communication under the circumstances. If, in addition, he could prove that the postscriptum and the paraph had been forged, Jacquin would speak out.

When Marc repaired to the Rue du Trou to keep the appointment he had made with David, he found the little shop shut, the house quite dark and lifeless. The family had prudently taken refuge in the back parlour, where Lehmann and his wife were working by lamplight; and it was there that the stirring scene took place in the presence of the quivering Rachel and her children, whose eyes were all ablaze.

Before speaking out, however, Marc wished to ascertain what point David had now reached in his investigations.

'Oh! things are moving, but still very, very slowly,' the other answered. 'Jacquin is one of those fair-minded Christians who worship a Deity of love and equity. At one moment I felt alarmed, for I discovered that Father Crabot was bringing the greatest pressure to bear on him through every possible intermediary. But I am now easy on that point—Jacquin will act only as his conscience may direct.... The difficulty is to get at the document in order that it may be examined by experts.'

'But did not Gragnon destroy it?' Marc inquired.

'It seems not. Having shown it to the jurors he did not dare to do so, but simply placed it with the papers in the case, among which it must still be. At least, such is the conviction of Delbos, based on certain information he has obtained. Thus the question is to exhume it from among the records, and it is not easy to devise a plausible motive for doing so.... Nevertheless, we are making progress.' And after a pause David added: 'And you, my friend, have you any good news?'

'Yes, good and great news.'

Then Marc slowly recounted all that had happened: Sébastien's illness, Madame Alexandre's despair, followed by her remorse and terror, which had prompted her to hand him the long-sought duplicate of the copy-slip, on which duplicate one found both the stamp of the Brothers' school and a paraph which undoubtedly represented Brother Gorgias's initials. 'Here it is,' said Marc. 'There, you see, is the stamp, in the very corner which was torn away from the copy found near little Zéphirin's body. We fancied that it might have been bitten off by the victim, but Father Philibin at least had time to tear it off; on that point the recollections of Mignot, my assistant, are precise.... Now, look at the paraph. It is identical with the other which figured at the trial, but it is more legible, and one can fully distinguish Brother Gorgias's initials,[1] that is an F and a G interlaced, which the experts, Masters Badoche and Trabut, with extraordinary aberration, persisted in declaring to be an L and an S, otherwise your brother's initials.... My conviction is now absolute: the culprit is Brother Gorgias, and none other.'

With passionate eagerness they all stared at the narrow yellow strip of paper produced by Marc, and scrutinised it in the pale lamplight. The old Lehmanns quitted their sewing and thrust their faces forward as if reviving to life. Rachel had emerged from her torpor, and stood there quivering, while the two children, Joseph and Sarah, their eyes aflame, pushed one another in order that they might see the better. Finally David, amid the deep silence of that mourning home, took the paper from Marc and examined it.

'Yes, yes,' he said, 'my conviction is the same as yours. What was suspected has now become certain. Brother Gorgias is the guilty man!'

A long discussion followed; all the facts were recalled in succession, and united in one sheaf. They threw light on each other, and all tended to the same conclusion. Apart from the material proofs which were beginning to come in, there was a moral certainty, the demonstration as it were of a mathematical problem, which reasoning sufficed to solve. No doubt obscurity still hung around a few points, such as the presence of the copy-slip in the Brother's pocket, and the fate of the corner on which the stamp had been impressed. But all the rest seemed certain: Gorgias returning home on the night of the crime, chance bringing him before Zéphirin's open and lighted window, temptation, and afterwards murder; then, on the morrow, chance likewise bringing Father Philibin and Brother Fulgence on the scene in such wise that they became mixed up in the tragedy and were forced to act in order to save one of their fellows. And how plainly did the mutilation of the copy-slip designate the culprit, whose name was virtually proclaimed also by the fierce campaign which had ensued, the great efforts which the Church had made in order to shield him, and cause an innocent man to be sentenced in his stead. Moreover, each day now brought fresh light, and before long the whole huge edifice of falsehood would crumble.

'So that is the end of our wretchedness!' exclaimed old Lehmann, becoming quite gay. 'It will only be necessary to show that paper and Simon will be restored to us.'

The two children were already dancing with delight, repeating in blissful accents: 'Oh! papa will come back! papa will come back!'

But David and Marc remained grave. They knew how difficult and dangerous the situation still was. Questions of the greatest weight and gravity had to be settled: how were they to make use of that newly-discovered document, what course was to be followed in applying for a revision of the trial? Thus Marc answered softly: 'One must think it over, one must wait a little longer.'

