BOOK I

I

On the previous evening, that of Wednesday, Marc Froment, the Jonville schoolmaster, with Geneviève his wife and Louise his little girl, had arrived at Maillebois, where he was in the habit of spending a month of his vacation, in the company of his wife's grandmother and mother, Madame Duparque and Madame Berthereau--'those ladies,' as folk called them in the district. Maillebois, which counted two thousand inhabitants and ranked as the chief place of a canton, was only six miles distant from the village of Jonville, and less than four from Beaumont, the large old university town.

The first days of August were oppressively hot that year. There had been a frightful storm on the previous Sunday, during the distribution of prizes; and again that night, about two o'clock, a deluge of rain had fallen, without, however, clearing the sky, which remained cloudy, lowering, and oppressively heavy. The ladies, who had risen at six in order to be ready for seven o'clock Mass, were already in their little dining-room awaiting the younger folk, who evinced no alacrity to come down. Four cups were set out on the white oilcloth table-cover, and at last Pélagie appeared with the coffee-pot. Small of build and red-haired, with a large nose and thin lips, she had been twenty years in Madame Duparque's service, and was accustomed to speak her mind.

'Ah! well,' said she, 'the coffee will be quite cold, but it will not be my fault.'

When she had returned, grumbling, to her kitchen, Madame Duparque also vented her displeasure. 'It is unbearable,' she said; 'one might think that Marc took pleasure in making us late for Mass whenever he stays here.'

Madame Berthereau, who was more indulgent, ventured to suggest an excuse. 'The storm must have prevented them from sleeping,' she replied; 'but I heard them hastening overhead just now.'

Three and sixty years of age, very tall, with hair still very dark, and a frigid, symmetrically wrinkled face, severe eyes, and a domineering nose, Madame Duparque had long kept a draper's shop, known by the sign of 'The Guardian Angel,' on the Place St. Maxence, in front of the cathedral of Beaumont. But after the sudden death of her husband, caused, it was said, by the collapse of a Catholic banking-house, she had sensibly disposed of the business, and retired, with an income of some six thousand francs a year, to Maillebois, where she owned a little house. This had taken place about twelve years previously, and her daughter, Madame Berthereau, being also left a widow, had joined her with her daughter Geneviève, who was then entering her eleventh year. To Madame Duparque, the sudden death of her son-in-law, a State revenue _employé_, in whose future she had foolishly believed but who died poor, leaving his wife and child on her hands, proved another bitter blow. Since that time the two widows had resided together in the dismal little house at Maillebois, leading a confined, almost claustral, life, limited in an increasing degree by the most rigid religious practices. Nevertheless Madame Berthereau, who had been fondly adored by her husband, retained, as a memento of that awakening to love and life, an affectionate gentleness of manner. Tall and dark, like her mother, she had a sorrowful, worn, and faded countenance, with submissive eyes and tired lips, on which occasionally appeared her secret despair at the thought of the happiness she had lost.

It was by one of Berthereau's friends, Salvan, who, after being a schoolmaster at Beaumont, became an Inspector of Elementary Schools and, subsequently, Director of the Training College, that the marriage of Marc and Geneviève was brought about. He was the girl's surrogate-guardian. Berthereau, a liberal-minded man, did not follow the observances of the Church, but he allowed his wife to do so; and with affectionate weakness he had even ended by accompanying her to Mass. In a similarly affectionate way, Salvan, whose freedom of thought was yet greater than his friend's, for he relied exclusively on experimental certainty, was imprudent enough to foist Marc into a pious family, without troubling himself about any possibility of conflict. The young people were very fond of each other, and in Salvan's opinion they would assuredly arrange matters between them. Indeed, during her three years of married life, Geneviève, who had been one of the best pupils of the Convent of the Visitation at Beaumont, had gradually neglected her religious observances, absorbed as she was in her love for her husband. At this Madame Duparque evinced deep affliction, although the young woman, in her desire to please her, made it a duty to follow her to church whenever she stayed at Maillebois. But this was not sufficient for the terrible old grandmother, who in the first instance had tried to prevent the marriage, and who now harboured a feeling of dark rancour against Marc, accusing him of robbing her of her grandchild's soul.

'A quarter to seven!' she muttered as she heard the neighbouring church clock strike. 'We shall never be ready!'

Then, approaching the window, she glanced at the adjacent Place des Capucins. The little house was built at a corner of that square and the Rue de l'Église. On its ground floor, to the right and the left of the central passage, were the dining and drawing rooms, and in the rear came the kitchen and the scullery, which looked into a dark and mouldy yard. Then, on the first floor, on the right hand were two rooms set apart for Madame Duparque, and, on the left, two others occupied by Madame Berthereau; whilst under the tiles, in front of Pélagie's bed-chamber and some store places, were two more little rooms, which had been furnished for Geneviève during her girlhood, and of which she gaily resumed possession whenever she now came to Maillebois with her husband. But how dark was the gloom, how heavy the silence, how tomblike the chill which fell from the dim ceilings! The Rue de l'Église, starting from the apse of the parish church of St. Martin, was too narrow for vehicular traffic; twilight reigned there even at noontide; the house-fronts were leprous, the little paving-stones were mossy, the atmosphere stank of slops. And on the northern side the Place des Capucins spread out treeless, but darkened by the lofty front of an old convent, which had been divided between the Capuchins, who there had a large and handsome chapel, and the Brothers of the Christian Schools, who had installed a very prosperous educational establishment in some of the conventual dependencies.

Madame Duparque remained for a moment in contemplation of that deserted space, across which flitted merely the shadowy figures of the devout; its priestly quietude being enlivened at intervals only by the children attending the Brothers' school. A bell rang slowly in the lifeless air, and the old lady was turning round impatiently, when the door of the room opened and Geneviève came in.

'At last!' the grandmother exclaimed. 'We must breakfast quickly: the first bell is ringing.'

Fair, tall, and slender, with splendid hair, and a face all life and gaiety inherited from her father, Geneviève, childlike still, though two and twenty, was laughing with a laugh which showed all her white teeth. But Madame Duparque, on perceiving that she was alone, began to protest: 'What! is not Marc ready?'

'He's following me, grandmother; he is coming down with Louise.'

Then, after kissing her silent mother, Geneviève gave expression to the amusement she felt at finding herself once more, as a married woman, in the quiet home of her youth. Ah! she knew each paving-stone of that Place des Capucins; she found old friends in the smallest tufts of weeds. And by way of evincing amiability and gaining time, she was going into raptures over the scene she viewed from the window, when all at once, on seeing two black figures pass, she recognised them.

'Why, there are Father Philibin and Brother Fulgence!' she said. 'Where can they be going at this early hour?'

The two clerics were slowly crossing the little square, which, under the lowering sky, the shadows of their cassocks seemed to fill. Father Philibin, forty years of age and of peasant origin, displayed square shoulders and a course, round, freckled face, with big eyes, a large mouth, and strong jaws. He was prefect of the studies at the College of Valmarie, a magnificent property which the Jesuits owned in the environs of Maillebois. Brother Fulgence, likewise a man of forty, but little, dark, and lean, was the superior of the three Brothers with whom he carried on the neighbouring Christian School. The son of a servant girl and a mad doctor, who had died a patient in a madhouse, he was of a nervous, irritable temperament, with a disorderly overweening mind; and it was he who was now speaking to his companion in a very loud voice and with sweeping gestures.

'The prizes are to be given at the Brothers' school this afternoon,' said Madame Duparque by way of explanation. 'Father Philibin, who is very fond of our good Brothers, has consented to preside at the distribution. He must have just arrived from Valmarie; and I suppose he is going with Brother Fulgence to settle certain details.'

But she was interrupted, for Marc had at last made his appearance, carrying his little Louise, who, scarcely two years old, hung about his neck, playing and laughing blissfully.

'Puff, puff, puff!' the young man exclaimed as he entered the room. 'Here we are in the railway train. One can't come quicker than by train, eh?'

Shorter than his three brothers, Mathieu, Luc, and Jean, Marc Froment had a longer and a thinner face, with the lofty towerlike family forehead greatly developed. But his particular characteristics were his spell-working eyes and voice, soft clear eyes which dived into one's soul, and an engaging conquering voice which won both mind and heart. Though he wore moustaches and a slight beard, one could see his rather large, firm, and kindly mouth. Like all the sons of Pierre and Marie Froment,[1] he had learned a manual calling, that of a lithographer, and, securing his bachelor's degree when seventeen years of age, he had come to Beaumont to complete his apprenticeship with the Papon-Laroches, the great firm which supplied maps and diagrams to almost every school in France. It was at this time that his passion for teaching declared itself, impelling him to enter the Training College of Beaumont, which he had quitted in his twentieth year as an assistant-master, provided with a superior certificate. Having subsequently secured that of Teaching Capacity, he was, when seven and twenty, about to be appointed schoolmaster at Jonville when he married Geneviève Berthereau, thanks to his good friend Salvan, who introduced him to the ladies, and who was moved by the sight of the love which drew the young folk together. And now, for three years past, Marc and Geneviève, though their means were scanty and they experienced all manner of pecuniary straits and administrative worries, had been leading a delightful life of love in their secluded village, which numbered barely eight hundred souls.

[Footnote 1: See M. Zola's novel, _Paris_.]

But the happy laughter of the father and the little girl did not dissipate the displeasure of Madame Duparque. 'That railway train is not worth the coaches of my youth,' said she. 'Come, let us breakfast quickly, we shall never get there.'

She had seated herself, and was already pouring some milk into the cups. While Geneviève placed little Louise's baby-chair between herself and her mother, in order to keep a good watch over the child, Marc, who was in a conciliatory mood, tried to secure the old lady's forgiveness.

'Yes, I have delayed you, eh?' he said. 'But it is your fault, grandmother; one sleeps too soundly in your house, it is so very quiet.'

Madame Duparque, who was hurrying over her breakfast, with her nose in her cup, did not condescend to answer. But a pale smile appeared on the face of Madame Berthereau after she had directed a long look at Geneviève, who seemed so happy between her husband and her child. And in a low voice, as if speaking involuntarily, the younger widow murmured, glancing slowly around her: 'Yes, very quiet, so quiet that one cannot even feel that one is living.'

'All the same, there was some noise on the square at ten o'clock,' Marc retorted. 'Geneviève was amazed. The idea of a disturbance at night on the Place des Capucins!'

He had blundered badly in his desire to make the others laugh. This time it was the grandmother who, with an offended air, replied: 'It was the worshippers leaving the Capuchin Chapel. The offices of the Adoration of the Holy Sacrament were celebrated yesterday evening at nine o'clock. The Brothers took with them those of their pupils who attended their first Communion this year, and the children were rather free in talking and laughing as they crossed the square. But that is far better than the abominable pastimes of the children who are brought up without moral or religious guidance!'

Silence, deep and embarrassing, fell immediately. Only the rattle of the spoons in the cups was to be heard. That accusation of abominable pastimes was directed against Marc's school, with its system of secular education. But, as Geneviève turned on him a little glance of entreaty, he did not lose his temper. Before long he even resumed the conversation, speaking to Madame Berthereau of his life at Jonville, and also of his pupils, like a master who was attached to them and who derived from them pleasure and satisfaction. Three, said he, had just obtained the certificate awarded for successful elementary studies.

But at this moment the church bell again rang out slowly, sending a wail through the heavy atmosphere above the mournful, deserted district.

'The last bell!' cried Madame Duparque. 'I said that we should never get there in time!'

She rose, and had already begun to hustle her daughter and her granddaughter, who were finishing their coffee, when Pélagie, the servant, again appeared, this time trembling, almost beside herself, and with a copy of _Le Petit Beaumontais_ in her hand.

'Ah! madame, madame, how horrible! The newspaper boy has just told me----'

'What? Make haste!'

The servant was stifling.

'That little Zéphirin, the schoolmaster's nephew, has just been found murdered, there, quite near, in his room.'

'Murdered!'

'Yes, madame; strangled in his nightdress. It is an abominable affair!'

A terrible shudder swept through the room; even Madame Duparque quivered.

'Little Zéphirin?' said she. 'Ah! yes, the nephew of Simon, the Jew schoolmaster, a child with a pretty face but infirm. For his part the lad was a Catholic; he went to the Brothers' school, and he must have been at the ceremony last night, for he took his first Communion lately.... But what can you expect? Some families are accursed!'

Marc had listened, chilled and indignant. And careless now whether he gave offence or not, he answered: 'Simon, I know Simon! He was at the Training College with me; he is only two years older than myself. I know nobody with a firmer intellect, a more affectionate heart. He had given shelter to that poor child, that Catholic nephew, and allowed him to attend the Brothers' school, from conscientious scruples which are seldom found. What a frightful blow has fallen on him!'

Then the young man rose, quivering: 'I am going to him,' he added; 'I want to hear everything, I want to sustain him in his grief.'

But Madame Duparque no longer listened. She was pushing Madame Berthereau and Geneviève outside, scarcely allowing them time to put on their hats. The ringing of the last bell had just ceased, and the ladies hastened towards the church, amidst the heavy, storm-laden silence of the deserted square. And Marc, after entrusting little Louise to Pélagie, in his turn went out.

The elementary schools of Maillebois, newly built and divided into two pavilions, one for boys and one for girls, stood on the Place de la République, in front of the town hall, which was also a new building of corresponding architecture, and only the High Street, really a section of the road from Beaumont to Jonville running across the square, separated the two edifices, which with their chalky whiteness were the pride of the district. The High Street, which the parish church of St. Martin likewise faced, a little further down, was, as became a centre of trade, a populous thoroughfare, animated by the constant coming and going of pedestrians and vehicles. But silence and solitude were found again behind the schools, and weeds sprouted there between the little paving-stones. A street, the Rue Courte, in which one found but the parsonage and a stationer's shop kept by Mesdames Milhomme, connected the sleepy end of the Place de la République with the Place des Capucins, in such wise that Marc had few steps to take.

The school playgrounds faced the Rue Courte, and were separated by two little gardens set apart for the schoolmaster and the schoolmistress. On the ground floor of the boys' pavilion, at a corner of the playground, was a tiny room, which Simon had been able to give to little Zéphirin on taking charge of him. The boy was a nephew of his wife, Rachel Lehmann, and a grandson of the old Lehmanns, who were poor Jew tailors, dwelling in the Rue du Trou, the most wretched street of Maillebois. Zéphirin's father, Daniel Lehmann, a mechanician, had contracted a love-match with a Catholic girl, an orphan named Marie Prunier, who had been reared by the Sisters, and was a dressmaker. The young couple adored each other, and at first their son Zéphirin was not baptised nor indeed brought up in any religious faith, neither parent desiring to grieve the other by rearing the child according to his or her particular creed. But after the lapse of six years a thunderbolt fell: Daniel met with a frightful death, being caught and crushed to pieces in some machinery before the very eyes of his wife, who had come to the works, bringing his lunch with her. And Marie, terrified by the sight, won back to the religion of her youth, picturing the catastrophe as the chastisement of Heaven, which thereby punished her for her guilt in having loved a Jew, soon caused her son to be baptised, and sent him to the Brothers' school. Unhappily, through some hereditary taint or flaw, the lad's frame became distorted, he grew gradually humpbacked; in which misfortune the mother imagined she could trace the implacable wrath of God pursuing her relentlessly, because she was unable to pluck from her heart the fond memory of the husband she had adored. That anguish, combined with excessive toil, ended by killing her about the time when little Zéphirin, having reached his eleventh birthday, was ready to take his first Communion. It was then that Simon, though poor himself, gave the boy shelter, in order that he might not become a charge on his wife's relations. At the same time the schoolmaster, who was tolerant as well as kind-hearted, contented himself with lodging and feeding his nephew, allowing him to communicate as a Catholic and to complete his studies at the Brothers' school.

The little room in which Zéphirin slept--formerly a kind of lumber-room, but tidily arranged for him--had a window opening almost on a level with the ground, behind the school, the spot being the most secluded of the square. And that morning, about seven o'clock, as young Mignot, the assistant-master, who slept on the first floor of the building, went out, he noticed that Zéphirin's window was wide open. Mignot was passionately fond of fishing, and, profiting by the arrival of the vacation, he was about to start, in a straw hat and a linen jacket, and with his rod on his shoulder, for the banks of the Verpille, a streamlet which ran through the industrial quarter of Maillebois. A peasant by birth, he had entered the Beaumont Training College, even as he might have entered a seminary, in order to escape the hard labour of the fields. Fair, with close-cut hair, he had a massive pock-marked face, which gave him an appearance of sternness, though he was not hardhearted, being indeed rather kindly disposed; but his chief care was to do nothing which might impede his advancement. He was five and twenty years of age, but showed no haste to get married, waiting in that respect as in others, and destined to become such as circumstances might decree. That morning he was greatly struck by the sight of Zéphirin's open window, although there was nothing very extraordinary in such a thing, for the lad usually rose at an early hour. However, the young master drew near and glanced into the room. Then stupefaction rooted him to the spot, and his horror found vent in cries.

'O God, the poor boy! O God, God, what can have happened? What a terrible misfortune!'

The tiny room, with its light wall paper, retained its wonted quietude, its suggestion of happy boyhood. On the table was a coloured statuette of the Virgin with a few books and little prints of a religious character, carefully arranged and classified. The small white bed was in no wise disarranged, the lad had not slept in it that night. The only sign of disorder was an overturned chair. But on the rug beside the bed Zéphirin was lying strangled, his face livid, his bare neck showing the imprint of his murderer's cruel fingers. His rent garment allowed a glimpse of his misshapen spine, the hump, that jutted out below his left arm, which was thrown back across his head. In spite of its bluish pallor his face retained its charm; it was the face of a fair curly-haired angel, delicately girlish, with blue eyes, a slender nose, and a small sweet mouth, whose gentle laugh in happy hours had brought delightful dimples to the child's cheeks.

But Mignot, quite beside himself, did not cease to cry his horror aloud. 'Ah! God, God, how frightful! For God's sake help, help! Come quickly!'

Then Mademoiselle Rouzaire the schoolmistress, who heard the cries, hastened to the spot. She had been paying an early visit to her garden, being anxious about some lettuces which the stormy weather was helping to go to seed. She was a red-haired woman of two and thirty, tall and strongly built, with a round freckled face, big grey eyes, pale lips, and a pointed nose, which denoted cunning and avaricious harshness. Ugly though she was, her name had been associated with that of the handsome Mauraisin, the Elementary Inspector, whose support ensured her advancement. Moreover she was devoted to Abbé Quandieu, the parish priest, the Capuchins, and even the Christian Brothers, and personally conducted her pupils to the catechism classes and the church ceremonies.

As soon as she beheld the horrid sight, she also raised an outcry: 'Good Lord, take pity on us! It is a massacre; it is the devil's work, O God of Mercy!'

Then, as Mignot was about to spring over the window-bar, she prevented him: 'No, no, don't go in, one must ascertain, one must call----'

As she turned round, as if seeking somebody, she perceived Father Philibin and Brother Fulgence emerging from the Rue Courte, on their way from the Place des Capucins, across which Geneviève had seen them pass. She recognised them, and raised her arms to heaven, as if at the sight of Providence.

'Oh, Father! oh, Brother! come, come at once, the devil has been here!'

The two clerics drew near and experienced a terrible shock. But Father Philibin, who was energetic and of a thoughtful bent, remained silent, whereas impulsive Brother Fulgence, ever prompt to throw himself forward, burst into exclamations: 'Ah! the poor child, ah! what a horrid crime! So gentle and so good a lad, the best of our pupils, so pious and fervent too! Come, we must investigate this matter, we cannot leave things as they are.'

This time Mademoiselle Rouzaire did not dare to protest as the Brother sprang over the window-bar followed by Father Philibin, who, having perceived a ball of paper lying near the boy, at once picked it up. From fear or rather prudence the schoolmistress did not join the others; indeed, she even detained Mignot outside for another moment. That which the ministers of the Deity might venture to do was not fit perhaps for mere teachers. Meantime, while Brother Fulgence bent over the victim without touching him, but again raising tumultuous exclamations, Father Philibin, still silent, unrolled the paper ball, and, to all appearance, examined it carefully. He was turning his back to the window, and one could only see the play of his elbows, without distinguishing the paper, the rustling of which could be heard. This went on for a few moments; and when Mignot, in his turn, sprang into the room he saw that the ball which Father Philibin had picked up had been formed of a newspaper, in the midst of which a narrow, crumpled, and stained slip of white paper appeared.

The Jesuit looked at the assistant-master, and quietly and slowly remarked: 'It is a number of _Le Petit Beaumontais_ dated yesterday, August 2; but the singular thing is that, crumpled up in it, there should be this copy-slip for a writing lesson. Just look at it.'

As the slip had been noticed by Mignot already, Father Philibin could not do otherwise than show it; but he kept it between his big fingers so that the other only distinguished the words, _'Aimez vous les uns les autres'_ ('Love one another') lithographed in a well-formed 'English' round-hand. Rents and stains made this copy-slip a mere rag of paper, and the assistant-master gave it only a brief glance, for fresh exclamations now arose at the window.

They came from Marc, who had just arrived, and who was filled with horror and indignation at the sight of the poor little victim. Without listening to the schoolmistress's explanations, he brushed her aside and vaulted over the window-bar. The presence of the two clerics astonished him; but he learnt from Mignot that he and Mademoiselle Rouzaire had summoned them as they were passing, immediately after the discovery of the crime.

'Don't touch or disturb anything!' Marc exclaimed. 'One must at once send to the mayor and the gendarmerie.'

People were collecting already; and a young man, who undertook the suggested commission, set off at a run, while Marc continued to inspect the room. In front of the body he saw Brother Fulgence distracted with compassion, with his eyes full of tears, like a man of nervous temperament unable to control emotion. Marc was really touched by the Brother's demeanour. He himself shuddered at the sight of what he beheld, for the abominable nature of the crime was quite evident. And a thought, which was to return later on as a conviction, suddenly flitted through his mind, then left him, in such wise that he was only conscious of the presence of Father Philibin, who, full of deep distressful calm, still held the newspaper and the writing-copy. For a moment the Jesuit had turned round as if to look under the bed; then, however, he had stepped back.

'You see,' he said, without waiting to be questioned, 'this is what I found on the floor, rolled into a ball, which the murderer certainly tried to thrust into the child's mouth as a gag, in order to stifle his cries. As he did not succeed he strangled him. On this writing-copy, soiled by saliva, one can see the marks left by the poor little fellow's teeth. The ball was lying yonder, near that leg of the table. Is that not so, Monsieur Mignot? You saw it?'

'Oh! quite so,' replied the assistant-master, 'I noticed it at once.'

As he drew near again and examined the copy, he felt vaguely surprised on noticing that the right-hand corner of the slip of paper was torn off. It seemed to him that he had not remarked that deficiency when the Jesuit had first shown him the slip; but perhaps it had then been hidden by Father Philibin's big fingers. However, Mignot's memory grew confused; it would have been impossible for him to say whether that corner had been torn away in the first instance or not.

Marc, however, having taken the slip from the Jesuit, was studying it and expressing his thoughts aloud: 'Yes, yes, it has been bitten. But it won't be much of an indication, for such slips are sold currently; one can find them everywhere. Oh! but there is a kind of flourish down here, I see, some initialling which one cannot well decipher.'

Without any haste, Father Philibin stepped up to him. 'Some initialling? Do you think so? It seemed to me a mere blot, half effaced by saliva and by the bite which pierced the slip, close by.'

'A blot, no! These marks are certainly initials, but they are quite illegible.' Then, noticing that a corner of the slip was deficient, Marc added: 'That, no doubt, was done by another bite. Have you found the missing piece?'

Father Philibin answered that he had not looked for it; and he again unfolded the newspaper and examined it carefully, while Mignot, stooping, searched the floor. Nothing was found. Besides, the matter was regarded as being of no importance. Marc agreed with the two clerics that the murderer, seized with terror, must have strangled the boy after vainly endeavouring to stifle his cries by stuffing the paper gag into his mouth. The extraordinary circumstance was that the copy-slip should have been found rolled up with the newspaper. The presence of a number of _Le Petit Beaumontais_ could be understood, for anybody might have one in his pocket. But whence had that slip come, how did it happen to be crumpled, almost kneaded, with the newspaper? All sorts of suppositions were allowable, and the officers of the law would have to open an investigation in order to discover the truth.

To Marc it seemed as if a calamitous gust had just swept through the dim tragedy, suddenly steeping everything in horrid night. 'Ah!' he murmured involuntarily, 'it is Crime, the monster, in the depths of his dark pit.'

Meantime people continued to assemble before the window. On perceiving the throng the Mesdames Milhomme, who kept the neighbouring stationery business, had hastened from their shop. Madame Alexandre, who was tall, fair, and gentle in appearance, and Madame Edouard, who was also tall but dark and somewhat rough, felt the more concerned as Victor, the latter's son, went to the Brothers' school, while Sébastien, the former's boy, attended Simon's. Thus they listened eagerly to Mademoiselle Rouzaire, who, standing in the middle of the group, was giving various particulars, pending the arrival of the mayor and the gendarmes.