At this Rachel, relapsing into tears, stammered amid her sobs: 'Wait! wait for what? For the poor man to die yonder, amid the torture of which he complains?'

Once more the dark little house sank into mourning. All felt that their unhappiness was not yet over. After their keen momentary delight came frightful anxiety as to what the morrow might bring forth.

'Delbos alone can guide us,' said David by way of conclusion. 'If you are willing, Marc, we will go to see him on Thursday.'

'Quite so: call for me on Thursday.'

In ten years Advocate Delbos had risen to a remarkable position at Maillebois. The Simon affair, that compromising case, the brief in which had been prudently declined by all his colleagues and bravely accepted by himself, had decided his future. At that time he had been merely a peasant's son, imbued with some democratic instincts and gifted with eloquence. But, while studying the affair and gradually becoming the impassioned defender of the truth, he had found himself in presence of all the bourgeois forces coalescing in favour of falsehood and the maintenance of every social iniquity. And this had ended by making him a militant Socialist, one who felt convinced that the salvation of the country could come solely from the masses. By degrees the whole revolutionary party of the town had grouped itself around him, and at the last elections he had forced a second ballot on the radical Lemarrois, who had been deputy for twenty years. And if Delbos still suffered in his immediate interests from the circumstance that he had defended a Jew charged with every crime, he was gradually rising to a lofty position by the firmness of his faith and the quiet valour of his actions, going forward to victory with gay and virile confidence.

As soon as Marc had shown him the copy-slip obtained from Madame Alexandre, the advocate raised a loud cry of delight: 'At last we hold them!' And turning towards David he added: 'This gives us a second new fact. The first is the letter—a forgery, no doubt—which was illegally communicated to the jury.... We must try to find it among the papers of the case.... And the second is this copy-slip, bearing the stamp of the Brothers' school, and a paraph which is evidently that of Brother Gorgias. It will, I think, be easier and more effective to use this second proof.'

'Then what do you advise me to do?' asked David. 'My idea is to write a letter to the Minister of Justice on behalf of my sister-in-law, a letter formally denouncing Brother Gorgias as the perpetrator of the crime, and applying for the revision of my brother's case.'

Delbos had become thoughtful again. 'That would undoubtedly be the correct course,' said he, 'but it is a delicate matter, and we must not act too hastily.... Let us return for a moment to the illegal communication of that letter, which it will be so difficult for us to prove as long as we cannot induce Architect Jacquin to relieve his conscience. You remember Father Philibin's evidence—his vague allusion to a paper signed by your brother with a flourish, similar to that on the incriminating copy-slip—a paper about which he would give no precise information—being bound, said he, by confessional secrecy? Well, I am convinced that he was then alluding to the very letter which was placed in Judge Gragnon's hands at the last moment, for which reason, like you, I suspect it to be forged. But these are only suppositions, theories; and we need proofs. Now, if we drop that matter, and, for the time at all events, content ourselves with this duplicate copy of the writing slip, on which the school stamp appears, and on which the initialling is much plainer, we still find ourselves face to face with some puzzling, obscure points. Without lingering too much over the question how it happened that such a slip was in the Brother's pocket at the moment of the crime—a point which it is rather difficult to explain—I am very worried by the disappearance of the corner on which the school stamp must have been impressed; and I should like to find that corner before acting, for I can foresee all sorts of objections which will be raised in opposition to us, in order to throw the affair into a muddle.'

Marc looked at him in astonishment. 'What! find that corner? It would be a wonderful chance if we should do so! We even admitted that it might have been torn away by the victim's teeth.'

'Oh! that is not credible,' Delbos answered. 'Besides, in that case the fragment would have been found on the floor. Nothing was found, so the corner was intentionally torn off. Besides, we here detect the intervention of Father Philibin, for, as you have told me, your assistant Mignot remembers that at his first glance the copy-slip appeared to him to be intact, and that he felt surprised when, after losing sight of it for a moment, he saw it still in Father Philibin's hands and mutilated. So there is no doubt on the point; the corner was torn away by Father Philibin. Throughout the campaign it was he, always he who turned up at decisive moments to save the culprit! And this is why I should like to have complete proof—that is to say, the little fragment of paper which he carried away with him.'

At this David in his turn expressed his surprise: 'You think that he kept it?'

'Certainly I think so. At all events he may have kept it. Philibin is a taciturn man, extremely dexterous, however coarse and heavy he may look. He must have preserved that fragment as a weapon for his own defence, as a means of keeping a hold over his accomplices. I nowadays suspect that, influenced by some motive which remains obscure, he was the great artisan of the iniquity. Perhaps he was merely guided by a spirit of fidelity towards his chief, Father Crabot; perhaps there has been some skeleton between them since that suspicious affair of the donation of Valmarie; perhaps too Philibin was actuated simply by militant faith and a desire to promote the triumph of the Church. At all events he's a terrible fellow, a man of determination and action, by the side of whom that noisy, empty Brother Fulgence is merely a vain fool.'

Marc had begun to ponder. 'Father Philibin, Father Philibin.... Yes, I was altogether mistaken about him. Even after the trial I still thought him a worthy man, a man of upright nature, even if warped by his surroundings.... Yes, yes, he was the great culprit, the artisan of forgery and falsehood.'

But David again turned to Delbos: 'Suppose,' said he, 'that Philibin should have kept the corner which he tore from the slip, you surely don't expect that he will give it to you, if you ask him for it—do you?'

'Oh! no,' the advocate answered with a laugh. 'But before attempting anything decisive I should like to reflect, and ascertain if there is no means of securing the irrefutable proof. Moreover, a demand for the revision of a case is a very serious matter, and nothing ought to be left to chance.... Let me complete our case if I can; give me a few days—two or three weeks if necessary—and then we will act.'

On the morrow Marc understood by his wife's manner that her grandmother had spoken out and that the Congregations, from Father Crabot to the humblest of the Ignorantines, were duly warned. The affair suddenly burst into life again, there came increasing agitation and alarm. Informed as they were of the discovery of the duplicate copy-slip, conscious that the innocent man's family were now on the road to the truth, hourly expecting to see Brother Gorgias denounced, the guilty ones, Brother Fulgence, Father Philibin, and Father Crabot, returned to the fray, striving to hide their former crime by committing fresh ones. They divined that the masterpiece of iniquity which they had reared so laboriously, and defended so fiercely, was now in great peril, and, yielding to that fatality whereby one lie inevitably leads to endless others, they were ready for the worst deeds in order to save their work from destruction. Besides, it was no mere question of protecting themselves, the salvation of the Church would depend on the battle. If the infamous structure of falsehood should collapse, would not the Congregations be buried beneath it? The Brothers' school would be ruined, closed, while the secular school triumphed; the Capuchins' business would be seriously damaged, customers would desert them, their shrine of St. Antony of Padua would be reduced to paltry profits; the college of Valmarie likewise would be threatened, the Jesuits would be forced to quit the region which they now educated under various disguises; and all religious influence would decline, the breach in the flanks of the Church would be enlarged, and free thought would clear the highway to the future. How desperate therefore was the resistance, how fiercely did the whole clerical army arise in order that it might not be compelled to cede aught of the wretched region of error and dolour, which, for ages, it had steeped in night!

Before Brother Gorgias was even denounced, his superiors felt it necessary to defend him, to cover him at all costs, to forestall the threatened attack, by concocting a story which might prove his innocence. At the first moment, however, there was terrible confusion; the Brother was seen hurrying wildly, on his long thin legs, along the streets of Maillebois and the roads of the neighbourhood. With his eagle beak set between his projecting cheek-bones, his deep black eyes, with their thick brows, and his grimacing mouth, he resembled a fierce, scoffing bird of prey. In the course of one day he was seen on the road to Valmarie, then quitting the residence of Philis, the Mayor of Maillebois, then alighting from a train which had brought him from Beaumont. Moreover, both in the town and the surrounding country many cassocks and frocks were encountered hurrying hither and thither, thus testifying to a perfect panic. It was only on the morrow that the meaning of the agitation was made evident by an article in Le Petit Beaumontais, announcing in violent language that the whole Simon affair was to be revived by the friends of the ignoble Jew, who were about to agitate the region by denouncing a worthy member of one of the religious Orders, the holiest of men.

Brother Gorgias was not yet named, but from that moment a fresh article appeared every day, and by degrees the version of the affair which the Brother's superiors had concocted was set out in opposition to the version which, it was foreseen, would be given by David, though the latter had revealed it to nobody. However, the desire of the clericals was to wreck it beforehand. Everything was flatly denied. It was impossible that Brother Gorgias could have paused before Zéphirin's window on the night of the crime, for witnesses had proved that he had already returned to the school at half-past ten o'clock. Besides, the initialling on the copy-slip was not his, for the experts had fully recognised Simon's handwriting. And everything could be easily explained. Simon, having procured a writing slip, had imitated the Brother's paraph, which he had found in one of Zéphirin's copybooks. Then, as he knew that the slips were stamped at the Brothers' school, he had torn off one corner with diabolical cunning, in order to create a belief in some precaution taken by the murderer; his infernal object being to cast the responsibility of his own crime on some servant of God, and thereby gratify the hatred of the Church which possessed him—-Jew that he was, fated to everlasting damnation. And this extravagant story, repeated every day, soon became the credo of the readers whom the newspaper debased and poisoned with its falsehoods.