'I went myself,' she said, 'to that touching Adoration of the Holy Sacrament at the Capuchin Chapel last evening, and poor Zéphirin was there with a few schoolfellows--those who took their first Communion this year. He edified us all, he looked a little angel.'

'My son Victor did not go, for he is only nine years old,' Madame Edouard answered. 'But did Zéphirin go alone? Did nobody bring him back?'

'Oh! the chapel is only a few yards distant,' the schoolmistress explained. 'I know that Brother Gorgias had orders to escort the children whose parents could not attend, and whose homes are rather distant. But Madame Simon asked me to watch over Zéphirin, and it was I who brought him back. He was very gay; he opened the shutters, which were simply pushed to, and sprang into his room through the open window, laughing and saying that it was the easiest and shortest way. I stayed outside for a moment, waiting until he had lighted his candle.'

Marc, drawing near, had listened attentively. 'What time was it?' he now inquired.

'Exactly ten,' Mademoiselle Rouzaire replied. 'St. Martin's clock was striking.'

The others shuddered, moved by that account of the lad springing so gaily into the room where he was to meet such a tragic death. And Madame Alexandre gently gave expression to a thought which suggested itself to all: 'It was hardly prudent to let the lad sleep by himself in this lonely room, so easily reached from the square. The shutters ought to have been barred at night.'

'Oh! he fastened them,' said Mademoiselle Rouzaire.

'Did he do so last night while you were here?' inquired Marc, intervening once more.

'No, when I left him to go to my rooms he had lighted his candle and was arranging some pictures on his table, with the window wide open.'

Mignot, the assistant-master, now joined in the conversation. 'This window made Monsieur Simon anxious,' he said; 'he wished he could have given the lad another room. He often recommended him to fasten the shutters carefully. But I fear that the child paid little heed.'

The two clerics in their turn had now decided to quit the room. Father Philibin, after laying the number of _Le Petit Beaumontais_ and the copy-slip on the table, had ceased speaking, preferring to look and listen; and he followed very attentively each word and gesture that came from Marc, while Brother Fulgence, for his part, continued to relieve himself with lamentations. Eventually, the Jesuit, who seemed to read the young schoolmaster's thoughts in his eyes, remarked to him: 'So you think that some tramp, some night prowler, seeing the boy alone in this room, may have got in by the window?'

From prudence Marc would express no positive opinion. 'Oh! I think nothing,' said he; 'it is for the law to seek and find the murderer. However, the bed has not been opened, the boy was certainly about to get into it, and this seems to show that, the crime must have been committed shortly after ten o'clock. Suppose that he busied himself for half an hour at the utmost with his pictures, and that he then saw a stranger spring into his room. In that case he would have raised a cry, which would certainly have been heard. You heard nothing, did you, mademoiselle?'

'No, nothing,' the schoolmistress replied. 'I myself went to bed about half-past ten. The neighbourhood was very quiet. The storm did not awaken me until about one o'clock this morning.'

'Very little of the candle has been burnt,' Mignot now observed. 'The murderer must have blown it out as he went off by the window, which he left wide open, as I found it just now.'

These remarks, which lent some weight to the theory of a prowler springing into the room, ill-using and murdering the boy, increased the horror-fraught embarrassment of the bystanders. All wished to avoid being compromised, and therefore kept to themselves their thoughts respecting the impossibilities or improbabilities of the theory which had been propounded. After a pause, however, as the mayor and the gendarmes did not appear, Father Philibin inquired: 'Is not Monsieur Simon at Maillebois?'

Mignot, who had not recovered from the shock of his discovery, gazed at the Jesuit with haggard eyes. To bring the assistant-master to his senses, Marc himself had to express his astonishment: 'But Simon is surely in his rooms! Has he not been told?'

'Why no!' the assistant answered, 'I must have lost my head. Monsieur Simon went to attend a banquet at Beaumont yesterday evening, but he certainly came home during the night. His wife is rather poorly; they must be still in bed.'

It was now already half-past seven, but the stormy sky remained so dark and heavy that one might have thought dawn was only just appearing in that secluded corner of the square. However, the assistant-master made up his mind and ascended the stairs to fetch Simon. What a happy awakening it would be for the latter, he muttered sarcastically, and what an agreeable commission for himself was that which he had to fulfil with his chief!

Simon was the younger son of a Jew clockmaker of Beaumont; he had a brother, David, who was his elder by three years. When he was fifteen and David eighteen their father, ruined by lawsuits, succumbed to a sudden attack of apoplexy; and three years later their mother died in very straitened circumstances. Simon had then just entered the Training College, while David joined the army. The former, quitting the college at an early age, became assistant-master at Dherbecourt, a large _bourg_ of the district, where he remained nearly ten years. There also, in his twenty-sixth year, he married Rachel Lehmann, the daughter of the little tailor of the Rue du Trou, who had a fair number of customers at Maillebois. Rachel, a brunette with magnificent hair and large caressing eyes, was very beautiful. Her husband adored her, encompassed her with passionate worship. Two children had been born to them, a boy, Joseph, now four, and a girl, Sarah, two years of age. And Simon, duly provided with a certificate of Teaching Capacity, was proud of the fact that at two and thirty he should be schoolmaster at Maillebois--where he had now dwelt a couple of years--for this was an instance of rapid advancement.

Marc, though he disliked the Jews by reason of a sort of hereditary antipathy and distrust, the causes of which he had never troubled to analyse, retained a friendly recollection of Simon, whom he had known at the Training College. He declared him to be extremely intelligent, a very good teacher, full of a sense of duty. But he found him too attentive to petty details, too slavishly observant of regulations, which he followed to the very letter, ever bending low before discipline, as if fearful of a bad report and the dissatisfaction of his superiors. In this Marc traced the terror and humility of the Jewish race, persecuted for so many centuries, and ever retaining a dread of outrage and iniquity. Moreover, Simon had good cause for prudence, for his appointment at Maillebois, that clerical little town with its powerful Capuchin community and its Brothers' school, had caused almost a scandal. It was only by dint of correctitude and particularly of ardent patriotism among his pupils, such as the glorification of France as a military power, the foretelling of national glory and a supreme position among the nations, that Simon obtained forgiveness for being a Jew.

He now suddenly made his appearance, accompanied by Mignot. Short, thin, and sinewy, he had red, closely-cropped hair and a sparse beard. His blue eyes were soft, his mouth was well shaped, his nose of the racial type, long and slender; yet his physiognomy was scarcely prepossessing, it remained vague, confused, paltry; and at that moment he was so terribly upset by the dreadful tidings that, as he appeared before the others, staggering and stammering, one might have thought him intoxicated.

'Great God! is it possible?' he gasped. 'Such villainy, such monstrosity!'

But he reached the window, where he remained like one overwhelmed, unable to speak another word, and shuddering from head to foot, his glance fixed meanwhile on the little victim. Those who were present, the two clerics, the lady stationers, and the schoolmasters, watched him in silence, astonished that he did not weep.

Marc, stirred by compassion, took hold of his hands and embraced him: 'Come, you must muster your courage; you need all your strength,' he said to him.

But Simon, without listening, turned to his assistant. 'Pray go back to my wife, Mignot,' he said; 'I do not want her to see this. She was very fond of her nephew, and she is too poorly to be able to bear such a horrible sight.'

Then, as the young man went off, he continued in broken accents: 'Ah! what an awakening! For once in a while we were lying late in bed. My poor Rachel was still asleep, and, as I did not wish to disturb her, I remained by her side, thinking of our holiday pleasures. I roused her late last night when I came home, and she did not get to sleep again till three in the morning, for the storm upset her.'

'What time was it when you came home?' Marc inquired.

'Exactly twenty minutes to twelve. My wife asked me the time and I looked at the clock.'

This seemed to surprise Mademoiselle Rouzaire, who remarked: 'But there is no train from Beaumont at that hour.'

'I didn't come back by train,' Simon explained. 'The banquet lasted till late, I missed the 10.30 train, and rather than wait for the one at midnight I decided to walk the distance. I was anxious to join my wife.'

Father Philibin still preserved silence and calmness; but Brother Fulgence, unable to restrain himself any longer, began to question Simon.

'Twenty minutes to twelve! Then the crime must have been committed already. You saw nothing? You heard nothing?'

'Nothing at all. The square was deserted, the storm was beginning to rumble in the distance. I did not meet a soul. All was quiet in the house.'

'Then it did not occur to you to go to see if poor Zéphirin had returned safely from the chapel, and if he were sleeping soundly? Did you not pay him a visit every evening?'

'No, he was already a very shrewd little man, and we left him as much liberty as possible. Besides, the place was so quiet, there was nothing to suggest any reason for disturbing his sleep. I went straight upstairs to my room, making the least possible noise. I kissed my children, who were asleep, then I went to bed; and, well pleased to find my wife rather better, I chatted with her in an undertone.'

Father Philibin nodded as if approvingly, and then remarked: 'Evidently everything can be accounted for.'

The bystanders seemed convinced; the theory of a prowler committing the crime about half-past ten o'clock, entering and leaving the room by the window, seemed more and more probable. Simon's statement confirmed the information given by Mignot and Mademoiselle Rouzaire. Moreover, the Mesdames Milhomme, the stationers, asserted that they had seen an evil-looking man roaming about the square at nightfall.

'There are so many rascals on the roads!' said the Jesuit Father by way of conclusion. 'We must hope that the police will set hands on the murderer, though such a task is not always an easy one.'

Marc alone experienced a feeling of uncertainty. Although he had been the first to think it possible that some stranger might have sprung on Zéphirin, he had gradually realised that there was little probability of such an occurrence. Was it not more likely that the man had been acquainted with the boy and had at first approached him as a friend? Then, however, had come the abominable impulse, horror and murder, strangulation as a last resource to stifle the victim's cries, followed by flight amidst a gust of terror. But all this remained very involved; and after some brief perception of its probability Marc relapsed into darkness, into the anxiety born of contradictory suppositions. He contented himself with saying to Simon, by way of calming him: 'All the evidence agrees: the truth will soon be made manifest.'

At that moment, just as Mignot returned after prevailing on Madame Simon to remain in her room, Darras, the Mayor of Maillebois, arrived with three gendarmes. A building contractor, on the high road to a considerable fortune, Darras was a stout man of forty-two, with a fair, round, pinky, clean-shaven face. He immediately ordered the shutters to be closed and placed two gendarmes outside the window, while the third, entering the house passage, went to guard the door of the room, which Zéphirin never locked. From this moment the orders were that nothing should be touched, and that nobody should even approach the scene of the crime. On hearing of it the mayor had immediately telegraphed to the Public Prosecution Office at Beaumont, and the magistrates would surely arrive by the first train.

Father Philibin and Brother Fulgence now spoke of having to attend to various matters connected with the distribution of prizes which was to take place in the afternoon, and Darras advised them to make haste and then return, for, said he, the Procureur de la République, otherwise the Public Prosecutor, would certainly wish to question them about the number of _Le Petit Beaumontais_ and the copy-slip found near the body. So the two clerics took their departure; and while the gendarmes, stationed on the square outside the window, with difficulty restrained the now increasing crowd, which became violent and raised threatening cries, demanding the execution of the unknown murderer, Simon again went into the building with Darras, Marc, Mademoiselle Rouzaire, and Mignot, the whole party waiting in a large classroom lighted by broad windows which faced the playground.

It was now eight o'clock, and after a sudden stormy rainfall, the sky cleared, and the day became a splendid one. An hour elapsed before the magistrates arrived. The Procureur de la République, Raoul de La Bissonnière, came in person, accompanied by Daix, the Investigating Magistrate. Both were moved by the magnitude of the crime and foresaw a great trial. La Bissonnière, a dapper little man with a doll-like face, and whiskers of a correct legal cut, was very ambitious. Not content with his rapid advancement to the post he held--he was only forty-five--he was ever on the watch for some resounding case which would launch him in Paris, where, thanks to his suppleness and address, his complaisant respect for the powers of the day, whatever they might be, he relied on securing a high position. On the other hand, Daix, tall and lean, with a sharp-cut face, was a type of the punctilious Investigating Magistrate, devoted to his professional duties. But he was also of an anxious and timid nature, for his ugly but coquettish and extravagant wife, exasperated by the poverty of their home, terrorised and distressed him with her bitter reproaches respecting his lack of ambition.

On reaching the schools the legal functionaries, before taking any evidence, desired to visit the scene of the crime. Simon and Darras accompanied them to Zéphirin's bed-chamber while the others, who were soon joined by Father Philibin and Brother Fulgence, waited in the large classroom. When the magistrates returned thither, they had verified all the material features of the crime, and were acquainted with the various circumstances already known to the others. They brought with them the number of _Le Petit Beaumontais_ and the copy-slip, to which they seemed to attach extreme importance. At once seating themselves at Simon's table, they examined those two pieces of evidence, exchanging impressions concerning them, and then showing the copy-slip to the two schoolmasters, Simon and Marc, as well as to the schoolmistress and the clerics. But this was only done by way of eliciting some general information, for no clerk was present to record a formal interrogatory.

'Oh! those copies,' Marc replied, 'are used currently in all the schools, in the secular ones as well as in those of the religious orders.'

This was confirmed by Brother Fulgence. 'Quite so,' said he; 'similar ones would be found at our school, even as there must be some here.'

La Bissonnière, however, desired more precise information. 'But do you remember having placed this one in the hands of any of your pupils?' he asked Simon. 'Those words "Love one another" must have struck you.'

'That copy was never used here,' Simon answered flatly. 'As you point out, monsieur, I should have recollected it.'

The same question was then addressed to Brother Fulgence, who at first evinced some little hesitation. 'I have three Brothers with me--Brothers Isidore, Lazarus, and Gorgias,' he replied, 'and it is difficult for me to avouch anything.'

Then, in the deep silence which was falling, he added: 'But no, no, that copy was never used at our school, for it would have come before me.'

The magistrates did not insist on the point. For the time being they did not wish the importance which they attached to the slip to become too manifest. They expressed their surprise, however, that the missing corner of it had not been found.

'Do not these slips sometimes bear in one corner a stamp of the school to which they belong?' Daix inquired. Brother Fulgence had to admit that it was so, but Marc protested that he had never stamped any copy-slips used in his school.

'Excuse me,' declared Simon in his tranquil way, 'I have some slips here on which a stamp would be found. But I stamp them down below--here!'

Perceiving the perplexity of the magistrates, Father Philibin, hitherto silent and attentive, indulged in a light laugh. 'This shows,' he said, 'how difficult it is to arrive at the truth.... By the way, Monsieur le Procureur de la République, matters are much the same with the stain which you are now examining. One of us fancied it to be some initialling, a kind of flourish. But, for my part, I believe it to be a blot which some pupil tried to efface with his finger.'

'Is it usual for the masters to initial the copy-slips?' asked Daix.

'Yes,' Brother Fulgence acknowledged, 'that is done at our school.'

'Ah! no,' cried Simon and Marc in unison, 'we never do it in the Communal schools.'

'You are mistaken,' said Mademoiselle Rouzaire, although I do not stamp my copies, I have sometimes initialled them.'

With a wave of the hand La Bissonnière stopped the discussion, for he knew by experience what a muddle is reached when one enters into secondary questions of personal habits. The copy-slip, the missing corner of it, the possible existence of a stamp and a paraph would all have to be studied in the course of the investigation. For the moment he now contented himself with asking the witnesses to relate how the crime had been discovered. Mignot had to say that the open window had attracted his attention and that he had raised an outcry on perceiving the victim's body. Mademoiselle Rouzaire explained how she had hastened to the spot and how, on the previous evening, she had brought Zéphirin home from the Capuchin Chapel, when he had sprung into the room by the window. Father Philibin and Brother Fulgence in their turn related how chance had connected them with the tragedy, in what condition they had found the room, and in what particular spot they had discovered the paper gag, which they had merely unfolded before placing it on the table. Finally, Marc indicated a few observations which he had made on his arrival, subsequent to that of the others.

La Bissonnière thereupon turned to Simon and began to question him: 'You have told us that you came home at twenty minutes to twelve, and that the whole house then seemed to you to be perfectly quiet. Your wife was asleep----'

At this point Daix interrupted his superior: 'Monsieur le Procureur,' said he, 'is it not advisable that Madame Simon should be present? Could she not come down here a moment?'

La Bissonnière nodded assent, and Simon went to fetch his wife, who soon made her appearance.

Rachel, attired in a plain morning wrap of unbleached linen, looked so beautiful as she entered the room amidst the deep silence, that a little quiver of admiration and tender sympathy sped by. Hers was the Jewish beauty in its flower, a delightfully oval face, splendid black hair, a gilded skin, large caressing eyes, and a red mouth with speckless, dazzling teeth. And one could tell that she was all love, a trifle indolent, living in seclusion in her home, with her husband and her children, like a woman of the East in her little secret garden. Simon was about to close the door behind her, when the two children, Joseph and Sarah, four and two years old respectively, and both of them strong and flourishing, ran in, although they had been forbidden to come downstairs. And they sought refuge in the folds of their mother's wrap, where the magistrates, by a gesture, intimated they might remain.

The gallant La Bissonnière, moved by the sight of such great beauty, imparted a flute-like accent to his voice as he asked Rachel a few questions: 'It was twenty minutes to twelve, madame, was it not, when your husband came home?'

'Yes, monsieur, he looked at the clock. And he was in bed and we were still chatting in an undertone and with the light out, in order that the children might not be roused, when we heard midnight strike.'

'But before your husband's arrival, madame, between half-past ten and half-past eleven, did you hear nothing, no footsteps nor talking, no sounds of struggling, nor stifled cries?'

'No, absolutely nothing, monsieur. I was asleep. It was my husband's entry into our room which awoke me. He had left me feeling poorly, and he was so pleased to find me better that he began to laugh as he kissed me, and I made him keep quiet for fear lest the others should be disturbed, so deep was the silence around us. Ah! how could we have imagined that such a frightful misfortune had fallen on the house!'

She was thoroughly upset, and tears coursed down her cheeks, while she turned towards her husband as if for consolation and support. And he, weeping now at the sight of her grief, and forgetting where he was, caught her passionately in his arms, and kissed her with infinite tenderness. The two children raised their heads anxiously. There was a moment of deep emotion and compassionate kindliness, in which all participated.

'I was rather surprised at the time because there is no train at that hour,' resumed Madame Simon of her own accord. 'But when my husband was in bed he told me how it happened.'

'Yes,' Simon explained, 'I could not do otherwise than attend that banquet; but when, on reaching the station at Beaumont, I saw the half-past ten o'clock train steaming away before my eyes, I felt so annoyed that I would not wait for the train at midnight, but set out on foot at once. A walk of less than four miles is nothing to speak of. The night was very beautiful, very warm.... About one o'clock, when the storm burst, I was still talking softly to my wife, telling her how I had spent my evening, for she could not get to sleep again. It was that which kept us late in bed this morning, ignorant of the dreadful blow that had fallen on us.'

Then, as Rachel began to weep again, he once more kissed her, like a lover and like a father. 'Come, my darling, calm yourself. We loved the poor little fellow with all our hearts, and we have no cause for self-reproach in this abominable catastrophe.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

II

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 1: The Protestant reader may be informed that this Saint (1195-1231) was a Portuguese Franciscan, famous for the eloquence of his sermons. The practices of which M. Zola speaks are not inventions. The so-called worship of St. Antony has become widespread in France of recent years. Such is superstition!--_Trans._]

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

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

[Footnote 2: Frequently referred to in M. Zola's _Lourdes_ and _Rome_ as a liberal prelate at variance with the Vatican.--_Trans._]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 3: In matters of education the French territory is apportioned among a number of 'Academies,' such as those of Paris, Caen, Rennes, Bordeaux, Dijon, &c., which are each governed by Rectors, and which, combined, constitute the University of France, of which the Minister of Public Instruction for the time being is the grand-master. The Rectors communicate with him; under them, in each territorial department within their jurisdiction, they have an 'Inspecteur d'Académie,' who is provided with a general secretary, and who in turn has under him several subordinate inspectors called 'Inspecteurs de l'Instruction primaire.' There is one of these for each _arrondissement_ into which the departments are divided.--_Trans._]

The young man therefore hastened his steps, desirous of paying his respects to the Inspector, but all at once an unexpected incident restrained him. A cassock had emerged from a neighbouring street, and he recognised in its wearer Father Crabot, the Rector of the Jesuit College of Valmarie. A tall, finely-built man, without a white hair at five and forty, Father Crabot had a broad and regular face, with a somewhat large nose, amiable eyes, and thick, caressing lips. The only failing with which he was reproached was a tendency to become a fashionable cleric as a result of the many aristocratic connections which he was always eager to form. But those connections simply increased the sphere of his power, and some people said, with good reason, that he was the secret master of the department, and that the victory of the Church, which was assuredly approaching, depended solely on him.

Marc felt surprised and disquieted on seeing the Jesuit at Maillebois at that hour. Had he quitted Valmarie very early in the morning then? What urgent business, what pressing visits had brought him there? Whence had he come, whither was he going, distributing bows and smiles as he passed through the streets full of the fever born by rumour and tittle-tattle? And all at once Marc saw Father Crabot stop at the sight of Mauraisin and offer the latter his hand with charming cordiality. Their conversation was not a long one; it consisted, no doubt, of the usual commonplaces, but they seemed to be on excellent terms, as if indeed they discreetly understood each other. When the Elementary Inspector quitted the Jesuit, he drew his little figure erect, evidently feeling very proud of that handshake, which had inspired him with an opinion, a resolution, which perhaps he had hitherto hesitated to form. But Father Crabot, going his way, also caught sight of Marc, and recognising him, from having seen him at Madame Duparque's, where he occasionally condescended to call, made a great show of doffing his hat by way of salutation. The young man, who stood on the kerb of the footway, was compelled to respond by a similar act of politeness, and then watched the Jesuit as the latter, filling the streets with the sweep of his cassock, betook himself through Maillebois, which felt very honoured, flattered, and subjugated by his presence.

Marc, for his part, slowly resumed his walk towards the school. The current of his thoughts had changed, he was growing gloomy again, as if he were returning to some contaminated spot where slow poison had diffused hostility. The houses did not seem to be the same as on the previous day; and, in particular, the faces of the people appeared to have changed. Thus, when he reached Simon's rooms, he was quite surprised to find his friend quietly sorting some papers in the midst of his family. Rachel was seated near the window, the two children were playing in a corner, and if it had not been for the sadness of the parents one would have thought that nothing unusual had occurred in the house.

Simon, however, stepped forward and pressed Marc's hands with keen emotion, like one who felt how friendly and bravely sympathetic was the visit. The perquisition early that morning was at once spoken of.

'Have the police been here?' Marc inquired.

'Yes, it was quite natural they should come: I expected it. Of course they found nothing, and went off with empty hands.'

Marc restrained a gesture of astonishment. What had Pélagie told him? Why had people spread rumours of crushing proofs, of the discovery among other things of copy-slips identical with the one found in the room of the crime? Were lies being told then?

'And you see,' Simon continued, 'I am setting my papers in order, for they mixed them up. What a frightful affair, my friend! We no longer know if we exist.'

Then he mentioned that the post-mortem examination of Zéphirin's remains was to take place that very day. Indeed, they were then expecting the medical officer of the Public Prosecution service. But doubtless it would only be possible to bury the body on the morrow.

'For my part,' Simon added, 'as you will well understand, I seem to be living in a nightmare. I ask myself if such a catastrophe is possible. I have been thinking of nothing else since yesterday morning; I am always beginning the same story afresh, my return on foot, so late but in great quietude, my arrival at the house which was fast asleep, and then that frightful awakening in the morning.'

These remarks gave Marc an opportunity to ask a few questions. 'Did you meet nobody on the road?' he inquired. 'Did nobody see you arrive here at the hour you named?'

'Why, no! I met nobody, and I think nobody saw me come in. At that late hour nobody is about in Maillebois.'

Silence fell. Then Marc resumed: 'But as you did not take the train back you did not use your return ticket. Have you still got it?'

'My return ticket? No! I was so furious when I saw the half-past ten o'clock train going off without me, that I threw the ticket away, in the station yard, directly I decided to return on foot.'

Silence fell again, and Simon gazed fixedly at his friend, saying: 'Why do you put these questions to me?'

Marc affectionately grasped his hands once more, and retained them for a moment in his own, whilst resolving to warn him of impending danger, indeed to tell him everything. 'I regret,' he said, 'that nobody saw you, and I regret still more that you did not keep your return ticket. There are so many fools and malicious folks about! It is being reported that this morning the police found overwhelming proofs here, copies of the writing-slip, initialled in the same way as the one which formed part of the gag. Mignot, it seems, is astonished that he should have found you so sound asleep yesterday morning; and Mademoiselle Rouzaire now remembers that about a quarter to eleven o'clock on the night of the crime, she heard voices and footsteps, as if somebody were entering the house.'