It should be mentioned, however, that at the first moment there was a little uncertainty and hesitation, for other explanations had been circulated, and Brother Gorgias himself appeared to have made some curious statements. Formerly hidden away in the background, now suddenly thrust into full light, this Brother Gorgias was an extraordinary character. The Countess de Quédeville, the former owner of Valmarie, had endeavoured to transform his father, Jean Plumet, a poacher, into a kind of gamekeeper. He, the son, had never known his mother, a hussy who rambled about the woods, for she had disappeared soon after his birth. Then his father had been shot one night by an old fellow poacher, and the boy, at that time twelve years old, had remained at Valmarie, protected by the Countess, and becoming the playfellow of her grandson Gaston, with the exact circumstances of whose death, while walking out with Father Philibin, he was doubtless well acquainted, as well as with all that had ensued when the last of the Quédevilles died and bequeathed the estate to Father Crabot. The two Jesuits had never ceased to take an interest in him, and it was thanks to them that he had become an Ignorantine, in spite, it was said, of serious circumstances which tended to prevent it. For these reasons certain evil-minded folk suspected the existence of some corpse between the two Jesuit fathers and their compromising inferior.

At the same time Brother Gorgias was cited as an admirable member of his cloth, one truly imbued with the Holy Spirit. He possessed faith, that sombre, savage faith which pictures man as a weakling, a prey to perpetual sin, ruled by an absolute master, a Deity of wrath and punishment. That Deity alone reigned; it was for the Church to visit His wrath upon the masses, whose duty it became to bow their heads in servile submission until the day of resurrection dawned amid the delights of the heavenly kingdom. He, Brother Gorgias, often sinned himself, but he invariably confessed his transgression with a vehement show of repentance, striking his breast with both fists, and humbling himself in the mud. Then he rose again, absolved, at rest, displaying the provoking serenity of a pure conscience. He had paid his debt, and he would owe nothing more until the weakness of his flesh should cast him into sin again. As a lad he had roamed the woods, growing up amid poaching and thieving, and hiding himself away with the little hussies of the district. Later, after joining the Ignorantines, he had displayed the keenest appetites, showing himself a big eater, a hard drinker, with inclinations towards lubricity and violence. But, as he said in that strangely-compounded, humble, scoffing, threatening way of his to Fathers Philibin and Crabot, whenever they reproached him for some too serious prank: did not everybody sin? did not everybody need forgiveness? Half amusing, half alarming them, he won their pardon, so sincere and stupendous did his remorse appear—remorse which sometimes impelled him to fast for a week at a stretch, and to wear hair-cloths, studded with small sharp nails, next to his skin. It was indeed on this account that he had been always well noted by his superiors, who recognised that he possessed the genuine religious spirit—the spirit which, when his monkish vices ran riot, atoned for them with the avenging flagellation of penitence.

Now, on the revival of the Simon case, Brother Gorgias made the mistake of saying too much in the course of his first confidential chats with the writers of Le Petit Beaumontais. No doubt his superiors had not yet expressly imposed their own version on him, and he was too intelligent to be blind to its exceeding absurdity. As another copy of the writing slip, one bearing his paraph, had been discovered, it must have seemed to him ridiculous to deny that this paraph was his writing. All the experts in the world would never prevent full light from being thrown on that point. Thus he gave some inkling of a version of his own, one which was more reasonable than that of his superiors, and in which a part of the truth appeared. For instance, he allowed it to be supposed that he had indeed halted for a moment outside Zéphirin's open window on the night of the crime, that he had engaged in a friendly chat with the little hunchback, and that he had scolded him on seeing on his table a copy-slip which he had taken from the school without permission. Next, however, had come falsehood. He, Gorgias, had gone off, the child had closed his window, then Simon must have come and have committed the horrid crime, Satan suddenly inspiring him to make use of the copy-slip, after which he had opened the window afresh, in order to let it appear that the murderer had fled that way.