Very pale but very calm, Simon smiled and shrugged his shoulders: 'Ah! that's it, is it? They are suspecting me. Well, I now understand the expressions I have seen on the faces of the folk who have been passing the school since early this morning! Mignot, who is a good fellow at heart, will of course say as everybody else says, for fear of compromising himself with a Jew like me. As for Mademoiselle Rouzaire, she will sacrifice me ten times over, if her confessor has suggested it to her, and if she finds a chance of advancement or merely additional consideration in such a fine deed. Ah! they are suspecting me, are they? and the whole pack of clerical hounds has been let loose!'

He almost laughed as he spoke. But Rachel, whose customary indolence seemed to have been increased by her deep grief, had now suddenly risen, her beautiful countenance all aglow with dolorous revolt.

'You, you! They suspect you of such ignominy!' she exclaimed; 'you who were so kind and gentle when you came home, and clasped me in your arms, and spoke such loving words to me! They must be mad! Is it not sufficient that I should speak the truth, tell of your return, and of the night we spent together?'

Then she flung herself upon his neck, weeping and relapsing into the weakness of an adored and caressed woman. Pressing her to his heart her husband strove to reassure and calm her.

'Don't be distressed, my darling! Those stories are idiotic, they stand on nothing. I am quite at ease; the authorities may turn everything here upside down; they may search all my past life, they will find no guilt in it. I have only to speak the truth, and, do you know, nothing can stand against the truth; it is the great, the eternal victor.'

Then, turning to his friend, he added: 'Is it not so, my good Marc? is one not invincible when one has truth on one's side?'

If Marc had not been convinced already of Simon's innocence his last doubts would have fled amid the emotion of that scene. Yielding to an impulse of his heart he embraced both husband and wife, as if giving himself to them entirely, in order to help them in the grave crisis which he foresaw. Desirous as he was of taking immediate action, he again spoke of the copy-slip, for he felt that it was the one important piece of evidence on which the elucidation of the whole affair must be reared. But how puzzling was that crumpled, bitten slip of paper, soiled by saliva, with its initialling or its blot half effaced, and with one of its corners carried away, no doubt, by the victim's teeth! The very words 'Love one another,' lithographed in a fine English round-hand, seemed fraught with a terrible irony. Whence had that slip come? Who had brought it to that room--the boy or his murderer? And how could one ascertain the truth when the Mesdames Milhomme, the neighbouring stationers, sold such slips almost daily?

Simon, for his part, could only repeat that he had never had that particular one in his school. 'All my boys would say so. That copy never entered the school, never passed under their eyes.'

Marc regarded this as valuable information. 'Then they could testify to that effect!' he exclaimed. 'As it is being falsely rumoured that the police found similar copies in your rooms, one must re-establish the truth immediately,--call on your pupils at their homes, and demand their evidence before anybody tries to tamper with their memory. Give me the names of a few of them; I will take the matter in hand, and carry it through this afternoon.'

Simon, strong in the consciousness of his innocence, at first refused to do so. But eventually, among his pupils' parents, he named Bongard, a farmer on the road to La Désirade, Masson Doloir, a workman living in the Rue Plaisir, and Savin, a clerk in the Rue Fauche. Those three would suffice unless Marc should also like to call on the Mesdames Milhomme. Thus everything was settled, and Marc went off to lunch, promising that he would return in the evening to acquaint Simon with the result of his inquiries.

Once outside on the square, however, he again caught sight of handsome Mauraisin. This time the Elementary Inspector was deep in conference with Mademoiselle Rouzaire. He was usually most punctilious and prudent with the schoolmistresses, in consequence of his narrow escape from trouble, a few years previously, in connection with a young assistant-teacher who had shrieked like a little booby when he had simply wished to kiss her. Malicious people said that Mademoiselle Rouzaire did not shriek, although she was so ugly, and that this explained both the favourable reports she secured and her prospects of rapid advancement.

Standing at the gate of her little garden, she was now speaking to Mauraisin with great volubility, making sweeping gestures in the direction of the boys' school; while the Inspector, wagging his head, listened to her attentively. At last they entered the garden together, gently closing the gate behind them. It was evident to Marc that the woman was telling Mauraisin about the crime and the sounds of footsteps and voices which she now declared she had heard. At the thought of this the quiver of the early morning returned to Marc; he again experienced discomfort--a discomfort arising from his hostile surroundings, from the dark, stealthy plot which was brewing, gathering like a storm, rendering the atmosphere more and more oppressive. Singular indeed was the fashion in which that Elementary Inspector went to the help of a threatened master: he began by taking the opinions of all the surrounding folk whom jealousy or hatred inspired!

At two o'clock in the afternoon Marc found himself on the road to La Désirade, just outside Maillebois. Bongard, whose name had been given him by Simon, there owned a little farm of a few fields, which he cultivated himself with difficulty, securing, as he put it, no more than was needed to provide daily bread. Marc luckily met him just as he had returned home with a cartload of hay. He was a strong, square-shouldered, and stoutish man, with round eyes and placid silent face, beardless but seldom fresh shaven. On her side La Bongard, a long bony _blonde_, who was also present, preparing some mash for her cow, showed an extremely plain countenance, outrageously freckled, with a patch of colour on each cheek-bone, and an expression of close reserve. Both looked suspiciously at the strange gentleman whom they saw entering their yard.

'I am the Jonville schoolmaster,' said Marc. 'You have a little boy who attends the Communal school at Maillebois, have you not?'

At that moment Fernand, the boy in question, who had been playing on the road, ran up. He was a sturdy lad of nine years, fashioned, one might have thought, with a billhook, and showing a low brow and a dull, heavy countenance. He was followed by his sister Angèle, a lass of seven, with a similarly massive but more knowing face, for in her quick eyes one espied some dawning intelligence which was striving to escape from its fleshy prison. She had heard Marc's question, and she cried in a shrill voice: 'I go to Mademoiselle Rouzaire's, I do; Fernand goes to Monsieur Simon's.'

Bongard had sent his children to the Communal schools, first because the teaching cost him nothing, and secondly because, as a matter of mere instinct,--for he had never reasoned the question,--he was not on the side of the priests. He practised no religion, and if La Bongard went to church it was simply from habit and by way of diversion. All that the husband, who was scarce able to read or write, appreciated in his wife, who was still more ignorant than himself, was her powers of endurance, which, similar to those of a beast of burden, enabled her to toil from morn till night without complaining. And the farmer showed little or no anxiety whether his children made progress at school. As a matter of fact little Fernand was industrious and took no end of pains, but could get nothing into his head; whereas little Angèle, who proved yet more painstaking and stubborn, at last seemed likely to become a passable pupil. She was like so much human matter in the rough, lately fashioned of clay, and awaking to intelligence by a slow and dolorous effort.

'I am Monsieur Simon's friend,' Marc resumed, 'and I have come on his behalf about what has happened. You have heard of the crime, have you not?'

Most certainly they had heard of it. Their anxious faces suddenly became impenetrable, in such wise that one could read on them neither feeling nor thought. Why had that stranger come to question them in this fashion? Their ideas about things concerned nobody. Besides, it was necessary to be prudent in matters in which a word too much often suffices to bring about a man's sentence.

'And so,' Marc continued, 'I should like to know if your little boy ever saw in his class a copy-slip like this.'

Marc himself on a slip of paper had written the words '_Aimez vous les uns les autres_' in a fine round-hand of the proper size. Having explained matters, he showed the paper to Fernand, who looked at it in a dazed fashion, for his mind worked slowly and he did not yet understand what was asked him.

'Look well at it, my little friend,' said Marc; 'did you ever see such a copy at the school?'

But before the lad had made up his mind, Bongard, in his circumspect manner, intervened: 'The child doesn't know, how can he know?'

And La Bongard, like her husband's shadow, added: 'Why of course a child, it can never know.'

Without listening to them, however, Marc insisted, and placed the copy in the hands of Fernand, who, fearing that he might be punished, made an effort, and at last responded: 'No, monsieur, I never saw it.'

As he spoke he raised his head, and his eyes met his father's, which were fixed on him so sternly that he hastened to add, stammering as he did so: 'Unless all the same I did see it; I don't know.'

That was all that could be got out of him. When Marc pressed him, his answers became incoherent, while his parents themselves said yes or no chancewise, according to what they deemed to be their interest. It was Bongard's prudent habit to jog his head in approval of every opinion expressed by those who spoke to him, for fear of compromising himself. Yes, yes, it was a frightful crime, and if the culprit should be caught it would be quite right to cut off his head. Each man to his trade, the gendarmes knew theirs, there were rascals everywhere. As for the priests, there was some good in them, but all the same one had a right to follow one's own ideas. And at last, as Marc could learn nothing positive, he had to take himself off, watched inquisitively by the children, and pursued by the shrill voice of little Angèle, who began chattering with her brother as soon as the gentleman could no longer detect what she said.

The young man gave way to some sad reflections as he returned to Maillebois. He had just come in contact with the thick layer of human ignorance, the huge blind, deaf multitude still enwrapped in the slumber of the earth. Behind the Bongards the whole mass of country folk remained stubbornly, dimly vegetating, ever slow to awaken to a true perception of things. There was a whole nation to be educated if one desired that it should be born to truth and justice. But how colossal would be the labour! How could it be raised from the clay in which it lingered, how many generations perhaps would be needed to free the race from darkness! Even at the present time the vast majority of the social body remained in infancy, in primitive imbecility. In the case of Bongard one descended to mere brute matter, which was incapable of being just because it knew nothing and would learn nothing.

Marc turned to the left, and after crossing the High Street found himself in the poor quarter of Maillebois. Various industrial establishments there polluted the waters of the Verpille, and the sordid houses of the narrow streets were the homes of many workpeople. Doloir the mason tenanted four fairly large rooms on a first floor over a wineshop in the Rue Plaisir. Marc, imperfectly informed respecting the address, was seeking it when he came upon a party of masons who had just quitted their work to drink a glass together at the bar of the wineshop. They were discussing the crime in violent language.

'A Jew's capable of anything,' one big fair fellow exclaimed. 'There was one in my regiment who was a thief, but that did not prevent him from being a corporal, for a Jew always gets out of difficulties.'

Another mason, short and dark, shrugged his shoulders. 'I quite agree,' said he, 'that the Jews are not worth much, but all the same the priests are no better.'

'Oh! as for the priests,' the other retorted, 'some are good, some are bad. At all events the priests are Frenchmen, whereas those dirty beasts, the Jews, have sold France to the foreigners twice already.' Then, as his comrade, somewhat shaken in his views, asked him if he had read that in _Le Petit Beaumontais_, 'No, I didn't,' he added; 'those newspapers give me too much of a headache. But some of my mates told me, and, besides, everybody knows it well.'

The others, thereupon feeling convinced, became silent, and slowly drained their glasses. They were just quitting the wineshop when Marc, approaching, asked the tall fair one if he knew where Doloir the mason lived. The workman laughed. 'Doloir, monsieur? that's me,' he said; 'I live here; those are my three windows.'

The adventure quite enlivened this tall sturdy fellow of somewhat military bearing. As he laughed his big moustaches rose, disclosing his teeth, which looked very white in his highly coloured face, with large, good-natured blue eyes.

'You could not have asked anybody more likely to know, could you, monsieur?' he continued. 'What do you wish of me?'

Marc looked at him with a feeling of some sympathy in spite of the hateful words he had heard. Doloir, who had been for several years in the employment of Darras, the Mayor and building contractor, was a fairly good workman--one who occasionally drank a drop too much, but who took his pay home to his wife regularly. He certainly growled about the employers, referred to them as a dirty gang, and called himself a socialist, though he had only a vague idea what socialism might be. At the same time he had some esteem for Darras, who, while making a great deal of money, tried to remain a comrade with his men. But above everything else three years of barrack-life had left an ineffaceable mark on Doloir. He had quitted the army in a transport of delight at his deliverance, freely cursing the disgusting and hateful calling in which one ceased to be a man. But ever since that time he had been continually living his three years' service afresh; not a day passed but some recollection of it came to him. With his hand spoilt as it were by the rifle he had carried, he had found his trowel heavy, and had returned to work in a spiritless fashion, like one who was no longer accustomed to toil, but whose will was broken and whose body had become used to long spells of idleness, such as those which intervened between the hours of military exercise. To become once more the excellent workman that he had been previously was impossible. Besides, he was haunted by military matters, to which he was always referring apropos of any subject that presented itself. But he chattered in a confused way, he had no information, he read nothing, he knew nothing, being simply firm and stubborn on the patriotic question, which, to his mind, consisted in preventing the Jews from handing France over to the foreigners.

'You have two children at the Communal school,' Marc said to him, 'and I have come from the master, my friend Simon, for some information. But I see that you are hardly a friend of the Jews.'

Doloir still laughed. 'It's true,' said he, 'that Monsieur Simon is a Jew; but hitherto I always thought him a worthy man. What information do you want, monsieur?'

When he learnt that the question was merely one of showing his children a writing copy in order to ascertain whether they had ever used it in their class, he responded: 'Nothing can be easier, monsieur, if it will do you a service. Come upstairs with me, the children must be at home.'

The door was opened by Madame Doloir, a dark, short but robust woman, having a serious, energetic face with a low brow, frank eyes, and a square-shaped chin. Although she was barely nine and twenty she was already the mother of three children, and it was evident that she was expecting a fourth. But this did not prevent her from being always the first to rise and the last to go to bed in the home, for she was very industrious, very thrifty, always busy, scrubbing and cleaning. She had quitted her employment as a seamstress about the time of the birth of her third child, and nowadays she only attended to her home, but she did so like a woman who fully earned her bread.

'This gentleman is a friend of the schoolmaster, and wishes to speak to the children,' her husband explained to her.

Marc entered a very clean dining or living room. The little kitchen was on the left, with its door wide open. In front were the bedrooms of the parents and the children.

'Auguste! Charles!' the father called.

Auguste and Charles, one eight, the other six years old, hastened forward, followed by their little sister Lucille, who was four. They were handsome, well-fed children in whom one found the characteristics of the father and the mother combined; the younger boy appearing more intelligent than the elder one, and the little girl, a _blondine_ with a soft laugh, already looking quite pretty.

When, Marc, however, showed the copy to the boys and questioned them, Madame Doloir, who hitherto had not spoken a word, hastily intervened: 'Excuse me, monsieur, but I do not wish my children to answer you.'

She said this very politely, without the slightest sign of temper, like a good mother, indeed, who was merely fulfilling her duty.

'But why?' Marc asked in his amazement.

'Why, because there is no need for us, monsieur, to meddle in an affair which seems likely to turn out very badly. I have had it dinned into my ears ever since yesterday morning; and I won't have anything to do with it, that's all.'

Then, as Marc insisted and began to defend Simon, she retorted: 'I say nothing against Monsieur Simon, the children have never had to complain of him. If he is accused, let him defend himself: that is his business. For my part I have always tried to prevent my husband from meddling in politics, and if he listens to me he will hold his tongue, and take up his trowel without paying any attention either to the Jews or to the priests. All this, at bottom, is politics again.'

She never went to church, although she had caused her children to be baptised and had decided to let them take their first Communion. Those, however, were things one had to do. For the rest, she simply and instinctively held conservative views, accepting things as they were, accommodating herself to her narrow life, for she was terrified by the thought of catastrophes which might diminish their daily bread. With an expression of stubborn resolve she repeated: 'I do not wish any of us to be compromised.'

Those words were decisive: Doloir himself bowed to them. Although he usually allowed his wife to lead him, he did not like her to exercise her power before others. But this time he submitted.

'I did not reflect, monsieur,' he said. 'My wife is right. It is best for poor devils like us to keep quiet. One of the men in my regiment knew all sorts of things about the Captain. Ah! they did not stand on ceremony with him. You should have seen what a number of times he was sent to the cells!'

Marc, like the husband, had to accept the position; and so, renouncing all further inquiry there, he merely said: 'It is possible that the judicial authorities may ask your boys what I desired to ask them. In that case they will have to answer.'

'Very good,' Madame Doloir answered quietly, 'if the judicial authorities question them we shall see what they ought to do. They will answer or not, it will all depend; my children are mine, and it is my business.'

Marc withdrew, escorted by Doloir, who was in a hurry to return to his work. When they reached the street, the mason almost apologised. His wife was not always easy to deal with, he remarked; but when she said the right thing, it was right and no mistake.

Such was Marc's discouragement that he now wondered whether it would be worth his while to carry the inquiry further by visiting Savin the clerk. In the Doloirs' home he had not found the same dense ignorance as at the Bongards'. The former were a step higher in the social scale, and if both husband and wife were still virtually illiterate, they at least came in contact with other classes, and knew a little of life. But how vague was still the dawn which they typified, how dim was the groping through idiotic egotism, in what disastrous errors did lack of solidarity maintain the poor folk of that class! If they were not happier it was because they were ignorant of every right condition of civic life, of the necessity that others should be happy in order that one might be happy oneself. Marc thought of that human house, the doors and windows of which people have striven to keep closed for ages, whereas they ought to be opened widely in order to allow air and warmth and light to enter in torrents freely.

While he was thus reflecting, he turned the corner of the Rue Plaisir, and reached the Rue Fauche, where the Savins dwelt. He thereupon felt ashamed of his discouragement, so he climbed the stairs to their flat, and speedily found himself in the presence of Madame Savin, who had hastened to answer his ring.

'My husband, monsieur? Yes, as it happens, he is at home, for he was rather feverish this morning and could not go to his office. Please follow me.'

She was charming was Madame Savin, dark, refined and gay, with a pretty laugh, and so young-looking also, though her twenty-eighth year was already past, that she seemed to be the elder sister of her four children. The firstborn was a girl, Hortense; followed by twin boys, Achille and Philippe, and then by another boy, Jules, whom the young mother was still nursing. It was said that her husband was terribly jealous, that he suspected her, and watched her, ever full of ill-natured disquietude, although she gave him no cause for it. A bead-worker by trade, and an orphan, she had been sought by him in marriage for her beauty's sake, after her aunt's death, when she was quite alone in the world; and on this account she retained a feeling of gratitude towards him, and conducted herself very uprightly like a good wife and a good mother.

Just as she was about to usher Marc into the adjoining room, some embarrassment came over her. Perhaps she feared the bad temper of her husband, who was ever ready to pick a quarrel, and to whom she preferred to yield for the sake of domestic peace.

'What name am I to give, monsieur?' she asked.

Marc told her his name and the object of his visit, whereupon with graceful suppleness she glided away, leaving the young man in the little ante-chamber, which he began to scrutinise. The flat was composed of five rooms, occupying the whole of that floor of the house. Savin, a petty _employé_ of the Revenue service, clerk to the local tax-collector, had to keep up his rank, which in his opinion necessitated a certain amount of outward show. Thus his wife wore bonnets, and he himself never went out otherwise than in a frock coat. But how painful were the straits of the life which he led behind that façade so mendaciously suggestive of class superiority and easy circumstances! The bitterness of his feelings came from his consciousness that he was bound fast to his humble duties, that he had no prospect whatever of advancement, but was condemned for life to never-changing toil and a contemptible salary, which only just saved him from starvation. Poor in health and soured, humble and irritable at one and the same time, feeling as much terror as rage in his everlasting anxiety lest he might displease his superiors, he showed himself obsequious and cowardly at his office, whilst at home he terrorised his wife with his fits of passion, which suggested those of a sickly child. She smiled at them in her pretty, gentle way, and after attending to the children and the household she found a means to work bead-flowers for a firm at Beaumont, very delicate and well-paid work, which provided the family with little luxuries. But her husband, vexed at heart, such was his middle-class pride, would not have it said that his wife was forced to work, and so it was necessary for her to shut herself up with her beads, and deliver her work by stealth.

For a moment Marc heard a sharp voice speaking angrily. Then, after a gentle murmur, silence fell, and Madame Savin reappeared: 'Please follow me, monsieur.'

Savin scarcely rose from the arm-chair in which he was nursing his attack of fever. A village schoolmaster was of no consequence. Short, lean, and puny, quite bald already, although he was only thirty-one years old, the clerk had a poor, cadaverous countenance, with slight, tired features, light eyes, and a very scanty beard of a dirty yellowish tinge. He finished wearing out his old frock coats at home, and that day the coloured scarf he had fastened about his neck helped to make him look like a little old man, burdened with complaints and quite neglectful of his person.

'My wife tells me, monsieur,' he said, 'that you have called about that abominable affair, in which Simon the schoolmaster, according to some accounts, is likely to be compromised; and my first impulse, I confess it, was to refuse to see you.'

Then he stopped short, for he had just noticed on the table some bead-work flowers which his wife had been making as she sat beside him, while he perused _Le Petit Beaumontais_. He gave her a terrible glance which she understood, for she hastened to cover her work with the newspaper.

'But don't regard me as a Reactionary, monsieur,' Savin resumed. 'I am a Republican--in fact a very advanced Republican; I do not hide it, my superiors are well aware of it. When one serves the Republic it is only honest to be a Republican, is it not? Briefly, I am on the side of the Government for and in all things.'

Compelled to listen politely, Marc contented himself with nodding his assent.

'My views on the religious question are very simple,' Savin continued. 'The priests ought to remain in their own sphere. I am an anti-clerical as I am a Republican. But I hasten to add that in my opinion a religion is necessary for women and children, and that as long as the Catholic religion is that of the country, why, we may as well have that one as another! Thus, with respect to my wife, I have made her understand that it is fitting and necessary for a woman of her age and position to follow the observances of religion in order that she may have a rule and a _morale_ in the eyes of the world. She goes to the Capuchins!'

Madame Savin became embarrassed, her face turned pink, and she cast down her eyes. That question of religious practices had long been a great source of unpleasantness in her home. She, with all her charming delicacy, her gentle, upright, heart, had always regarded those practices with repugnance. As for her husband, he, wild with jealousy, ever picking quarrels with her respecting what he called her unfaithfulness of thought, looked upon Confession and Communion solely as police measures, moral curbs, excellently suited to restrain women from descending the slope which leads to betrayal. And his wife had been obliged to yield to him in the matter, and accept the confessor whom he selected, the bearded Father Théodose, though with her woman's instinct she divined the latter to be a man of a horrid nature. But if she was wounded at heart and blushed with offended delicacy, she none the less shrugged her shoulders and continued to obey her husband for the sake of domestic quietude.

'As for my children, monsieur,' Savin was now saying, 'my resources have not enabled me to send Achille and Philippe, my twin sons, to college; so, naturally enough, I have sent them to the secular school in accordance with my duty as a functionary and a Republican. In the same way my daughter Hortense goes to Mademoiselle Rouzaire's; but, at bottom, I am well pleased to find that that lady has religious sentiments, and conducts her pupils to church--for, after all, such is her duty, and I should complain if she did not do so. Boys always pull through. And yet if I did not owe an account of my actions to my superiors, would it not have been more advantageous for my sons if I had sent them to a Church school? Later in life they would have been helped on, placed in good situations, supported, whereas now they will simply vegetate, as I myself have vegetated.'

His bitter rancour was overflowing; and, seized with a secret dread, he added in a lower tone: 'The priests, you see, are the stronger, and in spite of everything one ought always to be with them.'

A feeling of compassion came over Marc; that poor, puny, trembling being, driven desperate by mediocrity of circumstances and foolishness of nature, seemed to him in sore need of pity. Foreseeing the conclusion of all his speeches the young man had already risen. 'And so, monsieur,' he said, 'the information which I desired to obtain from your children----'

'The children are not here,' Savin answered; 'a lady, a neighbour, has taken them for a walk. But, even if they were here, ought I to allow them to answer you? Judge for yourself. A functionary can in no case take sides. And I already have quite enough worries at my office without incurring any responsibility in this vile affair.'

Then, as Marc hastily bowed, he added: 'Although the Jews prey on our land of France I have nothing to say against that Monsieur Simon, unless it be that a Jew ought never to be allowed to be a schoolmaster. I hope that _Le Petit Beaumontais_ will start a campaign on that subject.... Liberty and justice for all--such ought to be the watchwords of a good Republican. But the country must be put first, the country alone must be considered, when it is in danger! Is that not so?'

Madame Savin, who since Marc's entry into the room had not spoken a word, escorted the young man to the door of the flat, where, while still retaining an air of embarrassment amid her submissiveness--that of a slave-wife superior to her harsh master--she contented herself with smiling divinely. Then at the bottom of the stairs Marc encountered the children whom the neighbour was bringing home. Hortense, the girl, now nine years old, was already a pretty and coquettish little person, with artful eyes which gleamed with maliciousness when she did not veil them with the expression of hypocritical piety which she had learnt to acquire at Mademoiselle Rouzaire's. But Marc was more interested in the twin boys, Achille and Philippe, two thin pale lads, sickly like their father, and very unruly and sly for their seven years. They pushed their sister against the banister, and almost made her fall; and when they had climbed the stairs, and the door of the flat opened, an infant's wail was heard, that of little Jules, who had awoke and was already in the arms of his mother, eager for her breast.

As Marc walked down the street, he caught himself talking aloud. So they were all agreed, from the ignorant peasant to the timid and idiotic clerk, passing by way of the brutified workman, the spoilt fruit of barrack-life and the salary system. In ascending the social scale one merely found error aggravated by narrow egotism and base cowardice. Men's minds remained steeped in darkness; the semi-education which was nowadays acquired without method, and which reposed on no serious scientific foundation, led simply to a poisoning of the brain, to a state of disquieting corruption. There must be education certainly, but complete education, whence hypocrisy and falsehood would be banished--education which would free the mind by acquainting it with truth in its entirety. Marc trembled at the thought of the abyss of ignorance, error, and hatred which opened before him. What an awful bankruptcy there would be if those folk were needed some day for some work of truth and justice! And those folk typified France; they were the multitude, the heavy, inert mass, many of them worthy people no doubt, but none the less a mass of lead, which weighed the nation down to the ground, incapable as they were of leading a better life, of becoming free, just, and truly happy, because they were steeped in ignorance and poison.

As Marc went slowly towards the school to acquaint his friend Simon with the sad result of his visits, he suddenly remembered that he had not yet called on the Mesdames Milhomme, the stationers of the Rue Courte; and although he anticipated no better result with them than with the others he resolved to fulfil his commission to the very end.

The Milhommes, the ladies' husbands, had been two brothers, born at Maillebois. Edouard, the elder, had inherited a little stationery business from an uncle, and, being of a stay-at-home and unaspiring disposition, had made a shift to live on it with his wife; while his younger, more active, and ambitious brother Alexandre laid the foundations of a fortune while hurrying about the country as a commercial traveller. But death swooped down on both: the elder brother was the first to die, as the result of a tragic accident, a fall into a cellar; the second succumbing six months later to an attack of pulmonary congestion while he was at the other end of France. Their widows remained--one with her humble shop, the other with a capital of some twenty thousand francs, the first savings on which her husband had hoped to rear a fortune. It was to Madame Edouard, a woman of decision and diplomatic skill, that the idea occurred of inducing her sister-in-law, Madame Alexandre, to enter into a partnership, and invest her twenty thousand francs in the little business at Maillebois, which might be increased by selling books, stationery, and other articles for the schools. Each of the two widows had a son, and from that time forward the Mesdames Milhomme, as they were called, Madame Edouard with her little Victor, and Madame Alexandre with her little Sébastien, had kept house together, living in the close intimacy which their interests required, although their natures were radically different.

Madame Edouard followed the observances of the Church, but this did not mean that her faith was firm. She simply placed the requirements of her business before everything else. Her customers were chiefly pious folk whom she did not wish to displease. Madame Alexandre, on the contrary, had given up church-going at the time of her marriage, for her husband had been a gay companion and freethinker, and she refused to take up religion again. It was Madame Edouard, the clever diplomatist, who ingeniously indicated that these divergencies might become a source of profit. Their business was spreading; their shop, situated midway between the Brothers' school and the Communal school, supplied articles suitable for both--lesson books, copybooks, diagrams, and drawing copies, without speaking of pens, pencils, and similar things. Thus it was decided that each of the two women should retain her views and ways, the one with the priests, the other with the freethinkers, in such wise as to satisfy both sides. And in order that nobody might remain ignorant of the understanding, Sébastien was sent to the secular Communal school, where Simon the Jew was master, while Victor remained at the Brothers' school. Matters being thus settled, engineered with superior skill, the partnership prospered, and Mesdames Milhomme now owned one of the most thriving shops in Maillebois.

Marc, on reaching the Rue Courte, in which there were only two houses, the Milhommes' and the parsonage, slackened his steps, and for a moment examined the windows of the stationery shop, in which religious prints were mingled with school pictures glorifying the Republic, whilst illustrated newspapers, hanging from strings, almost barred the doorway. He was about to enter when Madame Alexandre--a tall and gentle-looking blonde, whose face, faded already, though she was only thirty, was still lighted by a faint smile--appeared upon the threshold. Close beside her was her little Sébastien, of whom she was very fond: a child of seven, fair and gentle like his mother, very handsome also, with blue eyes, a delicately shaped nose, and a mouth bespeaking amiability.

Madame Alexandre was acquainted with Marc, and she at once referred to the abominable crime which seemed to haunt her. 'How dreadful, Monsieur Froment!' said she. 'To think also that it occurred so near to us! I frequently saw poor little Zéphirin go by, either on his way to school or returning home. And he often came here to buy copybooks and pens. I can no longer sleep since I saw him dead!'

Then she spoke compassionately of Simon and his grief. She considered him to be very kind-hearted and upright, particularly as he took a great interest in her little Sébastien, who was one of his most intelligent and docile pupils. Whatever other people might say, she would never be able to think the master capable of such a frightful deed as that crime. As for the copy-slip of which people talked so much, nothing would have been proved even if similar ones had been found in the school.

'We sell such slips, you know, Monsieur Froment,' she continued, 'and I have already searched through those which we have in stock. It is true that none bear those particular words, "Love one another"----'

At this moment Sébastien, who had been listening attentively, raised his head. 'I saw one like that,' said he. 'My cousin Victor brought one home from the Brothers' school--there were those words on it!'

His mother appeared stupefied: 'What are you saying?' she exclaimed. 'You never mentioned that to me!'

'But you did not ask. Besides, Victor forbade me to tell, because it's forbidden to take the copy-slips from school.'

'Then where is that one?'

'Ah! I don't know. Victor hid it somewhere, so that he might not be scolded.'

Marc was following the scene, astonished, delighted, his heart beating fast with hope. Was the truth about to come forth from the mouth of that child? Perchance this would prove the feeble ray which spreads little by little until it finally expands into a great blaze of light. And the young man was already putting precise and decisive questions to Sébastien, when Madame Edouard, accompanied by Victor, appeared upon the scene. She was returning from a visit which she had just made to Brother Fulgence, under the pretext of applying for the payment of a stationery account.

Taller than her sister-in-law, Madame Edouard was dark, with a massive square-shaped face and a masculine appearance. Her gestures were quick, her speech was loud. A good and honest woman in her way, she would not have wronged her partner of a _sou_, though she never hesitated to domineer over her. She indeed was the man in the household, and the other as a means of defence only possessed her force of inertia, her very gentleness, of which she availed herself at times for weeks and months together, thereby often securing the victory. As for Victor, Madame Edouard's son, he was a sturdy, squarely-set lad, nine years of age, with a big dark head and massive face, quite a contrast indeed to his cousin Sébastien.

Directly Madame Edouard was apprised of the situation, she looked at her son severely: 'What! a copy? You stole a copy from the Brothers and brought it here?'

Victor had already turned a glance of despair and fury upon Sébastien. 'No, no, mamma,' he answered.

'But you did, for your cousin saw it. He does not usually tell falsehoods.'

The boy ceased answering, but he still cast terrible glances at his cousin. And the latter was by no means at his ease, for he well knew the physical strength of his playmate, and commonly represented the vanquished, beaten enemy whenever they had a game at war together. Under the elder's guidance, there were endless noisy gallops through the house; the younger, so gentle by nature, letting himself be led into them with a kind of rapturous terror.

'No doubt he did not steal it,' Madame Alexandre observed indulgently. 'Perhaps he only brought it home by mistake.'

In order that his cousin might the more readily forgive his indiscretion, Sébastien at once confirmed this suggestion: 'Of course, it was like that. I did not say he stole it.'

Madame Edouard, having now calmed down, ceased to exact an immediate answer from Victor, who remained silent as if stubbornly resolved upon making no confession. His mother, for her part, doubtless reflected that it would be scarcely prudent to investigate the matter in a stranger's presence without weighing the gravity of the consequences. She pictured herself taking one or the other side in the affair, and setting either the Brothers' school or the Communal school against her, thereby losing one set of customers. So, after casting a domineering glance at Madame Alexandre, she contented herself with saying to her son: 'That will do. Go indoors, monsieur; we will settle all this by and by. Just reflect, and if you do not tell me the real truth, I shall know what to do to you.'

Then, turning to Marc, she added: 'We will tell you what he says, monsieur; and you may depend upon it that he will soon speak unless he desires such a whipping as he is not likely to forget.'

Marc could not insist any further, however ardent might be his desire to learn the whole truth immediately, in order that he might convey it to Simon like tidings of deliverance. But he no longer felt a doubt respecting the genuineness of the decisive fact, the triumphant proof which chance had placed in his hands; so he at once hastened to his friend's, to tell him of his successive repulses with the Bongards, the Doloirs, and the Savins, and of the unhoped-for discovery which he made at the Milhommes'. Simon listened quietly, showing no sign of the delight which Marc had anticipated. Ah! there were similar copies at the Brothers' school? Well, he was not astonished to hear it. For his own part, why should he worry, as he was innocent?

'I thank you very much for all the trouble you have taken, my good friend,' he added, 'and I fully understand the importance of that child's statement. But I cannot accustom myself to the idea that my fate depends on what may be said, or what may not be said, considering that I am guilty of nothing. To my thinking, that is as evident as the sun in the skies.'

Marc, who felt quite enlivened, began to laugh. He now shared his friend's confidence. And after they had chatted for a moment, he took, his leave, but suddenly returned to ask: 'Has handsome Mauraisin been to see you?'

'No, I have not seen him,' Simon answered.

'In that case, my friend, he must have wished to ascertain the opinions of all Maillebois before coming. I caught sight of him this morning, first with Father Crabot, and afterwards with Mademoiselle Rouzaire. While I was running about this afternoon, too, I fancied I saw him twice--once slipping into the Ruelle des Capucins, and then, as it seemed to me, on his way to the mayor's. He must have been making inquiries in order to be sure of taking the stronger side.'

Simon, hitherto so calm, made a nervous gesture; for, timid by nature, he regarded his superiors with respect and fear. Indeed, his sole personal worry in the catastrophe was the possibility of a great scandal which might cost him his situation, or at least cause him to be regarded very unfavourably by the officials of his department. And he was about to confess this apprehension to Marc when, as it happened, Mauraisin presented himself, looking frigid and thoughtful.

'Yes, Monsieur Simon, I have hastened here on account of that horrible affair. I am in despair for the school, for all of you, and for ourselves. It is very serious--very serious--very serious.'

As he spoke the Elementary Inspector drew up his little figure, and his words fell from his lips with increasing severity. In a formal way he had shaken hands with Marc, knowing that Le Barazer, the Academy Inspector, his superior, was partial to the young man. But he looked at him askance through his glasses as if to invite him to withdraw. And Marc could not linger, although it worried him to leave Simon alone with that man, on whom his position depended, and before whom he now trembled--he who had shown so much courage ever since the morning. But there was no help for it; so Marc went home full of the new impression that had come to him, the covert hostility of that man Mauraisin, whom he divined to be a traitor.

The evening, spent with the ladies, proved very quiet. Neither Madame Duparque nor Madame Berthereau referred to the crime, and the little house fell asleep peacefully, as if nought of the tragedy in progress elsewhere had ever entered it. Marc had thought it prudent to say nothing about his busy afternoon. On going to bed he contented himself with telling his wife that he felt quite at ease with reference to his friend Simon. The news pleased Geneviève; and they then continued chatting until rather late, for in the daytime they were never alone together, never able to speak freely, in such wise that they seemed to be strangers. When they fell asleep in each other's arms, it was as if they had been blissfully reunited after a positive separation.

But, in the morning, Marc was painfully astonished to find an abominable article against Simon in _Le Petit Beaumontais_. He remembered the paragraph of the previous day which had expressed so much sympathy with the schoolmaster and had covered him with praise. Twenty-four hours had sufficed to effect a complete change, and now, with a wonderful show of perfidious suppositions and false interpretations of the facts, the Jew was savagely sacrificed, plainly accused of the ignoble crime. What could have happened then? What powerful influence could have been at work? Whence came that poisoned article, drafted so carefully in order that the Jew might be for ever condemned by the ignorant populace athirst for falsehood? That newspaper melodrama with its mysterious intricacies, its extraordinary fairy-tale improbabilities, would prove, Marc felt it, a legend changing into truth, positive truth, from which people henceforth would refuse to depart. And when the young man had finished his perusal he again became conscious of some secret working in the gloom, some immense work which mysterious forces had been accomplishing since the previous day in order to ruin the innocent and thereby save the unknown culprit.

Yet no fresh incident had occurred, the magistrates had not returned to Maillebois, there was still only the gendarmes guarding the chamber of the crime, where lay the remains of the poor little victim, awaiting burial. The post-mortem examination on the previous day had merely confirmed the facts which were already known: After a scene of horror Zéphirin had been killed by strangulation, as was indicated by the deep violet finger-marks around his neck. It had been settled that the funeral should take place that afternoon, and, according to report, preparations were being made to invest it with avenging solemnity. The authorities were to be present as well as all the victim's school-fellows.

Marc, whom anxiety assailed once more, spent a gloomy morning. He did not go to see Simon, for he thought it best to do so in the evening after the funeral. He contented himself with strolling through Maillebois, which he found drowsy, as if gorged with horrors, while waiting for the promised spectacle. After his walk the young man's spirits revived, and he was finishing lunch with the ladies, amused by the prattle of little Louise, who was very lively that day, when Pélagie, on entering the room with a fine plum tart, found herself unable to restrain her rapturous delight.

'Ah! madame,' she exclaimed, 'they are arresting that brigand of a Jew! At last! It's none too soon!'

'They are arresting Simon? How do you know it?' exclaimed Marc, who had turned very pale.

'Why, everybody says so, monsieur. The butcher across the road has just gone off to see it.'

Marc flung down his napkin, rose, and went out without touching any tart. The ladies were aghast, deeply offended by such a breach of good manners. Even Geneviève seemed to be displeased.

'He is losing his senses,' said Madame Duparque dryly. 'Ah! my dear girl, I warned you. Without religion no happiness is possible.'

When Marc reached the street he immediately realised that something extraordinary was taking place. All the shopkeepers were at their doors, some people were running, while an ever-increasing uproar of shouts and jeers was to be heard. Hastening his steps Marc turned into the Rue Courte, and there he at once perceived the Mesdames Milhomme and their children assembled on the threshold of the stationery shop. They also were deeply interested in the great event. And Marc then remembered that there was some good evidence to be obtained there, of which he had better make sure immediately.

'Is it true?' he asked. 'Is Monsieur Simon being arrested?'

'Why, yes, Monsieur Froment,' Madame Alexandre replied in her gentle way. 'We have just seen the Commissary pass.'

'And it is certain, you know,' said Madame Edouard in her turn, looking him straight in the face, and anticipating the question which she had already read in his eyes, 'it is quite certain that Victor never had that pretended copy-slip. I have questioned him, and I am convinced that he is telling no falsehood.'

The boy raised his face, with its square chin and large eyes full of quiet impudence. 'No, of course I am not telling a falsehood,' he said.

Amazed, chilled to the heart, Marc turned to Madame Alexandre: 'But what was it your son said, madame? He saw that copy in his cousin's hands--he declared it!'

The mother appeared ill at ease and did not immediately answer. Her little Sébastien had already taken refuge in her skirts as if to hide his face, and she with a quivering hand fondled his hair, covered his head anxiously and protectingly.

'No doubt, Monsieur Froment,' she at last responded, 'he saw it, or rather he fancied he saw it. At present he is not very sure: he thinks he may have been mistaken. And so, you see, there is nothing more to be said.'

Unwilling to insist with the women, Marc addressed himself to the little boy. 'Is it true that you did not see the copy? There is nothing so wicked as a lie, my child.'

Sébastien, instead of answering, pressed his face more closely to his mother's skirt, and burst into sobs. It was evident that Madame Edouard, like a good trader, who feared that by taking any particular side in the conflict she might lose a part of her custom, had imposed her will upon the others. She was as firm as a rock, and it would be impossible to move her. However, she condescended to indicate the reasons by which she was guided.

'_Mon Dieu_, Monsieur Froment,' she said, 'we are against nobody, you know; we need everybody's help in our business. Only it must be admitted that all the appearances are against Monsieur Simon. Take, for instance, that train which he says he missed, that return ticket which he threw away in the station yard, that four-mile walk when he met nobody. Besides, Mademoiselle Rouzaire is positive that she heard a noise about twenty minutes to eleven o'clock, whereas he pretends that he did not return till an hour later. Explain, too, how it happened that Monsieur Mignot had to go and wake him when it was nearly eight o'clock in the morning--he who is usually up so early.... Well, perhaps he will justify himself. For his sake, let us hope so----'

Marc stopped her with a gesture. She was repeating what he had read in _Le Petit Beaumontais_, and he was terrified by it. He cast a keen glance on both women--the one who so resolutely silenced her conscience, the other who trembled from head to foot; and he himself shuddered at the thought of their sudden falsehood which might lead to such disastrous consequences. Then he left them and hastened to Simon's.

A closed vehicle, guarded by two plain-clothes officers, was waiting at the door. The orders were stringent, but Marc at last contrived to enter. While two other officers guarded Simon in the classroom, the Commissary of Police, who had arrived with a warrant signed by Investigating Magistrate Daix, conducted a fresh and very minute perquisition through the whole house, seeking, no doubt, for copies of the famous writing slip. But he found nothing; and when Marc ventured to ask one of the officers if a similar perquisition had taken place at the school kept by the Brothers of the Christian Doctrine, the man looked at him in amazement. A perquisition at the good Brothers' school? What for, indeed? But Marc was already shrugging his shoulders at his own simplicity, for, even supposing that the officers had gone to the Brothers', the latter had been allowed ample time to burn and destroy everything likely to compromise them.

The young man had to exert all his powers of restraint to prevent himself from expressing his feelings of revolt. His powerlessness to demonstrate the truth filled him with despair. For yet another hour he had to remain in the hall, waiting for the finish of the Commissary's search. At last, just as the officers were about to remove Simon, he was able to see him for a moment. Madame Simon and her two children were there also, and she flung herself, sobbing, about her husband's neck, while the Commissary, a rough but not hard-hearted man, made a pretence of giving some last orders. There came a most heart-rending scene.

Simon, livid, crushed by the downfall of his life, strove to preserve great calmness.

'Do not grieve, my darling,' he said. 'It can only be an error, an abominable error. Everything will certainly be explained as soon as I am interrogated, and I shall soon return to you.'

But Rachel sobbed yet more violently, with a wild expression on her tear-drenched face, while she raised the poor little ones, Joseph and Sarah, in order that their father might kiss them once again.

'Yes, yes, the poor children; love them well; take good care of them until my return. And I beg you do not weep so; you will deprive me of all my courage.'

He tore himself from her clasp, and then, at the sight of Marc, his eyes sparkled with infinite joy. He quickly grasped the hand which the young man offered him: 'Ah! comrade, thank you! Let my brother David be warned at once; be sure to tell him I am innocent. He will seek everywhere, he will find the culprit, it is to him that I confide my honour and my children's.'

'Be easy,' replied Marc, half-choking with emotion, 'I will help him.'

But the Commissary now returned and put an end to the leave-taking. It was necessary that Madame Simon, wild with grief, should be removed at the moment when Simon was led away by the two officers. What followed was monstrous. The hour fixed for the funeral of little Zéphirin was three, and, in order to prevent any regrettable collision, it had been decided to arrest Simon at one o'clock. But the perquisition had lasted so long that the very thing which the authorities had wished to prevent took place. When Simon appeared outside, on the little flight of steps, the square was already crowded with people who had come to see the funeral procession. And this crowd, which had gorged itself with the tales of _Le Petit Beaumontais_, and which was still stirred by the horror of the crime, raised angry shouts as soon as it perceived the schoolmaster, that accursed Jew, that slayer of little children, who for his abominable witchery needed their virgin blood, whilst it was yet sanctified by the presence of the Host. That was the legend, never to be destroyed, which sped from mouth to mouth, maddening the tumultuous and menacing crowd.

'To death! To death with the murderer and sacrilegist! To death, to death with the Jew!'

Chilled to his bones, paler and yet more rigid than before, Simon, from the top of the steps, responded by a cry which henceforth came without cessation from his lips as if it were the very voice of his conscience: 'I am innocent, I am innocent!'

Then rage transported the throng, the hoots ascended tempestuously, a huge human wave bounded forward to seize the accursed wretch and throw him down and tear him into shreds.

'To death! to death with the Jew!'

But the officers had quickly pushed Simon into the waiting vehicle, and the driver urged his horse into a fast trot, while the prisoner, never tiring, repeated his cry in accents which rose above the tempest:

'I am innocent! I am innocent! I am innocent!'

All the way down the High Street the crowd rushed, howling louder and louder, behind the vehicle. And Marc, who had remained in the square, dazed and full of anguish, began to think of the other demonstration, the indignant murmurs, the explosion of revolt which had attended the end of the prize-giving at the Brothers' school two days previously. Barely forty-eight hours had sufficed for a complete revulsion of public opinion, and he was terrified by the abominable skill, the cruel promptitude displayed by the mysterious hands which had gathered so much darkness together. His hopes had crumbled, he felt that truth was obscured, defeated, in peril of death. Never before had he experienced such intense distress of mind.

But the procession for little Zéphirin's funeral was already being formed. Marc saw the devout Mademoiselle Rouzaire bringing up the girls of her class, after witnessing Simon's Calvary without making even a gesture of sympathy. Nor had Mignot, who was surrounded by some of the boys, gone to press his superior's hand. He stood there sullen and embarrassed, suffering no doubt from the struggle between his good nature and his interests. At last the procession started, directing its steps towards St. Martin's amidst extraordinary pomp. Again one realised how carefully artful hands had organised everything in order to move the people, excite its pity, and its desire for vengeance. On either side of the little coffin walked those of Zéphirin's school-fellows who had taken their first Communion at the same time as himself. Next appeared Darras, the Mayor, attended by the other authorities and acting as chief mourner. Then came all the pupils of the Brothers' school, led by Brother Fulgence with his three assistants, Brothers Isidore, Lazarus, and Gorgias. The important airs which Brother Fulgence gave himself were much remarked; he came, went, and commanded on all sides, going even so far in his agitation as to meddle with Mademoiselle Rouzaire's pupils as though they were under his orders. And several Capuchins were also present with their superior, Father Théodose, and there were Jesuits from the College of Valmarie, headed by their rector, Father Crabot, together with priests who had come from all the surrounding districts--such a gathering of gowns and cassocks, indeed, that the whole Church of the region seemed to have been mobilised in order to ensure itself a triumph by claiming as its own the poor little body which, amid that splendid procession, was now being carried to the grave.

Sobs burst forth along the whole line of route, and furious cries resounded: 'Death to the Jews! Death to the dirty Jews!'

A final incident completed Marc's enlightenment while, with his heart full of bitterness, he continued to watch the scene. He caught sight of Inspector Mauraisin, who, as on the previous day, had come from Beaumont to ascertain, no doubt, what might be his best line of conduct. And when Father Crabot passed, Marc saw that he and Mauraisin exchanged a smile and a discreet salutation, like men who understood each other and regarded each other's conduct with approval. All the monstrous iniquity, woven in the gloom during the last two days, then appeared to Marc under the clear sky, while the bells of St. Martin's rang out in honour of the poor little boy whose tragic fate was about to be so impudently exploited.

But a rough hand was laid on Marc's shoulder, and some words addressed to him in a tone of bitter irony caused him to look round.

'Well, what did I tell you, my worthy and simple colleague? The dirty Jew is convicted of villainy and murder. And while he travels to Beaumont gaol, all the good Brothers are triumphing!'

It was Férou who spoke--Férou the rebellious, starveling schoolmaster, looking more gawky than ever, with his hair all in disorder, his long bony head, and his big sneering mouth.

'How can they be accused,' he continued, 'since the little victim belongs to them, to them alone? Ah! it's certain that nobody will dare to accuse them, for all Maillebois has seen them take him to the grave in grand procession! The amusing thing is the buzzing of that ridiculous black fly, that idiotic Brother Fulgence, who knocks up against everybody. He's over zealous. But you must have also seen Father Crabot with his shrewd smile, which doubtless hides no little stupidity, whatever may be his reputation for skilfulness. At all events, remember what I tell you, the cleverest, the only really clever one among them all, is certainly Father Philibin, who pretends to look like a big booby. You may search for him, but you won't find him there. It wasn't likely that he would come to Maillebois to-day. He's keeping himself in the background, and you may be sure that he's doing some fine work. Ah! I don't know exactly who the culprit may be--he is certainly none of those--but he belongs to their shop, that's as plain as a pikestaff, and they will overturn everything rather than give him up.'

Then as Marc, still overcome, remained silent, merely nodding, Férou went on: 'Ah! they regard it as a fine opportunity to crush the freethinkers. A Communal schoolmaster guilty of abomination and murder! What a splendid battle-cry! They will soon settle our hash, rogues that we are, without God or country! Yes, death to the traitors who've sold themselves! Death to the dirty Jews!'

Waving his long arms, Férou went off into the crowd. As he was wont to say with his excessive jeering bitterness, it mattered little to him at bottom whether he ended by being burnt at the stake, in a shirt dipped in brimstone, or whether he starved to death in his wretched school at Le Moreux.

That evening, when, after a silent dinner in the ladies' company, Marc found himself alone again with Geneviève, she, observing his despair, lovingly passed her arms about him, and burst into tears. He felt deeply moved, for it had seemed to him that day as if their bond of union had been slightly shaken, as if severance were beginning. He pressed her to his heart, and for a long time they both wept without exchanging a word.