But, although this version of the affair was at the first moment given by the newspaper, which declared that it emanated from a most reliable source, it was on the morrow contradicted energetically, even by Brother Gorgias himself, who repaired expressly to the newspaper office to enter his protest. He then swore on the gospel that he had gone straight home on the evening of the crime, and that the initialling on the copy-slip was a forgery in Simon's handwriting, even as the experts had demonstrated. As a matter of fact he was compelled to accept the concoction of his superiors in order that he might be backed up and saved by them. He grumbled over it, and shrugged his shoulders impatiently, for it seemed to him an extremely stupid version; but at the same time he bowed to the decision of the others, even though he foresaw that their system of defence must eventually crumble to pieces.

At this moment Brother Gorgias, with his scoffing impudence and his heroic mendacity, was really superb. But, then, was not the Deity behind him? Was he not lying in order to save Holy Church, knowing too that absolution would wash away his sin? He even dreamt of the palms of martyrdom; each pious act of infamy that he perpetrated would entitle him to another joy in heaven! From that moment, then, he became merely a docile instrument in the hands of Brother Fulgence, behind whom Father Philibin was secretly acting under the discreet orders of Father Crabot. Their tactics were to deny everything, even what was self-evident, for fear lest the smallest breach in the sacred wall of the Congregations should prove the beginning of inevitable ruin; and although their absurd version of the affair might seem idiotic to people possessed of logical minds, it would none the less long remain the only truth accepted by the mass of the faithful, with whom they could presume to do anything, knowing as they did their boundless, fathomless credulity.

The clericals, then, having assumed the offensive without waiting for Gorgias to be denounced, Brother Fulgence in particular displayed the most intemperate zeal. At times of great emotion, his father, the mad doctor who had died in an asylum, seemed to revive in him. With his brain all fogged, unhinged by vanity and ambition, he yielded to the first impulse that came to him, ever dreaming of doing some mighty service to the Church, which would raise him to the head of his Order. Thus, in the earlier stages of the Simon affair, he had lost the little common-sense which he had previously shown, for he had hoped that the case would yield him the glory he coveted; and now that it was revived he once more became delirious. He was constantly to be seen hurrying along the streets of Maillebois, little, dark, and lean, with the folds of his gown flying about him as if a gale were carrying him away. Whenever he entered into conversation he defended his school with passionate eagerness, calling on heaven to witness the angelic purity of his assistants. As for the abominable rumours which had been circulated long ago respecting some Brothers who had been so horribly compromised that it had been necessary to conjure them away with the greatest speed—all those infamous tales were inventions of the devil.

In this respect, perhaps, however contrary to the truth his vehement declarations might be, Brother Fulgence, in the first instance, made them in all good faith, for he lived very much in another world, far from mere reason. But he soon found himself caught beneath the millstone of falsehood; it became necessary that he should lie knowingly and deliberately, and he did so at last with a kind of devout rage, for the very love of God. Was he not, himself, chaste? Had he not always wrestled against temptation? That was so; and he therefore made it his duty to guarantee the absolute chastity of his entire Order; he answered for the Brothers who stumbled by the way, he denied to laymen the right of judging them, for the laymen belonged merely to the flock, they knew nought of the temple. If, then, Brother Gorgias had sinned, he owed account of it to God only, not to man. As a member of a religious Order he had ceased to be liable to human justice. In this way, consumed by his craving to thrust himself forward, Brother Fulgence went on and on, impelled by skilful and discreet hands which piled all responsibilities upon his shoulders.

It was not difficult to divine that Father Philibin stood behind him in the gloom—Father Philibin, who, in his turn, was the instrument of Father Crabot. But how supple and how powerful a one, retaining his personality even amidst his obedience! He willingly exaggerated the characteristics of his peasant origin, affecting the heavy bon-homie of some rough-hewed son of the soil; yet he was full of the shrewdest craft, endowed with the patience needed for long enterprises, which he conducted with wonderful dexterity. He was always striving to attain some mysterious object, but he made no stir, he showed no personal ambition; the only joy he coveted was that of seeing his work prosper. Supposing him to be possessed of faith, it must have been a desire to serve his superiors and the Church that impelled him to fight on like an unknown unscrupulous soldier. As Prefect of the Studies at Valmarie he there kept a watch over everything, busied himself with everything; for, however massive his build, he was very active. Mingling with the pupils of the college, playing with them, watching them, studying them, diving to the very depths of their souls, ascertaining everything he could about their relatives and their friends, he possessed the master's all-seeing eye, the mind which stripped the brains and hearts of others.