At last, hesitating somewhat, she said to him: 'Listen, my dear Marc, I think we should do well to shorten our stay with grandmother. We might go away to-morrow.'

Surprised by these words, he questioned her: 'Has she had enough of us then? Were you told to signify it to me?'

'Oh! no, no! On the contrary, it would grieve mamma. We should have to invent a pretext, get somebody to send us a telegram.'

'But in that case, why should we not spend our full month here as usual? We have some little differences together, no doubt; but I don't complain.'

For a moment Geneviève remained embarrassed. She did not dare to confess her anxiety at the thought that something had seemed to be detaching her from her husband that evening, in the atmosphere of devout hostility in which she lived at her grandmother's. She had felt indeed as if the ideas and feelings of her girlhood were returning and clashing with the life which she led as wife and mother. But all that was merely the faint touch of the past, and her gaiety and confidence soon returned amid Marc's caresses. Near her, in the cradle, she could hear the gentle and regular breathing of her little Louise.

'You are right,' she said. 'Let us stay--and do your duty as you understand it. We love each other too well to be otherwise than happy, always.'

III

From that time forward, in order to avoid painful quarrels; nothing more was said of the Affaire Simon in the ladies' little house. At meals they spoke merely of the fine weather, as if they were a thousand leagues from Maillebois, where the popular passions raged more and more tempestuously, old friends of thirty years' standing, and even relatives quarrelling, threatening one another and exchanging blows. Marc, who in the home of Geneviève's family displayed such silence and lack of interest, became elsewhere one of the most ardent combatants, an heroic worker in the cause of truth and justice.

On the evening of the day when Simon was arrested he had persuaded his colleague's wife to seek an asylum with her parents, the Lehmanns, those tailors who dwelt in a little dark house of the Rue du Trou. It was holiday-time, the school was closed; and, besides, Mignot the assistant-master, remained to guard the building--that is, when he was not fishing in the Verpille. Moreover, Mademoiselle Rouzaire, who wished to take part in the affair, in which her evidence was likely to prove important, had also remained at her post, renouncing on this occasion the holiday visit which she usually paid to an aunt dwelling at a distance. Thus Madame Simon, leaving her furniture behind, in order that folk might not regard her departure as terrified flight and a tacit acknowledgment of guilt, had taken Joseph and Sarah to the Rue du Trou, with a single trunk of clothes, as if she merely intended to stay with her parents for a few weeks.

From that moment Marc visited the Lehmanns almost daily. The Rue du Trou, which opened into the Rue du Plaisir, was one of the most sordid streets of the poor quarter of Maillebois, and the Lehmanns' house was composed merely of a dark shop and a still darker shop parlour on the ground floor, then three first-floor rooms, reached by a black staircase, at the very top of which was a spacious garret, this last being the only part of the house which the sunrays occasionally entered. The damp, greenish, cellar-like shop parlour served as a kitchen and living room. Rachel took possession of the dismal bedroom of her girlhood; and the old people contented themselves with one chamber, the third being given to the children, who were also allowed the run of the garret, which made them a gay and spacious playroom.

Marc constantly felt surprised that such an admirable woman as Rachel, one of so rare a beauty, should have sprung in such a horrid den from needy parents, weighed down by a long heredity of anxious penury. Lehmann, her father, was, at five and fifty, a Jew of the classic type, short and insignificant, with a large nose, blinking eyes, and a thick grey beard which hid his mouth. His calling had distorted him; he had one shoulder higher than the other, and a kind of anxious discomfort of body was thus added to his humility. His wife, who plied her needle from morning till night, hid herself away in his shadow, being yet more retiring in her humility and silent disquietude. They led a narrow life full of difficulties, earning a scanty subsistence by dint of hard work for slowly-acquired customers, such as the few Israelites of the region who were in easy circumstances, and certain Christians who did not spend much money on their clothes. The gold of France, with which the Jews were said to gorge themselves, was certainly not piled up there. Indeed, a feeling of great compassion came to one at the sight of those poor weary old people, who were ever trembling lest somebody should deprive them of the bread which cost them so much toil.

At the Lehmanns', however, Marc became acquainted with Simon's brother David, whom a telegram had summoned on the day of the arrest. Taller and stronger than Simon, whose senior he was by three years, David had a full firm face with bright and energetic eyes. After his father's death he had entered the army, in which he had served for twelve years, rising from the ranks to a lieutenancy, and after innumerable struggles and rebuffs being, it seemed, near promotion to the rank of captain, when he suddenly sent in his papers, lacking the courage to contend any longer against the affronts to which his comrades and superiors subjected him because he was a Jew. This had taken place some five years before the crime of Maillebois, at the time when Simon was about to marry Rachel. David, who remained a bachelor, looked round him for occupation, and, like a man of initiative and energy, embarked in an enterprise of which nobody had previously thought. This was the working of some very extensive sand and gravel pits on the estate of La Désirade, which then still belonged to the millionaire banker, Baron Nathan. The latter, taken with the young man's energy and sense, granted him a thirty years' lease on fairly low terms, and thus David was soon on the high road to fortune; for in three years he earned a hundred thousand francs in this enterprise, which steadily increased in magnitude and at last absorbed every hour of his time.

But, on hearing of the charge brought against his brother, he did not hesitate; he placed his business in the hands of a foreman on whom he could rely, and hurried to Maillebois. He did not for a moment doubt his brother's innocence. It was materially impossible, he felt, that such a deed could be the act of such a man, the one whom he knew best in all the world, who was indeed the counterpart of himself. But he evinced great prudence, for he desired to do nothing that might harm his brother, and he knew, too, that all Jews were unpopular. Thus, when Marc in his impassioned way spoke to him of his suspicions, declaring that the real culprit must certainly be one of the Brothers of the Christian Doctrine, David, though at heart of the same opinion, strove to calm his friend, saying that one must not lose sight of the theory of a prowling tramp, a chance murderer, who might have entered and left by the window. As a matter of fact, he felt that he would increase the popular prejudice against Simon by bringing any random charge against the Brothers; he foresaw, too, that all efforts would be vain against the coalition of the interested parties unless he were possessed of decisive proofs. Meantime, in order that Simon might benefit by an element of doubt, would it not be best to revert to the theory of that prowler, which everybody had admitted as possible at the moment of the discovery of the crime? It would serve as an excellent basis for provisional operations; whereas a campaign at that moment against the well-informed and powerfully supported Brothers could only turn against the prisoner.

David was able to see Simon in the presence of Investigating Magistrate Daix, and by the long hand-shake which they then exchanged they fully understood that each was possessed by the same feelings. Later, David also saw his brother at the prison, and, on returning to the Lehmanns, he described Simon as being still in great despair, ever straining his mind in endeavouring to unravel the enigma, but displaying extraordinary energy in defending his honour and that of his children. When David recounted all this, seated in the dim little shop where Marc also was present, the latter was profoundly stirred by the silent tears of Madame Simon, who looked so beautiful and dolorous in her self-abandonment, like a woman of weak loving nature cruelly struck down by destiny. The Lehmanns also could only sigh and display the shrinking despair of poor folk who were resigned to contumely. They still plied their needles, and, though they were convinced of their son-in-law's innocence, they dared not proclaim it before their customers for fear lest they should aggravate his position and lose their own means of livelihood. The public effervescence at Maillebois was unhappily increasing, and one evening a band of brawlers smashed the shop windows. It was necessary to put up the shutters at once. Then little manuscript notices were posted in various parts of the town, calling upon patriots to assemble and burn down the shop. For some days indeed--particularly one Sunday, after a pompous religious ceremony at the Capuchin Chapel--the explosion of anti-semite passion became so intense that Darras, the Mayor, had to send to Beaumont for police, deeming it necessary to have guards posted in the Rue du Trou lest the house of the Lehmanns should be sacked.

From hour to hour the affair expanded, and grew more virulent, becoming a social battlefield on which rival parties contended hotly. Magistrate Daix had doubtless received orders to conduct his investigations with all possible speed. In less than a month he interrogated all the witnesses--Mignot, Mademoiselle Rouzaire, Father Philibin, Brother Fulgence, several schoolchildren and railway employés. Brother Fulgence, with his usual exuberance, demanded that his three assistants, Brothers Isidore, Lazarus, and Gorgias, should also be interrogated; he likewise insisted that a search should be made at his school, and this was done; but naturally nothing was found. Daix thought it his duty, however, to inquire minutely into the suggestion that the crime might have been committed by a tramp. By his orders the entire gendarmerie of the department scoured the roads, and some fifty tramps were arrested, and then released, without the slightest clue being arrived at. In one instance a pedlar remained three days under lock and key, but to no purpose. Then Daix, setting aside the theory of a prowler, remained in presence of the copy-slip, the one tangible piece of evidence at his disposal, the only thing on which he could rear his charge.

When this reached the ears of Marc and David, they became calm again, for it seemed to them impossible that a serious accusation could be based on that slip of paper, the importance of which was so open to discussion. As David repeated, although no guilty tramp had been found, the hypothesis that one existed, or at least an element of doubt, still remained. And if thereto one added the lack of proof against Simon, the moral improbability of his guilt, his never-varying protests of innocence, it was purely impossible for an Investigating Magistrate, possessed of any conscience, to come to the conclusion that he was the culprit. A _non-lieu_, otherwise a decision that there was no ground to proceed further against the prisoner, seemed a certainty on which one might rely.

There came days, however, when Marc and David, who co-operated in brotherly fashion, began to lose some of their fine assurance. Bad rumours reached them. The Congregations were bestirring themselves frantically. Father Crabot was for ever visiting Beaumont, availing himself of his society connections to dine with government officials, members of the judicial and even the university world. As the Jew prisoner seemed more and more likely to secure release, so, on all sides, the battle grew fiercer. At last, then, it occurred to David to endeavour to obtain the support of Baron Nathan, the great banker and former proprietor of La Désirade, who was staying there as the guest of his daughter, the Countess de Sanglebœuf, whose marriage portion had consisted of that royal domain and a sum of ten millions of francs[1] in hard cash. Thus, one bright afternoon in August, David and Marc, who also had a slight acquaintance with the Baron, set out on foot for La Désirade, a very pleasant walk, for the distance from Maillebois was not much more than a mile.

[Footnote 1: About $1,940,000.]

Count Hector de Sanglebœuf, the last scion of his house, one of the early members of which had been squire to St. Louis, had found himself completely ruined when he was only thirty-six years of age. His father had devoured the greater part of the family fortune and he himself had consumed the remnants. After holding a commission in the Cuirassiers, he had resigned it, feeling tired of garrison life; and for a time he had remained living with a widow, the Marchioness de Boise, who was ten years his senior, and far too intent on her own comfort to marry him, for her penury, added to his own, would only have conduced to a disastrous future. People related that it was this mistress who had ingeniously arranged the Count's marriage with Baron Nathan's daughter Lia, a young person of four and twenty, very beautiful and all ablaze with millions. Nathan had negotiated the transaction with his eyes open, knowing perfectly well what he gave and what he was to receive in exchange, adding his daughter to the millions which left his safe in order that he might have as son-in-law a Count of very old and authentic nobility, which circumstance would open to him the portals of a sphere from which he had been hitherto excluded.

He himself had lately acquired the title of Baron, and he was at last escaping from the ancient 'ghetto,' that universal contumely of which the haunting thought made him shudder. A dealer in money, he had filled his cellars with gold, and his one frantic craving nowadays, like that of the Christian moneymongers, whose appetites were fully as keen, was to gratify his pride and his instincts of domination, to be saluted, honoured and worshipped upon all sides, and in particular to be delivered from the ever-pursuing dread of being kicked and spat upon like a mere dirty Jew. Thus he quite enjoyed staying with his son-in-law at La Désirade, deriving no little consideration from the connections of his daughter the Countess, and remaining in so small a degree a Jew that, like many other renegades of his class, he had enrolled himself among the anti-semites, and professed the most fervent royalism and patriotism. Indeed, the dexterous, smiling Marchioness de Boise, who had derived from her lover's marriage all the profit she had anticipated for him and for herself, was often obliged to moderate the Baron's ardour. That marriage, it should be mentioned, had scarcely changed the position of the Marchioness and Count Hector. The former, a beautiful ripening blonde, was doubtless devoid of jealousy in the strict sense of the word, besides being intelligent enough to combine such worldly enjoyment as money may procure with the happiness of a long and peaceful _liaison_. Besides, she knew the beautiful Lia to be an admirable piece of statuary, an idol full of narrow egotism, who found it blissful to be installed in a sanctuary, where attendant worshippers adored but did not unduly tire her. She did not even read, for reading soon brought her fatigue; she was quite content to remain seated for hours together in the midst of general attentions, with never a thought for anybody but herself.

Doubtless she did not long remain ignorant of the real position of the Marchioness and her husband, but she dismissed the thought of it, not wishing to be worried, and indeed she was at last unable to dispense with that caressing friend, who was ever in admiration before her, and who lavished on her such loving and pleasing expressions as 'my pussy,' 'my beautiful darling,' 'my dear treasure.' A more touching friendship was never seen, and the Marchioness soon had her room and her place at table at La Désirade. Then another idea of genius came to her. She undertook to convert Lia to the Catholic faith. The young wife was at first terrified by the idea, for she feared that she might be overwhelmed with religious exercises and observances. But, directly Father Crabot was brought into the affair, he, with his worldly graciousness, made the path quite easy. Yet the Countess was most won over by the enthusiasm which her father displayed for the Marchioness's idea. It was as if the Baron hoped that he would cleanse himself of some of his own horrid Jewry in the water of the young woman's baptism. When the ceremony took place it quite upset society in Beaumont, and it was always spoken of as a great triumph of the Church.

As a final achievement, the motherly Marchioness de Boise, who directed the steps of Hector de Sanglebœuf as if he were her big, dull-witted, obedient child, had with the help of his wife's fortune caused him to be elected as one of the deputies of Beaumont, insisting too that he should join the little parliamentary group of Opportunist Reactionaries, who gave out that they had 'rallied' to the Republic; for by this course she hoped to raise him to some high political position. The amusing part of the affair was that Baron Nathan, who, scarce freed from the stigma of his Jewish ancestry, had become an uncompromising Royalist, now found himself a far more fervent partisan of the monarchy than his son-in-law, and this in spite of the latter's descent from a squire of St. Louis. The Baron, who had found an opportunity for personal triumph in the baptism of his daughter--on which occasion he had chosen her new 'Christian' name, Marie, by which he always addressed her with a kind of pious affectation--triumphed also in the election of his son-in-law as deputy, for he felt that he might be able to make use of him in the political world. But, apart from questions of interest, he quite enjoyed himself at La Désirade, which was now full of priests, and where all the talk was about the various pious works in which the Marchioness de Boise associated her friend Marie, with whom she became yet more intimate and loving.

David and Marc slackened their steps when, admitted by the lodge-keeper of La Désirade, they at last found them selves in the grounds. It was a splendid and enjoyable August day, and the beauty of the great trees, the infinite placidity of the lawns, the delightful freshness of the waters filled them with admiration. A king might have dwelt there. At the end of the enchanting avenues of verdure extending on all sides, one invariably perceived the château, a sumptuous Renaissance château, rising like lace-work of pinkish stone against the azure of the sky. And at the sight of that paradise acquired by Jew wealth, at the thought of the splendid fortune amassed by Nathan the Jew money-monger, Marc instinctively recalled the gloomy little shop in the Rue du Trou, the dismal hovel without air or sunshine, where Lehmann, that other Jew, had been plying his needle for thirty years, and earning only enough to provide himself with bread. And, ah! how many other Jews there were, yet more wretched than he--Jews who starved in filthy dens. They were the immense majority, and their existence demonstrated all the idiotic falsity of anti-semitism, that proscription _en masse_ of a race which was charged with the monopolisation of all wealth, when it numbered so many poor working-folk, so many victims, crushed down by the almightiness of money, whether it were Jew, or Catholic, or Protestant. As soon as ever a French Jew became a great capitalist, he bought a title of Baron, married his daughter to a Count of ancient stock, made a pretence of showing himself more royalist than the king, and ended by becoming the worst of renegades, a fierce anti-semite, who not only denied, but helped to slaughter, his kith and kin. There was really no Jew question at all, there was only a Capitalist question--a question of money heaped up in the hands of a certain number of gluttons, and thereby poisoning and rotting the world.

As David and Marc reached the château they perceived Baron Nathan, his daughter, and his son-in-law seated under a large oak tree in the company of the Marchioness de Boise and a cleric, in whom they recognised Father Crabot. Doubtless the Rector of the College of Valmarie had been invited to a quiet family lunch, in neighbourly fashion--for a distance of less than two miles separated the two estates; and doubtless, also, some serious question had been discussed at dessert. Then, to enjoy the fine weather, they had seated themselves in some garden chairs, under that oak and near a marble basin, into which ever fell the crystal of a source which an indelicate nymph was pouring from her urn.

On recognising the visitors, who discreetly halted a short distance away, the Baron came forward and conducted them to some other seats, set out on the opposite side of the basin. Short and somewhat bent, quite bald at fifty, with a yellow face, a fleshy nose, and black eyes--the eyes of a bird of prey set deeply under projecting brows--Nathan had assumed for the nonce an expression of grievous sympathy as if he were receiving folk in deep mourning who had just lost a relative. It was plain that the visit did not surprise him. He must have been expecting it.

'Ah! how I pity you, my poor David,' he said. 'I have often thought of you since that misfortune. You know how highly I esteem your intelligence, enterprise, and industry. But what an affair, what an abominable affair your brother Simon has put on your shoulders! He is compromising you, he is ruining you, my poor David!'

And with an impulse of sincere despair the Baron raised his quivering hands and added, as if he feared he might see the persecutions of olden time begin afresh: 'The unhappy man! He is compromising all of us!'

Then David with his quiet bravery began to plead his brother's cause, expressing his absolute conviction of his innocence, enumerating the moral and material proofs which in his estimation were irrefutable, while Nathan curtly jogged his head.

'Yes, yes, it is only natural,' the Baron at last replied, 'you believe him to be innocent; I myself still wish to do so. Unfortunately it is not a question of convincing me, you must convince the officers of the law, and also the exasperated masses who are capable of doing harm to all of us if he is not condemned.... No, I shall never forgive your brother for having saddled us with such a dreadful affair.'

Then, on David explaining that he had come to him, knowing his influence, and relying on his help to make the truth manifest, the Baron became colder, more and more reserved, and listened in silence.

'You always showed me so much kindness, Monsieur le Baron,' said David, 'and as you used to invite the judicial authorities of Beaumont here, I thought that you might perhaps be able to give me some information. For instance, you are acquainted with Monsieur Daix, the Investigating Magistrate who has the affair in hand, and who, I hope, will soon stay further proceedings. Perhaps you may have some news on that subject; besides which, if a decision has not yet been reached, a word from you might prove valuable----'

'No, no,' Nathan protested, 'I know nothing, I desire to know nothing. I have no official connections, no influence. Besides, my position as a co-religionist prevents me from doing anything; I should merely compromise myself without rendering you any service. But wait a moment, I will call my son-in-law.'

Marc had remained silent, contenting himself with listening. He had accompanied David merely to give him the support of his presence as one of Simon's colleagues. But while he listened he glanced in the direction of the oak tree, at the ladies sitting there--Countess Marie, as the beautiful Lia was now called, and the Marchioness de Boise, between whom Father Crabot was reposing in a rustic armchair, while Count Hector de Sanglebœuf, who had remained erect, finished chewing a cigar. The Marchioness, still slim and still pretty under her fair hair, which she powdered, was expressing great anxiety respecting a sunbeam which darted on the nape of the Countess's neck; and although the beautiful Jewess, indolent and superb, declared that she was in no way inconvenienced, her friend, lavishing on her all the usual pet names, 'my pussy,' 'my jewel,' and 'my treasure,' at last compelled her to change places. The Jesuit Crabot, who was evidently at his ease, smiled at both of them with the air of a very tolerant father-confessor. And meantime a never-ending flute-like strain came from the crystalline water which the indelicate nymph was pouring from her urn into the marble basin.

Sanglebœuf, on being called by his father-in-law, came forward slowly. With a big body and a full and highly-coloured face, a low forehead and short-cropped, ruddy, bristling hair, he had eyes of a dim blue, a small flabby nose, and a large voracious mouth, half-hidden by thick moustaches. As soon as the Baron had told him of the help which David solicited, he became quite angry, though he affected a kind of military plain-speaking.

'What! mix myself up in that affair! Ah, no!' he exclaimed. 'You must excuse me, monsieur, if I employ my credit as a deputy in clearer and cleaner affairs. I am quite willing to believe that you personally are an honourable man. But you will really have a great deal to do if you wish to defend your brother. Besides, as all those who support you say, we are the enemy. Why do you apply to us?'

Then, turning his big, blurred, wrathful eyes on Marc, he began to hold forth against the godless and unpatriotic folk who dared to insult the army. Too young to have fought in 1870, he had merely served as a garrison soldier, taking part in no campaign whatever. Nevertheless he had remained a cuirassier to his very marrow, to cite one of his own expressions. And he boasted that he had set two emblems at his bedside, two emblems which summed up his religion--a crucifix and a flag, his flag--for which, unfortunately for a good many people, he had not died.

'When you have restored the Cross to the schools, monsieur,' he continued, 'when your schoolmasters decide to make Christians and not citizens of their pupils, then, and only then, will you have any claim on us should you ask us to render you a service.'

David, pale and frigid, allowed him to run on without attempting any interruption. It was only when he had finished that he quietly rejoined: 'But I have asked you for nothing, monsieur. It was to Monsieur le Baron that I ventured to apply.'

Nathan, fearing a scene, then intervened, and led David and Marc away, as if to escort them through a part of the grounds. Father Crabot, on hearing the Count's loud voice, had for a moment raised his head; then had returned to his worldly chat with his two dear lady penitents. And when Sanglebœuf had joined the others again, one could distinctly hear them laughing at the good lesson which, in their opinion, had just been administered to a couple of dirty Jews.

'What can you expect? They are all like that,' said Nathan to David and Marc, lowering his voice, when they were some thirty paces distant. 'I summoned my son-in-law in order that you might see for yourselves what are the views of the department--I mean of the upper classes, the deputies, functionaries, and magistrates. And so, how could I be of any use to you? Nobody would listen to me.'

This hypocritical affectation of good nature, in which one detected a quiver of the old hereditary racial dread, must have seemed cowardly even to the Baron himself, for he presently added: 'Besides, they are right; I am with them; France before everything else, with her glorious past, and the _ensemble_ of her firm traditions. We cannot hand her over to the Freemasons and the cosmopolites! And I cannot let you go, my dear David, without offering you a word of advice. Have nothing to do with that affair; you would lose everything in it, you would be wrecked for ever. Your brother will get out of the mess by himself if he is innocent.'

Those were his last words; he shook hands with them, and quietly walked back, while they in silence quitted the grounds. But on the high road they exchanged glances almost of amusement, however much they might be disappointed, for the scene in which they had participated seemed to them quite typical, perfect of its kind.

'Death to the Jews!' exclaimed Marc facetiously.

'Ah! the dirty Jews!' David responded in the same jesting way, tinged with bitterness. 'He advised me to forsake my brother; and for his part he would not hesitate. He has thrown his brothers over plenty of times already, and he will do so again. I certainly must not knock for help at the doors of my famous and powerful co-religionists. They shiver with fear.'

Several more days now went by, and, however prompt Magistrate Daix might have been with his investigations, he still delayed his decision. It was said that he was a prey to increasing perplexity, having a very keen professional mind, and too much intelligence to have failed to divine the truth; but, on the other hand, being worried by public opinion and browbeaten at home by his terrible wife. Madame Daix, ugly, coquettish, and very pious--indeed, another of Father Crabot's dearly-loved penitents--was consumed by ambition, tortured by penurious circumstances, haunted by dreams of life in Paris, finery, and a social position, as the outcome of some great sensational 'affair.' Such an 'affair' was within her reach now, and she never ceased repeating to her husband that it would be idiotic not to profit by the opportunity; for if he were so simple as to release that dirty Jew they would end by dying in a garret. Yet Daix struggled, honest still, but perturbed and no longer hurrying, clinging in fact to a last hope that something would happen to enable him to reconcile his interests with his duty. This fresh delay seemed of good augury to Marc, who was well aware of the magistrate's torments, but who still remained optimistically convinced that truth possessed an irresistible power, to which all ended by submitting.

Since the beginning of the affair he often went to Beaumont of a morning to see his old friend Salvan, the Director of the Training College. He found him well posted with information, and derived also a good deal of faith and courage from what he said. Besides, that college where he had lived three years, full of apostolic enthusiasm, had remained dear to him. It stood on a lonely little square at the end of the Rue de la République; and when in those vacation days he reached the director's quiet private room, which looked into a little garden, he felt himself in a spot where peace and happy confidence prevailed. One morning, however, when he called, he found Salvan full of grief and irritation. At first he had to wait in the ante-chamber, for the director was engaged with another visitor; but the latter, a fellow-schoolmaster named Doutrequin--a man with a low stubborn brow, broad clean-shaven cheeks, and the expression of a magistrate conscious of the importance of his functions--soon quitted the private room, and Marc bowed to him as he passed. Then, his turn having come, he was astonished by the agitation of Salvan, who, raising his arms to the ceiling, greeted him with the exclamation: 'Well, my friend, you know the abominable news, don't you?'

Of medium height, unassuming but energetic, with a good round face, all gaiety and frankness, Salvan, as a rule, turned laughing eyes upon those to whom he spoke. But now his glance was ablaze with generous anger.

'What is it?' Marc inquired anxiously.

'Ah, so you do not know yet? Well, my friend, those blackguards have dared to do it. Last night Daix signed an _ordonnance_ sending Simon for trial!'

Marc turned pale, but remained silent, while Salvan, pointing to a number of _Le Petit Beaumontais_ which lay open on his table, added: 'Doutrequin, who just went out, left me that filthy rag which gives the news, and he confirmed its accuracy, on the authority of one of the clerks at the Palace of Justice whom he knows.'

Then, taking up the paper, crumpling it, and flinging it into a corner of the room with a gesture of disgust, Salvan continued: 'Ah! the filthy rag! If iniquity becomes possible it is because that paper poisons the poor and lowly with its lies. They are still so ignorant, so credulous, so ready to believe the stories that flatter their base passions. And to think that paper first acquired a circulation, first found its way into all hands, by belonging to no party, by remaining neutral, by merely printing serial stories, matter-of-fact accounts of current events, and pleasant articles popularising general knowledge. By that means, in the course of years, it became the friend, the oracle, the daily pabulum of the simple-minded and the poor who cannot think for themselves. But now, abusing its unique position, its immense connection, it places itself in the pay of the parties of error and reaction, makes money out of every piece of financial roguery, and every underhand political plot. It is of secondary importance if lies and insults come from the fighting journals which are openly reactionary. They support a faction, they are known, and when one reads them one is prepared for what they may say. Thus _La Croix de Beaumont_, the Church party's organ, has started an abominable campaign against our friend Simon, "the Jew schoolmaster who poisoned and murdered little children," as it calls him; but all that has scarcely moved me. When, however, _Le Petit Beaumontais_ publishes the ignoble and cowardly articles with which you are acquainted, those charges and slanders picked up in the gutter, it is a crime. To penetrate among the simple by affecting bluff good nature, and then to mingle arsenic with every dish, to drive the masses to delirium and to the most monstrous actions in order to increase one's sales, I know of no greater crime! And make no mistake, if Daix did not stay further proceedings it was because public opinion weighed on him, poor wretched man that he is, afraid to be honest, and afflicted too with a wife who rots everything. And public opinion, you know, is such as it is made by _Le Petit Beaumontais_, which is the prime mover in the iniquity, for it sows imbecility and cruelty in the minds of the multitude, whence now, I fear, we shall see a detestable harvest rise!'

Salvan sank into his arm-chair in front of his writing-table with an expression of despairing anguish on his countenance. And silence fell while Marc walked slowly to and fro, overwhelmed by that recapitulation of opinions which he himself fully shared. At last, however, he stopped, saying: 'All the same, we must come to a decision, and what shall we do? Let us suppose that this iniquitous trial takes place: Simon cannot be condemned, it would be too monstrous! And, surely, we shall not remain with our arms folded. When this terrible blow falls on poor David he will want to act. What do you advise us to do?'

'Ah, my friend!' cried Salvan, 'how willingly I would be the first to act, if you could give me the means! You readily understand--do you not?--that in the person of that unfortunate Simon, it is the secular schoolmaster whom they are pursuing and whom they want to crush. They regard our dear training school as a nursery of godless, unpatriotic men, and they are eager to destroy it. For them I am a kind of Satan, engendering atheist missionaries, to ruin whom has long been their dream. What a triumph for the Church gang if one of our former pupils should ascend the scaffold, convicted of an infamous crime! Ah, my dear college, my poor house, which I should like to see so useful, so great, so necessary for the destinies of the country, through what a terrible time will it now have to pass!'

All Salvan's ardent faith in the good work he did was manifest in his fervid words. Originally a schoolmaster, then an Elementary Inspector, a militant with a clear mind devoted to knowledge and progress, he had given himself, on his appointment as Director of the Training College, to one sole mission--that of preparing efficient schoolmasters ready to champion experimental science and freed from the bonds of Rome--men who would at last teach Truth to the people and make it capable of practising Liberty, Justice, and Peace. Therein lay the whole future of the nation--the future indeed of all mankind.

'We shall all group ourselves around you,' said Marc, quivering; 'we will not suffer you to be stopped in your work, the most urgent and loftiest of all at the present time!'

Salvan smiled sadly. 'Oh, all, my friend! How many are there around me then? There is yourself, and there was also that unfortunate fellow, Simon, on whom I greatly relied. Again, there is Mademoiselle Mazeline, the schoolmistress at your village, Jonville. If we had a few dozen teachers like her we might expect that the next generation would at last see women, wives and mothers, delivered from the priests! As for Férou, wretchedness and revolt are driving him crazy, bitterness of feeling is poisoning his mind. And after him comes the mere flock of indifferent, egotistical folk, stagnating in the observance of routine, and having only one concern, that of flattering their superiors in order to secure good reports. Then too there are the renegades, those who have gone over to the enemy, as, for instance, that Mademoiselle Rouzaire, who alone does the work of ten nuns, and who behaves so shamefully in the Simon affair. I was forgetting another, Mignot, one of our best pupils, who is certainly not a bad fellow, but whose mind requires forming, liable as it is to turn out good or bad, according to influence.'

Salvan was growing excited, and it was with increased force that he continued: 'But a case that one may well despair of is that of Doutrequin, whom you saw leaving me just now. A schoolmaster himself, he is the son of one; in '70 he was fifteen, and three years later he entered the college still shuddering at the thought of the invasion, and dreaming of revenge. At that time considerations of patriotism influenced the whole of our educational system in France. The country asked us merely for soldiers; the army was like a temple, a sanctuary, that army which has remained waiting with arms grounded for thirty years, and which has devoured thousands upon thousands of millions of francs! And thus we have been turned into a warrior France instead of becoming a France of progress, truth, justice, and peace, such as alone could have helped to save the world. And now one sees so-called patriotism changing Doutrequin, once a good Republican, a supporter of Gambetta, and still quite recently an anti-clerical, into an anti-Semite, even as it will end by changing him into a clerical altogether. A few minutes ago he favoured me with an extraordinary speech, an echo of the articles in _Le Petit Beaumontais_. "France before everything else," said he; it was necessary to drive out the Jews, to make a fundamental dogma of respect for the army, and to allow more liberty in education, by which he meant to allow the religious Congregations full freedom to keep the masses ignorant. He typifies the bankruptcy of the earlier patriotic Republicans. Yet he is a worthy man, an excellent teacher, with five assistants under him, and the best-kept school in Beaumont. Two of his sons are already assistant-teachers in other schools of the department, and I know that they share their father's views and even exaggerate them as young men are wont to do. What will become of us if such sentiments should continue to animate our elementary masters? Ah! it is high time to provide others, to send a legion of men of free intelligence to teach the people truth, which is the one sole source of equity, kindliness, and happiness!'

He spoke these last words with such fervour that Marc smiled! 'Ah! my dear master, now I recognise you,' he said. 'You are not going to give up the battle! You will end by winning it, for you have truth on your side.'

Salvan gaily admitted that he had previously given way to a fit of discouragment. The infamous proceedings with which Simon was threatened had unnerved him. 'Advice?' he repeated, 'you asked me for advice as to how you should act. Let us see; let us examine the situation together.'

There was Forbes, the Academy Rector,[2] gentle and affable, a very able man of letters, and a very intelligent man also. But he was deep in historical studies, covertly disdainful of the present age, and he acted as a mere go-between for the intercourse of the Minister of Public Instruction and the university staff. Then, however, came Le Barazer, the Academy Inspector; and Salvan's hope of future victory was centred in that sensible and courageous man, who was also a skilful politician. The experience of Le Barazer, who was now barely fifty years of age, dated back to the heroic days of the Republic, when the necessity of secular and compulsory education had imposed itself as the one sole possible basis of a free and just democracy. A worker for the good cause from the very outset, Le Barazer had retained all his hatred of clericalism, convinced that it was absolutely necessary to drive the priests from the schools, and to free people's minds from all mendacious superstitions, if one desired that the nation should be strong, well-instructed, and capable of acting in the plenitude of its intelligence. But age, the obstacles he had encountered, the ever tenacious resistance of the Church, had added great prudence and tactical skill to his Republican zeal.

[Footnote 2: See foot-note, p. 44, _ante_.]

Nobody knew better than he how to utilise the little ground which he gained each day, and to oppose inertia to the assaults of his adversaries, when forcible resistance was impossible. He exerted the power he held as Academy Inspector without ever entering into a direct contest with anybody, either the Prefect or the Deputies or the Senators of the department, though, on the other hand, he refused to yield so long as his views were not adopted.

It was thanks to him that Salvan, although violently attacked by the clerical faction, was able to continue his work of regeneration, the renewing of the _personnel_ of the elementary schoolmasters; and doubtless he alone could in a measure defend Simon against his subordinate, Inspector Mauraisin. For that handsome gentleman also had to be reckoned with, and he was likely to prove ferocious, a traitor to the university cause, and an accomplice of the Congregations, since he had come to the conclusion that the Church would prove victorious in the affair, and pay a higher reward than the other side for the services rendered to it.

'Have you heard of his evidence?' Salvan continued. 'It appears that he said everything he could against Simon to Daix. To think that the inspection of our schools is confided to Jesuits of his stamp! It is the same with that fellow, Depinvilliers, the principal of the Lycée[3] of Beaumont, who attends Mass at St. Maxence every Sunday with his wife and his two ugly daughters. Opinions are free, of course; but if Depinvilliers is free to go to Mass, he ought not to be free to hand one of our establishments of secondary education over to the Jesuits. Father Crabot reigns at our Lycée as he reigns at the College of Valmarie. Ah! the bitter irony of it when one thinks that this secular Lycée, this Republican Lycée, which I sometimes hear called the rival of the Jesuit College, is in reality a mere branch of it! Ah! our Republic does fine work, it places its interests in very trusty and loyal hands! I can well understand Mauraisin working for the other side, which is ever active and which pays its supporters well!'

Then, coming to the point, Salvan added: 'I tell you what I will do. I will see Le Barazer. Do not go to him yourself. It is better that any application should come from me, whom he supports so bravely. And it is useless to hustle him, he will act at the moment he thinks fit, and with such means as are at his disposal. He will certainly keep Mauraisin quiet, if he can render Simon no more direct service.... But what I advise you to do is to see Lemarrois, our Mayor and Deputy. You know him well, do you not? He was a friend of Berthereau, your wife's father. He may be useful to you.'

[Footnote 3: A government secondary college.]

Marc then took leave, and on reaching the street decided to call on Lemarrois at once. Eleven o'clock was striking, and he would doubtless find him at home. Turning, therefore, into the Rue Gambetta, a thoroughfare running from the Lycée to the Hôtel de Ville, and thus cutting Beaumont in halves, he made his way to the Avenue des Jaffres, the famous promenade of the town, which also traversed it, but from the Préfecture to the Cathedral. In that very avenue, in the midst of the aristocratic quarter, Lemarrois owned a luxurious house, where his beautiful wife, a Parisienne, often gave entertainments. Wealthy and already of repute in his profession, he had brought her from Paris at the time when he had returned to his native place to practise there and satisfy his political ambition. While he was yet a medical student, he had made the acquaintance of Gambetta, with whom intimacy had followed, for he showed much enthusiasm and firm Republicanism, and became indeed one of the great man's favourite disciples. Thus he was regarded at Beaumont as a pillar of the middle-class Republic. And not only was he the husband of an amiable wife, but, intelligent and good-hearted, he was personally very popular with the poor, whom he attended gratuitously. His political advancement had been rapid; first he had become municipal councillor, then a departmental councillor, then deputy and mayor. For twelve years now he had been installed in the latter functions, and was still the uncontested master of the town and the chief of the departmental parliamentary contingent, though the latter included some reactionary deputies.

Directly he saw Marc enter his study, a spacious room furnished with chastened luxury, he went towards him with both hands outstretched, and an expression of smiling sympathy on his face. Dark, with scarcely a grey hair, though he was nearly fifty, he had a big head, with quick, bright eyes, and a profile fit for a medal.

'Ah! my good fellow, I was astonished not to see you, and I can guess what motive has brought you to-day! What an abominable business, is it not? That unfortunate Simon is innocent, that is certain from the frantic way in which he is being charged. I am on your side, you know--on your side with all my heart!'

Pleased by this reception, cheered at meeting a just man, Marc quickly explained to him that he came to solicit his influential help. There was surely something to be done. One could not allow an innocent man to be tried and perhaps condemned.

But Lemarrois was already raising his arms to heaven. 'Do something, no doubt, no doubt!' said he. 'Only, what can one do against public opinion when the whole department is already stirred up? As you must know, the political situation is becoming more and more difficult. And the general elections will take place next May--that is, in scarcely nine months' time! Do you not understand to what extreme prudence we are reduced? for we must not expose the Republic to the risk of a check.'

He had seated himself and his face became anxious while, toying with a large paper-knife, he expressed his fears about the agitated condition of the department, in which the Socialists were actively bestirring themselves, and gaining ground. He did not fear the election of any of them as yet, for none could command a sufficient majority; but if two Reactionaries, one of whom was Sanglebœuf, the so-called _rallié_, had been returned at the last elections, it was by reason of a diversion created by the Socialists. Each time that he pronounced that word 'Socialists' it was with a kind of aggressive bitterness, in which one could detect the fear and anger of the middle-class Republic, which now possessed power, in presence of the slow but irresistible use of the Socialist Republic which wished to possess it.

'So how can I help you, my good fellow?' he continued; 'I am bound hand and foot, for we have to reckon with public opinion. I don't refer to myself,--I am certain of re-election,--but I have to think of my colleagues whom I must not leave wounded on the battlefield. If it were merely a question of my own seat I would sacrifice it at once so as to act solely in accordance with my conscience; but the Republic is at stake and we must not allow it to be defeated.'

Then he complained of the Prefect of the department, that handsome, well-groomed Hennebise, who sported glasses and arranged his hair so carefully. He gave no help whatever; for being perpetually afraid of getting into difficulties with his Minister or the Jesuits, he was careful to offend neither. He probably had secret leanings towards the priests and the military set, and it would be necessary to watch him, while pursuing, however, a course of diplomacy and compromise similar to his own.

'Briefly,' said Lemarrois, 'you see me in despair, reduced to measure every step and weigh every word for the next nine months under penalty of being hissed by the readers of _Le Petit Beaumontais_, to the great delight of the clerical faction. This Simon affair falls on us at a most unfavourable moment. If the elections were not so near, I would march with you at once.'

Then, quite abruptly, he, usually so calm, lost his temper: 'To make matters worse, Simon not only saddles us with this business at a difficult moment, but he chooses Delbos as his advocate, Delbos the Socialist, who is the _bête noire_ of all right-thinking people. Frankly, that is the climax; Simon must be really desirous of seeing himself condemned.'

Marc had remained listening, pained at heart, feeling that another of his illusions was taking flight. Yet he knew Lemarrois to be honest, and he had seen him give many proofs of firm Republican faith.

'But Delbos is very talented,' the young man answered, 'and if poor Simon chose him, it was because, like all of us, he considered him to be the man of the situation. Besides, it is not certain that another advocate would have accepted the brief. It is a frightful moment; people are becoming cowards.'

That word must have seemed to Lemarrois like a smack. He made a quick gesture, but he evinced no anger--indeed, he began to smile. 'You consider me very cautious, do you not, my young friend?' he said. 'When you get older you will see that it is not always easy in politics to behave in accordance with one's own convictions. But why do you not apply to my colleague Marcilly, your young deputy, the favourite and the hope of all the young intellectuals of the department? I have become an old, spent, prudent hack--that's understood. But Marcilly, whose mind is so free and broad, will certainly place himself at your head. Go to see him, go to see him.'

Then, having escorted Marc to the landing, he again pressed his hands, promising that he would help him with all his power, when circumstances should permit it.

Indeed, thought Marc, why should he not go to Marcilly? The latter also lived in the Avenue des Jaffres, and it was not yet noon. The young schoolmaster was entitled to call on him, as he had acted, very discreetly, as one of his electoral canvassers, being full of enthusiasm for a candidate who was so sympathetic and possessed of such high literary culture. Born at Jonville, Marcilly had distinguished himself as a pupil of the Training College, and had subsequently held a professorship at the Faculty of Beaumont, which post he had resigned in order to become a parliamentary candidate. Short, fair, and refined in appearance, with an amiable and ever-smiling face, he played havoc with women's hearts, and even won the partiality of men, thanks to his rare skill in saying the right word to each, and in evincing all necessary obligingness. To the younger members of the electorate he endeared himself by his own comparative youth, for he was only thirty-two, and by the happy and elegant form of his speeches, in which he displayed much broadness of mind and knowledge of men and things. It was felt at the time of his election that one would at last have a really young deputy on whom one might rely. He would renew the science of politics, infuse into it the blood of the rising generations, and adorn it with faultless language, all the delightful bloom of sound literature. Indeed, for three years past Marcilly had been acquiring a more and more important position in the Chamber. His credit constantly increased, and, in spite of the fact that he was only two and thirty, he had already been spoken of for a ministerial portfolio. It was certain also that if he attended to his constituents' affairs with untiring complaisance, he pushed on his own still more successfully, profiting by every circumstance to rise a little higher, but doing so in such a natural and easy way that nobody had yet regarded him as a mere _Arriviste_, one of those representatives of hot, impatient youth, eager for enjoyment and power in every form. His rooms were furnished and ornamented in a delicate style, and he received Marc like a comrade. He spoke of Simon, too, immediately, in a voice full of emotion, saying how deeply he was affected by the poor man's fate. Of course he did not refuse to help him, he would speak in his favour, he would see people who might be useful. But whatever might be his graciousness, he ended by recommending extreme prudence on account of the proximity of the elections. If his manners were more caressing, his answer was much the same as Lemarrois'; he was secretly resolved to do nothing for fear of compromising the Republican party. The two schools might differ in outward appearance--that of Lemarrois being older and rougher in its ways; that of Marcilly, younger and more prodigal of compliments--but both were determined to abandon no shred of the power they held. And now, for the first time, Marc felt that Marcilly might be merely an _Arriviste_ in his flower, resolved to follow his own course and bear his fruit. Nevertheless, on taking leave, it became necessary to thank him, for with a flow of gentle words the young deputy repeated that he was at his visitor's disposal and would assuredly give some help.

Marc was full of fear and anxiety when he returned to Maillebois that day. Calling on the Lehmanns in the afternoon, he found the family in desolation. They had so confidently expected that further proceedings would be abandoned. David, who was present, quite upset by the bad news, still tried to believe in the possibility of some miracle which would prevent that iniquitous trial from taking place. But, on the morrow, things began to move quickly. The Indictment Chamber[4] seemed to be in a singular hurry, for, the case was set down for hearing at the earliest assizes, those of October. In presence of the inevitable, David, with his ardent faith in his brother's innocence, recovered all his courage, all that strength and firmness of mind which were to make him a hero. The trial would have to take place; it could not be avoided; but where was the jury that would dare to convict Simon when no proofs were forthcoming? The prisoner never varied in his cry of innocence; and the calmness with which he waited, the confidence in speedy release which he expressed to his brother at each visit, greatly fortified the latter. At the Lehmanns' house, as the expectations of acquittal grew stronger, plans were formed, and Madame Simon talked of a month's rest which she, her husband, and the children would afterwards take in Provence, where they had some friends. It was in the midst of this fresh spell of hopefulness that David one morning asked Marc to go with him to Beaumont in order that they might discuss the affair with Delbos, Simon's counsel.

The young advocate resided in the Rue Fontanier, in the popular trading quarter of the town. The son of a peasant of the environs, he had studied law in Paris, where for a short time he had frequented many young men of Socialist views. But hitherto, for lack of one of those great causes which class a man, he had not bound himself to any party. In accepting a brief in Simon's case, that case which made his colleagues of the bar tremble, he had decided his future. He studied it and became impassioned on finding himself in presence of all the public powers, all the forces of reaction, which, in order to save the old rotten framework of society from destruction, were coalescing and striving to ruin a poor and guiltless man. And the rise of militant Socialism was at the end of it all, the salvation of the country by the new force of which the freed masses now disposed.

[Footnote 4: A tribunal discharging the duties of a grand jury.--_Trans._]

'Well, so there is to be a battle!' Delbos exclaimed gaily, when he received his visitors in his little study, littered with books and papers. 'Ah! I cannot tell if we shall conquer, but at all events we shall do the others some harm.'

Short, dark, and wiry, with eyes of fire and tongue of flame, he possessed an admirable voice and an extraordinary gift of eloquence, at once enthusiastic, logical, and precise. David, however, was struck by his apparent doubt of victory and repeated what he had been saying for a week past: 'Conquer? Oh! we shall certainly do so. Where can a jury be found that would dare to convict my brother without proofs?'

Delbos looked at him, and then began to laugh, saying: 'Let us go down into the street, my poor friend, and the first twelve citizens we get together will spit in your face and call you a dirty Jew. You don't read _Le Petit Beaumontais_, and you are ignorant of the beautiful souls and minds of your contemporaries. But all allusions would be dangerous and culpable: is that not so, Monsieur Froment?'

Then, as Marc spoke of the disappointment he had experienced when visiting influential persons, Delbos, wishing to free his client's brother of his erroneous views, insisted on the subject. No doubt they had a friend in Salvan, but he was sorely threatened, and, instead of defending others, needed to be defended himself. Then Le Barazer would sacrifice something to the fire, suffering Simon to go to his fate and reserving all his authority and influence for the defence of secular education. Next Lemarrois, the once incorruptible Republican, was unknowingly on that path of disquietude which leads straight to reaction. Then came Marcilly, at the mention of whose name Delbos was all afire. No trust whatever was to be placed in him, he had always lied, and to-morrow he would become a renegade and a traitor. Indeed, one would obtain only fair words from all those folks; nothing in the way of deeds was to be expected, neither an act of frankness nor one of courage.

Having thus judged the university men and the politicians, Delbos passed to the judicial world. He was convinced that Magistrate Daix had suspected the truth, but had set it on one side, terrified as he was by the perpetual quarrels which his wife stirred up in order to prevent him from releasing the dirty Jew. And in acting as he had done he had surely experienced great perturbation of conscience, for at bottom he was honest. But, apart from him, one had to fear the Procureur de la République, the frisky Raoul de La Bissonnière, whose speech to the jury would certainly prove ferocious. Vain of his petty _noblesse_, it seemed to La Bissonnière great condescension on his part to serve the Republic, and he meant to be rewarded for doing so by rapid advancement, which he hastened as best he could, fawning on both the Government and the Congregations, zealous too as a patriot and an anti-semite. As for President Gragnon, in him one would have a jovial judge, a hard drinker, a keen sportsman, fond of petticoats, addicted to witticisms, affecting brusqueness, not certainly sceptical, without soul or faith, and at the mercy of the stronger side. Finally, there would be the jury, the composition of which it was easy to foresee. One might expect a few representatives of the manufacturing and trading classes, some professional men, clerks, and retired officers, and all would have poisoned minds, all would tremble for their skins, and yield to the general dementia.

'So, you see,' Delbos concluded bitterly, 'your brother, forsaken by everybody since he so awkwardly requires help when fear respecting the result of the elections paralyses even the friends of truth and justice, will have a fine collection of stupidity, egotism, and cowardice to judge him.' And, as David preserved dolorous silence, he added: 'Oh! we shall not allow ourselves to be devoured without raising an outcry. But I prefer to show you things as they are. And now let us examine the position with respect to the case itself.'

He could tell what views would be set forth by the prosecution. Pressure had been brought to bear on the witnesses from all sides. Quite apart from public opinion in the midst of whose vitiated atmosphere they lived, they were certainly being worked upon by occult powers, caught in a skilfully contrived skein of daily exhortations which dictated to them the statements they were to make. Mademoiselle Rouzaire now declared peremptorily that she had heard Simon come home at a quarter to eleven o'clock on the night of the crime. Even Mignot now fancied that he had heard footsteps and voices about the same hour. Then influence must have been exercised on Simon's pupils, the Bongard, Doloir, Savin, and Milhomme children, with the object of extracting from them statements unfavourable to the prisoner. Little Sébastien Milhomme, for instance, had now declared, while sobbing distressfully, that he had never seen his cousin Victor with any copy-slip coming from the Brothers' school; and apropos of that affair, people spoke of an unexpected visit that Madame Edouard Milhomme had lately received from a distant cousin, General Jarousse, who commanded the division garrisoned at Beaumont. He had never previously confessed his relationship to the lady stationer, but had suddenly remembered it, and paid her that friendly call.

Moreover, the prosecution insisted on the failure of all efforts to find any tramp who might have committed the crime, as had been originally suspected. It also asserted that it had vainly sought any witness, guard, or wayfarer, who had seen Simon returning from Beaumont to Maillebois on foot. On the other hand, it had failed to establish that he had returned by train, for no railway employé remembered having seen him; besides which several return tickets had not been given up on the night of the crime. But it seemed that the evidence of Brother Fulgence and Father Philibin would be very grave, particularly that of the latter, who would prove that the copy-slip connected with the crime had really belonged to Simon's school. And to make things complete, two handwriting experts of the prosecution, Masters Badoche and Trabut, had declared that they fully recognised Simon's initials, an E and an S intertwined, in the faint and virtually illegible paraph on the slip.

Thus one could divine the form which the 'act of accusation' or indictment would take. It would set forth that Simon lied, and that he had assuredly returned from Beaumont by train, and must have reached his home at the very time when Mademoiselle Rouzaire declared that she had heard him. On the other hand it seemed certain that little Zéphirin, after returning from the Capuchin Chapel at ten o'clock, had not gone to bed immediately, but had amused himself by arranging some religious pictures on his table, in such wise that one might say the crime had been committed between a quarter to eleven and eleven o'clock.

It was easy to picture the scene. Simon, seeing a light, had entered his nephew's room, and found him there, about to get into bed. Arriving from a banquet, heated by wine, he had yielded to a fit of abominable madness. Moreover, he hated the child, he was infuriated by the fact that he was a Catholic, and thus it was allowable to hint at the possibility of ritual crime, at the horrible legend fixed in the minds of the masses. But, at all events, there certainly had been abomination; and the maddened criminal, after thrusting the first thing he had at hand into the victim's mouth in order to stifle his cries, had lost his head, and, frantic with terror, had strangled the lad when the improvised gag fell out and the cries began afresh, more terrible than ever. It was not so easy to explain how it happened that the number of _Le Petit Beaumontais_ and the copy-slip had been mingled together. Doubtless the newspaper had been in Simon's pocket, for the boy would not have had one in his possession. As for the copy-slip, the prosecution, after hesitating slightly, had adopted the view that this also must have been in Simon's pocket, for the report of the handwriting experts identifying the initials showed that it belonged to him.

The crime accomplished, the rest was easily explained. Simon left the body on the floor, touched nothing in the room, but contented himself with opening the window widely in order to make it appear that the murderer had come from outside. In one respect he had blundered badly, he had not thought of picking up and destroying the newspaper and the copy-slip, which had rolled to the foot of the bed. This showed how great had been his perturbation. And, doubtless, he had not immediately joined his wife, as she fixed the hour of his return at twenty minutes to twelve. In all probability he had spent some time seated on the stairs, trying to recover his calmness. The prosecution did not go so far as to charge Madame Simon with complicity; nevertheless, it gave out that she did not tell the truth when she spoke of the smiling quietude, the gay affection displayed by her husband that night; and a proof of her disregard for veracity was to be found in the evidence of Mignot, who was astonished that his principal should have risen so late the next morning, and who asserted that he had found him pale and shivering, scarce able to walk, when he went to tell him the dreadful tidings. Mademoiselle Rouzaire, Brother Fulgence, and Father Philibin agreed that Simon had almost fainted at the sight of the little body, although in other respects he showed the most revolting dryness of heart. And in this again was there not an overwhelming proof of culpability? The wretched man's guilt could be doubted by none.

Having thus explained the views of the prosecution, Delbos resumed: 'The moral impossibilities are gross; no man of good sense will think Simon guilty, and, besides, there are several material improbabilities. But this frightful tale is sufficiently well constructed to seize hold of the masses and to become one of those legendary fables which acquire the force of truth. Our weakness proceeds from the fact that, not knowing the real story, we cannot set it up in opposition to the legend now being forged. The theory of a night prowler, to which you seem to cling, can only serve to cast a little doubt into the minds of the jury; for there are serious objections to it. And so whom can we accuse, and what shall my system of defence be?'

At this Marc, hitherto very attentive and silent, could not restrain himself from giving expression to the conviction which had slowly gathered in his mind: 'But there is no doubt at all for me; the criminal was one of the Brothers!'

Delbos, well pleased with the answer, and signifying his approval by an energetic gesture, then exclaimed: 'Quite so. My own conviction is the same. The more I study the case the more I am led to that conclusion as being the only one possible.' And as David anxiously shook his head, he added: 'Yes, I know; it seems to you that your brother's position would be very dangerous if one of those Ignorantines were accused without decisive proof. And you are certainly right. Nevertheless, I have to plead, and the best way to prove your brother's innocence is to demonstrate who the guilty man must be. Is it not so? You will tell me that the question becomes one of ascertaining who that man is, and for that very reason I wish to go into the matter with you thoroughly.'

The discussion continued, and Marc recapitulated the reasons which made him believe the murderer to be one of the Brothers. First, the copy-slip had come from this school; that was virtually proved by what had occurred at the Milhommes. Then there was the initialling of the slip, and the corner of it which had been torn away, in which clue the solution of the enigma probably lurked. A decisive moral proof was the extraordinary zeal the Congregations displayed in denouncing Simon. They would not have stirred up heaven and earth in this fashion if they had not found it necessary to save some black sheep; though of course they also hoped to crush the secular schools and to insure the triumph of the Church. Moreover, there were features in the crime which suggested that it could only have been perpetrated by some sly, cruel, bestial frock-wearer. But unfortunately arguments did not suffice, and Marc was in despair that his investigations had been thwarted by a combination of obscurity, confusion, and dread which artful, invisible hands seemed to increase each day.

'Come,' interrupted Delbos, 'you suspect neither Brother Fulgence nor Father Philibin, eh?'

'Oh no!' Marc answered, 'I saw them near the body when the crime was discovered. Brother Fulgence certainly returned to his school on quitting the Capuchin Chapel on the Thursday evening. Besides, though he is vain and crazy, I do not think him capable of such a dreadful deed. As for Father Philibin, he did not quit Valmerie that evening. Moreover, he also seems to me honest, a worthy man at bottom.'

Silence fell. Then Marc, with a dreamy expression in his eyes, resumed: 'Yet something had certainly happened that morning just as I arrived at the school. Father Philibin had picked up the newspaper and the copy-slip, and I now ask myself whether he profited by that brief opportunity to tear off and do away with that corner of the slip, on which, perhaps, there may have been some indication.... But But Mignot, though he hesitated at first, now declares the corner must have been missing when he first saw the slip.'

'And what about the assistant Brothers, Isidore, Lazarus, and Gorgias?' asked Delbos.

David, who on his side had prosecuted unremitting inquiries with admirable zeal, intelligence, and patience, shook his head. 'All three have _alibis_ which a dozen of their set will establish in court,' he replied. 'Isidore and Lazarus, it seems, returned to the school from the Capuchin Chapel with their principal, Brother Fulgence. Brother Gorgias for his part saw a child home, but he also had returned to the school by half-past ten, according to all the members of the staff and various lay witnesses--friends of the Brothers, it is true--who perceived him going in.'

Again did Marc intervene in his pensive manner, his eyes wandering afar like those of a man in quest of truth. 'That Brother Gorgias is not to my liking; I thought of him,' he said. 'The child he escorted home was Polydor, the nephew of a woman named Pélagie, who is cook to my wife's relatives. I tried to question the boy, but he is sly, idle, addicted to falsehoods, and I got nothing out of him except a little more confusion. All the same, Brother Gorgias haunts me. He is said to be brutal, sensual, cynical, displaying excessive piety, professing a stern, uncompromising, exterminating creed. I have been told also that he formerly had some connection with Father Philibin and even with Father Crabot.... Brother Gorgias, yes, I certainly thought for a moment that he might be our man. But then I found I had nothing to go upon except suppositions.'

'Certainly, Brother Gorgias is not a pleasant customer,' declared David, 'and my feelings are akin to yours. But can we denounce him when we have only arguments to bring against him? No witness would support us; all would stand up for the Brother and whitewash him in reply to our impious charges.'

Delbos had listened attentively. 'At all events,' said he, 'I cannot defend Simon without carrying the battle into the enemy's camp. Bear in mind, too, that the only help from which you may derive some advantage will perhaps come to you from the Church itself. The old quarrel between our Bishop, Monseigneur Bergerot, and Father Crabot, the Rector of Valmarie, is taking a very serious turn, by reason, precisely, of the Simon affair. My own belief is that the crafty mind and the invisible hand, which seem to you to be directing the whole business, are those of Father Crabot. I certainly do not accuse him of the crime, but it is he who is protecting the culprit. And if we attack him we shall strike the head of the band, besides which the Bishop will be on our side--not openly, of course; but is not such assistance something, even if it be secret?'

A smile of doubt appeared on Marc's face, as if he felt that one never had the Church on one's side when human truth and justice were at stake. However, he likewise regarded Father Crabot as the enemy, and to trace the developments of the case back to him and to endeavour to destroy him was the right course. So they spoke of Father Crabot and of his past life, which a somewhat mysterious legend poetised. He was thought to be the illegitimate grandson of a famous general, a prince of the First Empire, which relationship, in the estimation of patriotic souls, endued his pious ministry with some of the resounding glory of battle and conquest. But the romantic circumstances in which he had taken orders touched people more deeply. At thirty years of age he had been a rich, handsome, gallant cavalier, on the point of marrying a beautiful widow, a Duchess with a great name and a great fortune; but brutal death had struck her down in her flower. That blow, as Father Crabot often said, had shown him the bitter nothingness of human joys, and cast him into the arms of religion. He had gained thereby the tremulous tenderness of all women's hearts; they were well pleased, indeed, that he should have sought a refuge in heaven, for love of the one woman whom he had adored.

Then another legend, that of the foundation of the College of Valmarie, endeared him to the devotees of the region. The Valmarie estate had previously belonged to the old Countess de Quédeville, who, after notorious amours, had retired thither to sanctify her last years by the practice of extreme piety. Her son and daughter-in-law having perished in an accident while travelling, she remained alone with her grandson and sole heir, Gaston, a boy of nine years, who was most aggressively turbulent, violent in speech, and wild in his play. Not knowing how to subdue him, and not daring to trust him to school life, the Countess had engaged as tutor a young Jesuit of six and twenty, Father Philibin, whose manners suggested his peasant origin, but who was recommended to her for his extreme firmness. He, no doubt, made the Countess acquainted with Father Crabot, who was some five or six years his senior, and who was then at the height of his celebrity, radiant with the halo of his great passion and its tragic, divine ending. Six months later, as friend and confessor, he reigned at Valmarie, evil-minded people asserting that he was the lover of the Countess.

As that turbulent boy Gaston seemed to disturb the happy quietude of the domain, a truly royal one with its grand old trees, its running waters, its great stretches of green velvet, there was at one moment some thought of sending him to the Jesuit Fathers in Paris. He climbed the loftiest poplars for rooks' nests, took to the river in his clothes to fish for eels, came home in rags, with arms and legs bruised, and his face bleeding, giving his grandmother no rest whatever from anxiety, in spite of Father Philibin's reputed firmness. But all at once the situation was tragically altered: Gaston was drowned one day while walking out, under the nominal supervision of his tutor. The latter related that the boy had fallen into a dangerous hole full of water, whence it had been impossible to extricate him, in spite of the efforts of a young fellow of fifteen, Georges Plumet--the son of one of the gardeners and sometimes Gaston's companion in his escapades--who had run up on seeing the accident from a distance. The Countess, profoundly grieved, died during the following year, bequeathing Valmarie and all her fortune to Father Crabot--or, to be exact, to a petty clerical banker of Beaumont, who lent his name in such matters--with directions to establish a Jesuit College on the estate. Crabot, for a time, had taken himself elsewhere, then had returned with the rank of Rector, and for ten years now the College had been prospering under his control.

He reigned there from his austere and retired little cell, whose walls were bare, and whose furniture was limited to a little pallet, a table, and two chairs. He made the bed, he swept the floor himself; and though he heard the confessions of his female penitents in the chapel, it was in that cell that he listened to those of the men, as if he were proud of the poverty and solitude into which he withdrew like some redoubtable divinity, leaving to Father Philibin, the Prefect of the Studies, all usual daily intercourse with the pupils of the establishment. But, although he rarely showed himself to them in the class-rooms, he reserved 'parlour-days' to himself, lavished attentions on his pupils' relations, particularly on the ladies and young girls of the local aristocracy, busying himself with the future of his dear sons and dear daughters, arranging their marriages, insuring them good positions, in fact disposing of all those fine folk for the greater glory of God and of his particular Order. And it was thus that he had become an all-powerful personage.

'To tell the truth,' Delbos resumed, 'Father Crabot strikes me as being a mediocrity, whose entire strength proceeds from the stupidity of those among whom he works. I am more distrustful of Father Philibin, whom you think a worthy man. I am impressed by his affected roughness and frankness. Suspicion clings to his doings and to Crabot's in the time of the Countess de Quédeville, such as the drowning of that child Gaston, and all the more or less lawful manœuvring to acquire the estate and the fortune. It happens that the only witness of Gaston's death, Georges Plumet, the gardener's son, is precisely Brother Gorgias, for whom Philibin assumed great affection and of whom he made an Ignorantine, when, of course, he changed his name. And now we find those three men together again, and the solution of the present mystery is to be found, perhaps, in that circumstance; for, if Brother Gorgias be guilty, the efforts of the others to save him might be explained by strong personal motives, the existence of some skeleton in their cupboard, and the dread lest he should speak out if he were abandoned. Unfortunately, as you said just now, we can only form suppositions, whereas we need substantial, authentic facts. However, let us keep on searching. Defence, I repeat it, will only be possible if I am armed sufficiently to be an accuser and an avenger.'

That conversation with Delbos inspirited David and Marc. And, even as had been foreseen, they tasted for a moment the pleasure of witnessing a quarrel in the clerical camp. At the outset of the affair Abbé Quandieu, the parish priest of Maillebois, had not concealed his belief in the innocence of Simon. He did not go so far as to accuse one of the Brothers; but he allowed it to be seen that he disapproved of the frantic campaign which the Brothers and the Capuchins were carrying on with the object of gaining the whole district for themselves; for, apart from his own loss of parishioners, it distressed him, for religion's sake, to see the basest superstitions triumphing. When he found public opinion suddenly poisoned with respect to Simon's case, he became neutral, never speaking of the affair, but dreading, in his sincere piety, lest his dear gentle Lord of charity and love should be slain and replaced by a God of falsehood and iniquity. His only consolation was that his views coincided with those of Monseigneur Bergerot, the Bishop, who was fond of him and whom he often visited. Like the priest himself, the Bishop was accused of Gallicanism, which simply meant that he did not invariably bow to Rome, and that the idolatrous worship of images and the impudent trafficking of those who contracted to perform spurious miracles were repugnant to his pure faith. For instance, he observed with saddened eyes the invading tendencies of the Maillebois Capuchins, who so openly traded on the shrine of St. Antony of Padua which they had set up in their chapel, thus competing disloyally with the church of St. Martin, where Abbé Quandieu officiated. The Bishop's anxiety increased when behind the Capuchins he divined the presence of the Jesuits, all the disciplined troops of his enemy Father Crabot, who was always employing his influence to thwart him, and who dreamt of becoming master of the diocese.

The Bishop reproached the Jesuits with compelling God to go to men, instead of forcing men to go to God, and he also saw in them the artisans of the society compromise, of the falling off both in faith and in observances, which in his opinion was destroying the Church. In the Simon affair, on finding them so intent upon ruining the unhappy prisoner, he became suspicious and studied the case very carefully with Abbé Quandieu, who was well informed. He must then have arrived at a decisive opinion. Perhaps indeed he learnt who was really the culprit. But what course could he take, how could he give up a member of the religious Orders, without risk of doing harm to religion? He lacked the courage to go as far as that. Yet certainly his silence was full of bitterness, and he felt anxious as to the consequences of the monstrous adventure into which others were forcing the Church, which he would have liked to see all peace, equity, and kindliness.

Thus Monseigneur Bergerot's resignation was not absolute. The idea of abandoning his dear Abbé Quandieu, of allowing those whom he called 'the dealers of the Temple' to consummate his ruin, was unbearable to him. On coming, then, to Maillebois in the course of a pastoral round of inspection, he officiated personally in the ancient church of St. Martin, and delivered an address in which he blamed all gross superstition, referring plainly to the commerce carried on by the Capuchins in their chapel, which was now driving as much trade as a bazaar. Nobody was mistaken as to the Bishop's meaning; moreover, everyone felt that the blow was directed not only against Father Théodose, but against Father Crabot who was behind him. And as Monseigneur ended by expressing the hope that the Church of France would remain the pure source of all truth and justice, the scandal became the greater, for in those words an allusion to the Simon affair was detected, and the Bishop was accused of casting the Brothers of the Christian Doctrine to the Jews, the bribe-takers, and the traitors. On returning to his episcopal palace Monseigneur Bergerot must have trembled at the thought of the courage he had shown, particularly as everything was done to embitter his position still more. Some intimates, in recounting the visit of thanks which Abbé Quandieu paid him, mentioned that the Bishop and the poor priest had wept together.

The agitation at Beaumont increased as the assizes drew near; the Indictment Chamber having returned the papers in Simon's case to the Prosecution Office, the first hearing had been fixed for Monday, October 20. Meantime the position taken up by the Bishop brought popular passions to a climax. He was attacked even more violently by _Le Petit Beaumontais_ than by _La Croix de Beaumont_, though the latter journal was in the hands of the Jesuits. The Simonists had plucked up a little courage at the advent of his unhoped-for help; but the anti-Simonists poisoned public opinion with fresh romances, among others an extraordinary invention to the effect that a Jew syndicate had been formed to buy up all the powers of the world by dint of millions. And three millions, it was said, had gone to Monseigneur Bergerot as his share.

From that moment dementia and violence reigned throughout the town. From Le Mauviot, the working-class _faubourg_, to the Avenue des Jaffres, the aristocratic quarter, passing by way of the Rue Fontanier and the adjoining narrow streets where the smaller shopkeepers congregated, the contest became more and more bitter, the Simonists, who were few in number, being crushed by the ever-growing hordes of their adversaries. On one occasion a crowd went to hoot Salvan, the Director of the Training College, as he was suspected of Simonism; and in a like spirit, Depinvilliers, the Jew-hating and patriotic principal of the Lycée, was acclaimed. Paid brawlers, recruited on the pavements and reinforced by clerical young men of position, swept the streets and threatened the Jew-shops. The saddest was that the Republican and even some of the Socialist working men either disinterested themselves from the contest or took up positions against right and truth. Then terror reigned, cowardice became widespread, all the social forces coalesced against the unhappy prisoner. The University, headed by Forbes, its Rector, did not stir for fear of compromising itself. The official Administration, personified by Prefect Hennebise, had disinterested itself from the question at the outset, desirous as it was of incurring no worries. The politicians, the Senators as well as the Deputies, remained silent for fear they might lose their seats if they spoke otherwise than the electors did. The Church, in which the Bishop had ceased to count, Father Crabot becoming its real chief, demanded the setting up of piles and stakes, and the extermination of all Jews, Protestants, and Freemasons. The army, by the voice of General Jarousse, also called for the cleansing of the country, and the enthronement of an emperor or a king as soon as all the rogues without God or fatherland should be sabred. And there remained the Judicial Bench, towards which every hope went forth, for did it not hold in its hands the necessary _dénouement_, the condemnation of the dirty Jew, by which alone the salvation of France might be assured? Thus Gragnon, the presiding judge, and Raoul de La Bissonnière, the Public Prosecutor, had become great personages, of whom nobody doubted, for their anti-Simonism was as notorious as were their desire for advancement and their passion for popularity.

When the names inscribed on the general roll of jurors for the coming assizes were made public, there was a fresh outburst of violence and intrigue. The most terrible pressure was brought to bear on the persons who were likely to serve; so that nobody might remain ignorant of their names and addresses _Le Petit Beaumontais_ printed them, thus designating them to the fury of the crowd in the event of their failing to convict the prisoner. They received anonymous letters, they were upset by strange visitors, they were begged to think of their wives and children. In the drawing-rooms of the Avenue des Jaffres people amused themselves with elaborate calculations, passing in review the more or less certain opinions of each individual juror. Would such a one convict or would he not? The question became a society pastime.

At beautiful Madame Lemarrois' house each Saturday, her day, nothing else was spoken of. All the ladies came: Générale Jarousse, who, although lean, ugly, and dusky, was said to be abominably unfaithful to the general, her husband; Présidente Gragnon, who, still superb and languishing, fascinated the young Assessors of the Public Prosecution Service; Préfete Hennebise, who, like an artful and prudent Parisienne, spoke little and listened a great deal; together with the eager Madame Daix, the Investigating Magistrate's wife, and at times even Madame de La Bissonnière, the Prosecutor's spouse, though she, gentle and retiring in her ways, seldom went into society. The ladies had all attended a great fête given at La Désirade by the Sanglebœufs in accordance with the advice of Baron Nathan, who had prevailed on his daughter to shake off her indolence and place herself, like others of her sex, at the service of the good cause. The part which women played in the affair was indeed an influential one: they were worth an army, said young Deputy Marcilly, who, waiting to see on which side victory would rest, comported himself as a Simonist with some and as an anti-Simonist with others.

But a last quarrel maddened everybody. One morning _Le Petit Beaumontais_ formally suggested that at least some part of the case should be heard _in camera_. This idea had certainly not originated with the newspaper itself; one divined in it a deep knowledge of the sentiments of the multitude, a hope that mystery would make the charges appear yet more monstrous than they were, and a desire for some convenient means by which one might subsequently justify the condemnation of an innocent man, as for instance by asserting that facts had come out _in camera_ with which the general public was not acquainted. The Simonists detected the danger, protested, appealed for full light, the hearing of the whole case in open court; whereupon the anti-Simonists, fired with indignation, shrieked that the appeal was scandalous, and demanded to know whether the ears of respectable people were to be soiled by being compelled to listen to the most abominable particulars. Thus, during the last week, a furious _mêlée_ raged in Beaumont.

At last the great day, October 20, arrived. The school term having begun, Marc had been obliged to reinstall himself at Jonville, with Geneviève and little Louise, whom Madame Duparque and Madame Berthereau had insisted on keeping with them throughout the whole vacation that year. Marc had assented the more readily as his sojourn at Maillebois permitted him to carry on his investigations, which, alas! led to nothing. But at the same time he had felt so uncomfortable in the ladies' house, where never a word was said of the great affair, that he was happy to find himself once more in his school, among his troop of playful boys, some of whom were so dear to him. On the other hand, at his own request, he had been cited as a witness in the case in order that he might testify to Simon's good character; and he awaited the trial with a quiver of emotion, again possessed by tenacious reliance in truth and justice, for it seemed to him impossible that a man could be condemned without proofs, in these days and in France, a land of liberty and generosity.

When he arrived at Beaumont on the Monday morning the town appeared to be in a state of siege. Most of the troops were kept under arms in their barracks, but gendarmes and infantrymen guarded the approaches of the Palace of Justice; and in order to reach it Marc had to overcome all sorts of obstacles, although he was duly provided with a witness's summons. Again, he found the staircases and passages likewise barred by troops. The Assize Court, a new and very spacious hall, glittered with gilding and imitation marble, in the crude light entering by six large windows. The place was already crowded two hours before the opening of the proceedings. All the fine folk of Beaumont were assembled behind the judges' armchairs. There were ladies in full dress everywhere, even on the benches usually reserved for witnesses. And the 'pit,' where only standing room was provided, was already tumultuous. A picked throng was gathered there; one recognised the church beadles and the hired 'demonstrators' of the streets, with whom mingled some of the ranters of the Young Catholic set. There was a long delay, and thus Marc had ample time to examine the faces around him and to realise amid what hostile passions the proceedings would take their course.

The Court appeared: first Gragnon and his Assessors, then the Procureur de la République, La Bissonnière. The first formalities were accomplished rapidly; but it was rumoured that a 'panel' had not been formed without difficulty, several jurors on the roll having applied to be excused, so great was their dread of incurring any responsibility in Simon's case. At last the twelve chosen men entered the court in a file, and took their seats morosely, like condemned criminals. There were five shopkeepers, two manufacturers, two individuals living on their means, a doctor, an architect, and a retired army captain. The architect, a pious man, named Jacquin, who worked for the bishopric, happened to be the foreman, his name having come first at the drawing of lots. If the counsel for the defence had not challenged him by reason of his connections, it was because he enjoyed a well-deserved reputation for loyalty, uprightness, and honesty. Moreover, something like disappointment became manifest among the anti-Simonists on the arrival of the jurymen, whose names were repeated here and there, as each in succession was identified. Some of them appeared to be doubtful customers; and there had been hopes of a more reliable jury, one absolutely determined to convict the prisoner.

Deep silence fell; then the examination of Simon began. Looking puny and awkward as he entered the court, he had created an unfavourable impression. But he had drawn himself up, and now, by reason of the quiet and easy way in which he answered the questions addressed to him, he appeared to be impudent. Gragnon, the presiding judge, had put on the scoffing air which he assumed on great occasions, while keeping his little grey eyes fixed upon the advocate, Maître Delbos, the anarchist, as he called him, whom he had undertaken to suppress with a thumb-stroke. Meantime he indulged in witticisms, striving to provoke laughter, but growing gradually irritated by the calmness of Simon, who, as he did not lie, was unable to contradict himself and thus give himself away. The judge therefore became insolent, vainly endeavouring to provoke a protest from Delbos; but the latter, knowing his man, held his tongue and smiled. On the whole, the first day's proceedings, while rejoicing the Simonists, rendered the anti-Simonists extremely anxious, for the prisoner had clearly set forth the hour of his return to Maillebois, and the manner in which he had immediately joined his wife, without it being possible for the judge to produce a single certain, ascertained fact in opposition to his declarations. At the rising of the Court, when the crowd retired, the witnesses for the defence were hooted, and there was almost a fight on the steps of the Palace of Justice.

On the Tuesday the hearing of the witnesses began amid a yet greater concourse of people. First came assistant-master Mignot, whose statements were now less assertive than they had been during the magisterial inquiry. He no longer spoke positively of the hour at which he had heard sounds of footsteps and voices. Simple and worthy fellow as he was at bottom, he doubtless felt disturbed when he thought of the terrible consequences of such evidence as the judge tried to extract from him. But Mademoiselle Rouzaire was pitilessly precise. She specified the exact time, a quarter to eleven o'clock, adding even that she had fully recognised Simon's voice and footfall. Then came a long procession of railway employés, _octroi_ officials,[5] and mere wayfarers, whose evidence was taken to solve the question whether the prisoner had travelled by the 10.30 train, as the prosecution asserted, or whether he had returned home on foot, as he himself claimed to have done. The depositions on the subject were interminable, full of confusion and contradictions. The impression they left, however, was somewhat favourable to the defence. But next came the much awaited evidence of Father Philibin and Brother Fulgence. The former, which was very brief, proved a disappointment, for the Jesuit merely recounted in a few husky sentences how he had found the little body on the floor near the bed. But Brother Fulgence amused the whole assembly by the vehemence he imparted to his narrative, throughout the whole of which he gesticulated as wildly as a jumping-jack. Nevertheless, he seemed quite pleased with the effect he produced. From the very outset of the affair he had not ceased to muddle and spoil things.

At last the three assistant Brothers, Isidore, Lazarus, and Gorgias, who had been specially cited by the defence, were called. Delbos allowed the two former to retire after a few insignificant questions, but he rose and remained erect while Gorgias was at the bar. That former little peasant, the son of a gardener at Valmarie, Georges Plumet as he was called in the days of the Countess de Quédeville, and now Brother Gorgias of the Ignorantine Order, was a strong, thin, dark and knotty man, with a low stern forehead, projecting cheek-bones, and thick lips under a big nose shaped like an eagle's beak. As formerly mentioned, he was afflicted with a tic, a convulsive twitching of his upper lip on its left side, which thus disclosed his strong teeth, and formed a kind of involuntary rictus, having a violent and scoffing expression. When he stepped forward in his old black frock and with his white band of doubtful cleanliness, a quiver, which had come nobody knew whence, sped through the assembly. And immediately a duel, with questions as keen as sword thrusts and answers as cutting as parries, began between the advocate and the Brother on the subject of the evening of the crime, on the time which the witness had taken to escort little Polydor to his home, and the precise hour at which he had returned to the school. The public listened in perplexity, failing to understand the decisive importance of this examination, for the witness was a stranger to most of the people present. As it happened, Brother Gorgias, in his violent scoffing way, found an answer for every question, produced proofs, and established the fact that at half-past ten o'clock he had been in bed in his cell. Brothers Isidore and Lazarus were recalled, the doorkeeper of the Brothers' school was fetched, together with two inhabitants of Maillebois, belated promenaders, and all swore and confirmed the Ignorantine's assertions.

[Footnote 5: Those who collect municipal dues at the gates or outskirts of French towns.--_Trans._]

Of course this duel was not fought without considerable intervention on the part of President Gragnon, who thought the opportunity favourable to silence Delbos, on the ground that he addressed insulting questions to the Brother. Delbos retorted by submitting 'conclusions,' and there was quite a to-do, amidst which Brother Gorgias seemed triumphant, turning on the advocate sly glances of disdain, as if to imply that he feared nothing whatever, protected as he was by his God of anger and extermination, who proved so terrible to infidels. But if the incident yielded no result that Delbos could immediately put to use, it wrought great perturbation; and some folk felt terribly alarmed lest Simon should escape as the result of such attempts to cast doubt into the minds of the jurors. That alarm must have spread to the Congregations, for a fresh incident occurred after the evidence of the handwriting experts, Masters Badoche and Trabut, who, amidst general stupefaction, explained how they detected Simon's initials, an E and an S interlaced, in the paraph on the copy-slip, when nobody else could see them there. That copy-slip was the one document in the case, everything depended on it; thus the evidence of those extraordinary experts was extremely grave: it meant the condemnation of Simon.

It was then that Father Philibin, who had followed the proceedings most attentively, asked the judge's permission to return to the bar. There, in a ringing voice, he, who had first shown himself so spiritless and retiring, recounted a brief story of a certain letter he had seen--a letter written by Simon to a friend, and signed with the same flourishes. And when Gragnon pressed him, asked for precise particulars, the Jesuit raised his hand towards the picture of the Crucifixion above the judgment seat, and declared theatrically that it was a secret of the confessional, and that he would say no more. Thus the second day's proceedings came to an end amid a paroxysm of feverishness and tumult.

On the Wednesday the question of hearing the report on the post-mortem examination and the evidence of the school children _in camera_ was dealt with. The presiding judge had the right to take such a course; but Delbos, without contesting it, set forth all the danger of wrapping the affair in mystery, and submitted fresh 'conclusions' to the effect that all evidence should be heard in open court. None the less Gragnon quietly pronounced a judgment, which the numerous gendarmes who were present immediately put into execution by pushing the public outside. There was an extraordinary outburst of emotion, a perfect scramble, followed by passionate discussions in the passages. During the two hours occupied by the proceedings _in camera_ the excitement kept on increasing. Frightful rumours and statements circulated as if what was being said in court filtered through the walls. At first the chatterers dealt with the report on the post-mortem examination, discussing in turn every expression said to be contained in it, and adding horrible particulars, hitherto unknown to anybody, but absolutely proving Simon's guilt. Then came the evidence of the Bongard, Doloir, Savin, and Milhomme children, who were pictured saying things they had never said. However, people were convinced that all had been corrupted, and, in spite of Delbos's protest, which indeed was regarded as a mere comedy, it was declared that the Simonists themselves had desired proceedings _in camera_ in order to save the secular school of Maillebois from utter disgrace. Thus, was not condemnation certain? Besides, those who might be disturbed by the lack of sufficient proof respecting the death of Zéphirin would be told that certain things had been stated _in camera_--things they would be unable to control, knowing nothing of them.

When the doors were re-opened there came a rush, people swept in tumultuously, searching and sniffing for some trace of the monstrosities they had imagined. But during the remainder of the sitting they heard little beyond the evidence of a few witnesses for the defence, witnesses as to character, among whom Marc figured, and who all declared Simon to be a very kind and gentle man, fondly attached to his wife and children. Only one witness attracted any attention, this being Mauraisin, the Elementary Inspector, who had felt greatly annoyed by the citation which Delbos had intentionally sent to him. At a loss between his desire to please the anti-Simonists and his fear of displeasing his immediate superior, Le Barazer, whom he knew to be discreetly a Simonist, Mauraisin was in the first instance obliged to admit that he had reported most favourably on Simon and his school, and subsequently he could only qualify those reports by vague insinuations respecting the prisoner's sly character and the sectarian violence of his religious passions.

The speeches of La Bissonnière and Delbos occupied the Court throughout the Thursday and the Friday. During the earlier proceedings La Bissonnière had intervened as little as possible, spending most of his time in taking notes and contemplating his finger-nails. At heart he was not free from uneasiness, and he must have asked himself if he would not do well to relinquish certain charges as some of the so-called proofs were so very fragile. Thus his address was rather spiritless. He contented himself with pointing out the various probabilities of guilt, and ended by asking merely for the application of the law. His speech had lasted barely two hours, its success was meagre, and the anxiety of the anti-Simonists again became acute.

Not enough time was left that day for Delbos, who only finished his speech on the morrow. He began by drawing a portrait of Simon, showing him in his school, esteemed and loved, having an adorable wife and beautiful children at his fireside. Then, after setting forth the horrible and ignoble circumstances of the crime, the advocate asked if such a man could be guilty of it. He took the so-called proofs of the prosecution one by one, and demonstrated their nothingness. On the subject of the copy-slip, and the report of the hand-writing experts, he waxed terrible; he showed that the ownership of the one document in the case could not be attributed to Simon, and he exposed the arrant stupidity of the report drawn up by Masters Badoche and Trabut. He discussed and destroyed every item of evidence, even that which had been taken _in camera_, thereby drawing on himself all the thunders of President Gragnon. Quite a violent quarrel arose, and, indeed, from that moment Delbos spoke under the constant threat of being arbitrarily silenced. Nevertheless, from a defender he became an accuser; he cast before the Court the Brothers and the Capuchins, and the Jesuits also. He carried the case back to Father Crabot in order that he might strike the chief of the coalition, as he desired to do. Only a Brother, he said, could have committed the crime, and, although he did not name Brother Gorgias, he designated him; he gave all the reasons on which his conviction was based, he pointed out all the underhand devices which had been adopted by the other side, the formation of a great clerical conspiracy of which Simon was the victim, and the necessity for the plotters that an innocent man should be condemned in order that the real culprit might be saved. In conclusion he cried to the jury that it was not the murderer of little Zéphirin, but the secular schoolmaster, the Jew, whom they were really asked to condemn. The end of his speech, though rent by the interruptions of the presiding judge and the hooting of the audience, was, on the whole, regarded as an oratorical triumph, which placed Delbos in the front rank, but for which his client, no doubt, would pay heavily.

La Bissonnière immediately rose to reply to it, his countenance assuming an expression of grief and indignation. An unqualifiable scandal had taken place; the counsel for the defence had dared to accuse a Brother without producing any serious proof in support of his monstrous allegation. He had done worse: he had denounced as that Brother's accomplices both his superiors and other members of the religious Orders, including even one of high personality, before whom all honest folk bowed with respect. Religion was outraged, anarchist passions were let loose, those who acknowledged neither God nor patriotic feeling would fain precipitate the country into an abyss. For three hours La Bissonnière went on denouncing the enemies of society in flowery language, drawing his little figure erect, as if he felt he were at last rising to the high destiny to which his ambition aspired. As he finished he became ironical; he wished to know if the fact of being a Jew sufficed to make a man innocent; and then he asked the jury for all its severity, for the head of the wretch who had degraded and murdered a little child. Frantic applause burst forth, and Delbos, by his vehement rejoinder full of exasperation, only drew on himself a fresh tempest of insults and threats.

It was seven o'clock in the evening when the jurors retired to consider their verdict. As the questions put to them by the Court were few in number, it was hoped that matters would be finished in less than an hour, and that one might then go off to dine. Night had fallen, and the few big lamps placed on the tables did not suffice to illumine the great hall. Candles, which looked like church tapers, had been set up in front of the newspaper reporters, who were still working. The atmosphere was hot and murky, but not a lady quitted her seat, the crowd stubbornly remained there, phantom-like in places according to the play of the lights, which threw great tragic shadows around. All gave full rein to their passions, there was a deafening uproar of voices, with an agitation, a seething and bubbling, as in some fermenting vat. The few Simonists were triumphant; they declared it would be impossible for the jury to convict. And, in spite of the noisy applause bestowed on La Bissonnière's reply, the anti-Simonists, who crowded the hall, showed themselves nervous, trembling lest the expiatory victim should escape them. It was asserted that Jacquin, the foreman of the jury, had spoken to somebody of the anguish he felt in presence of the absolute lack of proofs. And three other jurymen were mentioned as having appeared favourable to the prisoner. Acquittal became possible. Thus there was angry waiting, waiting which lasted and lasted, contrary to all previous expectations. Eight o'clock struck, nine o'clock struck, and still the jurors did not return. They had been shut up for two hours, unable, no doubt, to come to an agreement. This only increased the general uncertainty, and, although the door of the jury's retiring room was carefully closed, rumours came from it, nobody knew how, raising the agitation of the ravenous, extenuated, impatient throng to a climax.

All at once it was learnt that the foreman, acting for himself and his colleagues, had begged the presiding judge to go to them. According to another version it was the judge who had placed himself at their disposal, insisting to see them, which seemed a scarcely correct proceeding. However, the waiting began once more, long minutes went by. What could the judge be doing with the jurors? Legally he might only acquaint them with the dispositions of the law, should they be ignorant of the consequences of their decision. But the delay which was taking place appeared very long for a simple explanation of that kind; and, indeed, a fresh rumour suddenly spread among Gragnon's intimates, who did not seem at all struck by the enormity of such a story. It was to the effect that a document had reached the judge after the close of the proceedings, and that he had found it absolutely necessary to lay it before the jurymen, though the prisoner and his counsel were not present. However, ten o'clock struck, and at last the jury reappeared.

Then, in the anxious and suddenly silent hall, when the judges had returned and taken their seats, their robes setting red blotches against the background of shifting darkness, architect Jacquin, the foreman, arose. His face, distinctly seen, for the light of a lamp fell on it, was very pale. And it was in a somewhat weak voice that he pronounced the customary formula. The jury's answer was 'yes' to all the questions, but it granted the admission of extenuating circumstances, illogically of course, and with the sole object of avoiding the capital penalty. The penalty, in the circumstances, was penal servitude for life, and sentence was pronounced by President Gragnon with the air of a well-satisfied jolly dog and the jeering nasal accent habitual to him. The Procureur de la République, La Bissonnière, picked up his papers with a quick gesture, like a man relieved and delighted at having secured his desire. From the audience frantic applause had risen immediately--the loud baying of hungry hounds, to whom the long-pursued quarry was at last flung. It was like the delirium of cannibals gorging themselves with human flesh. And yet amid that tumult, fraught with horrid savagery, above all the ferocious baying, there rose a cry--Simon's unceasing cry, 'I am innocent! I am innocent!'--a loud and stubborn call which sowed truth in worthy hearts, whilst Advocate Delbos, with tears springing to his eyes, leant towards the condemned man and embraced him like a brother.

David, who had abstained from appearing in court, in order that he might give no occasion for an increase of anti-Semite hatred, awaited the result at Delbos's rooms in the Rue Fontanier. Until ten o'clock he remained counting the minutes, consumed by the most torturing fever, knowing not whether he ought to rejoice or despair at such delay. He continually went to the window to lean out, and listen to the sounds in the distance. And the very atmosphere of the street, and the exclamations of a few people passing, had already imparted to him the fatal tidings, when Marc arrived, sobbing, exhausted, and confirmed them. Salvan accompanied Marc--Salvan, whom the young man had met on quitting the court, and who was also beside himself. There came an hour of tragic despair, of utter collapse, when all that was good and just seemed to be engulfed for ever; and when Delbos, after an interview with Simon, whom he had found stricken yet still erect, arrived in his turn, he could only cast himself on David's neck and embrace him, even as he had embraced his brother yonder.

'Ah! weep, my friend!' he cried. 'It is the greatest iniquity of the century!'

IV

On his return to Jonville after the vacation that year, Marc had found himself engaged in another struggle, one having no connection with Simon's case. His adversary, Abbé Cognasse, the parish priest, anxious to get him into difficulties, had decided to make an effort to win over the village Mayor, one Martineau, a peasant, through the latter's wife, 'the beautiful Martineau,' as she was called.

Abbé Cognasse was a terrible man, tall, lean, and angular, with a determined chin, and a sharp nose under a low brow and a thick mane of dark hair. His eyes glowed with aggressive fire; his knotty hands, which he seldom washed, seemed made expressly for the purpose of throttling those who dared to resist him. Forty years of age, he kept one servant, Palmyre, an old maid of sixty, who was inclined to be humpbacked and who was yet more terrible than her master, so miserly and harsh indeed that she was regarded as the terror of the district. The priest was said to lead a chaste life, but he ate a great deal and he drank very copiously, though without intoxicating himself. A peasant's son, and therefore narrow and stubborn in his opinions, he always insisted upon his rights and his dues, never foregoing a single copper of the latter, even when the poorest of his parishioners was in question. Thus he was very anxious to hold Mayor Martineau in his power in order to become the real master of the commune, and thereby increase his own profits as well as assure the triumph of religion. As for his quarrel with Marc, this had arisen over a sum of thirty francs a year which the parish had arranged to pay the schoolmaster for ringing the church bell, and which Marc, for a time, duly received, although he absolutely refused to put his hands to the bell-rope.

Martineau was not easily won over when he found himself supported. Of the same age as the priest, square of face and sturdy of build, ruddy and bright-eyed, he spoke little and evinced great caution. He was said to be the wealthiest cultivator of the commune, and, his extensive property gaining him the favour of his fellow parishioners, he had been Mayor of Jonville for ten years past. Scarcely knowing how to read and write, he did not care to pronounce openly between the Church and the school; he thought it best to affect neutrality, though he always ended by siding with one or the other, according whether he felt the priest or the schoolmaster to be the stronger. In the depths of his heart he was inclined to favour the latter, for in his veins coursed some of that ancient rancour which animates the French peasant against the priest, whom he regards as an idle man bent on enjoying life, one indeed who does nothing and yet requires to be paid, and who captures the wives and daughters of his parishioners in the name of an invisible, jealous and ever-threatening Deity. But if Martineau did not follow the Church observances, he had never opposed his _curé_ without assistance, for he held that the black-gowns were extremely clever, whatever else might be said about them. Thus it was largely because Marc displayed so much quiet energy and intelligence that Martineau had joined his side, allowing him to go forward without pledging himself too much.

But it occurred to Abbé Cognasse to make use of the Mayor's wife, the beautiful Martineau, who, although she was not one of his penitents, attended church very regularly on Sundays and festivals. Very dark, with large eyes, a fresh mouth, and a buxom figure, she was coquettishly inclined, fond of exhibiting a new gown, of airing a lace cap, of arraying herself in her gold jewellery. Her assiduity at Mass was due to that alone. Church-going had become her diversion. There was no other spot whither she could repair in full dress, to show herself, and pass her neighbours in review. Indeed, in that village of less than eight hundred souls, for lack of any other meeting place and occasion for ceremony and festival, the damp little nave of the church, where Mass was so hastily celebrated, became the drawing-room, the theatre, the one general parade and recreation ground of the women who were desirous of pleasing. Those who went thither were influenced very little by faith; their craving was to wear their Sunday finery and to show themselves. Their mothers had done it, their daughters would do it also; it was the general custom. As for Madame Martineau, on being approached and flattered by Abbé Cognasse, she endeavoured to convince her husband that the priest was right in the matter of the thirty francs. But Martineau sharply bade her hold her tongue and return to her cows, for he belonged to the old school, and did not allow women to meddle in matters which concerned men.

In itself the story of the thirty francs was very simple. Ever since there had been a schoolmaster at Jonville he had been paid that sum annually to ring the church bell. But Marc, being unwilling to do so, ended by persuading the parish council to devote the money to another purpose. If the priest needed a bellringer he could surely pay for one himself. But the old clock in the church steeple was in a sad condition, constantly losing time, and a former clockmaker, dwelling in the vicinity, was willing to repair it and keep it in working order for that very sum of thirty francs a year. It was with some little malice that Marc suggested the acceptance of the offer, while the peasants reflected and sounded themselves, wondering whether their interests would be best served by having the bell rung for Mass, or by having a clock to tell them the correct time. As for ensuring both services by voting an additional thirty francs, they never gave that point a moment's thought, for their policy was to burden the parish with no useless expense whatever. Nevertheless, there was a fine tussle, in which the influence of the priest and that of the schoolmaster came into collision, the latter finally remaining victorious, in spite of the maledictions which Abbé Cognasse, in his sermons, heaped on the impious folk who, by silencing the bell, wished to silence the call of religion. One fine Sunday morning, however, after a month's quietude, a succession of furious peals resounded from the church steeple; and people then discovered that the priest's old servant, the terrible Palmyre, was ringing the bell with all the furious strength of her wiry little arms.

Abbé Cognasse understood that the Mayor was escaping him, and, though inwardly aglow with anger, he henceforth became prudent, displaying all the flexible craft of his cloth. Then, as Martineau grew conscious of the firmness of the hands to which he had confided himself, he more and more frequently consulted Marc, who at last felt that he was master. As parish clerk the young man ended by discreetly guiding the council, duly respecting the self-esteem of its members and remaining in the background, content to inspire those peasants, whose chief desire was for quietude and prosperity, with intelligence, sense, and healthy determination. Under the young man's auspices education spread, casting light upon all things, destroying foolish superstitions, and driving not only mental poverty but also the poverty of homes away; for wealth comes with knowledge. Never indeed had Jonville made so much progress; it was becoming the most prosperous and the happiest parish of the department.

It must be said that Marc was greatly assisted in his work by Mademoiselle Mazeline, the mistress of the girls' school, which a wall alone separated from the boys' school, where the young man was master. Short and dark, quite destitute of beauty, but very charming, with a broad face, a full kindly mouth, fine black eyes glowing with tenderness and abnegation beneath a lofty and bossy brow, Mademoiselle Mazeline was all intelligence, sense, healthy and upright determination, like one born to educate and emancipate the little girls confided to her. She came from that Training School of Fontenay-aux-Roses which, thanks to the heart and mind of an illustrious master, has already sent forth a whole cohort of able pioneers, whose mission it is to form the wives and mothers of to-morrow. And if, at six and twenty years of age, the young woman was already mistress of a school, it was thanks to her intelligent superiors, Salvan and Le Barazer, who were giving her a trial in that lonely village in order to ascertain if she would turn out the good work which they awaited. At heart they felt some anxiety on account of her advanced opinions, fearing that she might indispose her pupils' parents by her anti-clerical views, her conviction that woman would only bring happiness to the world when she was at last delivered from the priests. But Mademoiselle Mazeline behaved with great sense and good humour, and if she did not take her girls to Mass, she treated them in such a motherly fashion, taught them and cared for them so affectionately, that the peasants became deeply attached to her. Thus she greatly helped Marc in his work by proving that, although one may not go to Mass, and although one may set one's belief more particularly in human work and conscientiousness, one may nevertheless become the most intelligent, most upright, and kindly woman in the world.

But Abbé Cognasse, whatever his repulse at Jonville, fully revenged himself at Le Moreux, a little parish some two and a half miles distant, which, having no priest of its own, was dependent upon him. If, however, there were less than two hundred inhabitants at Le Moreux, and if the village was hidden away among the hills, the difficult roads cutting it off from frequent intercourse with the rest of the world, on the other hand it was by no means a wretched spot. Its only poor family was that of its schoolmaster; all the others possessed fertile lands, and lived with hardly a care amid the sleepy quietude of routine. Saleur, the Mayor, a short stout man with a bovine muzzle and little or no neck, had been a grazier, and had suddenly made a fortune by selling his meadow lands, herds, and flocks at a high price to a company, which wished to syndicate all the stock-raising in the department. Since then he had transformed his house into a coquettish villa, and had become a _bourgeois_, sending his son Honoré to the Beaumont Lycée before letting him go as a student to Paris. Although the people of Moreux were jealous of Saleur, they reappointed him Mayor at each election, for the all-sufficient reason that, having to do nothing for a living, he was well able to attend to the parish affairs. He, however, cast them upon the shoulders of Férou, the schoolmaster, who as parish clerk received an annual salary of one hundred and eighty francs,[1] in return for which he had to perform no little work, keep the registers, draw up reports, write letters, and attend to something or other at almost every moment.

Saleur was dense and heavy, crassly ignorant, scarce able to sign his name, and, though not harsh at bottom, he treated Férou as if the latter were a mere writing machine, regarding him indeed with the quiet contempt of a man who had needed nothing like so much learning to make his fortune and live at his ease. Moreover, the Mayor bore the schoolmaster a grudge for having quarrelled with Abbé Cognasse by refusing to take his pupils to church, and sing as a choirman. It was not that Saleur himself followed the observances of the Church; for it was merely as a supporter of the cause of order that he went to Mass with his wife, a lean, insignificant, red-haired woman, who was neither devout nor coquettish, but who also regarded attendance at church on Sundays as a social duty. Thus Saleur's grudge against Férou arose simply from the circumstance that the schoolmaster's rebellious attitude aggravated the quarrels which were perpetually occurring between the priest of Jonville and the inhabitants of Le Moreux.

[Footnote 1: About $35.]

For instance, the latter complained that the priest treated them with little or no respect, that they only obtained from him some scraps of Masses, bestowed on them like alms, that they were compelled to send their children to Jonville for the catechism classes and the first Communion, and that all sorts of difficulties were placed in their way with respect to weddings, baptisms, and churchings; whereupon the infuriated Abbé retorted that when folk wished to obtain favours from Heaven their first duty was to provide themselves with a priest of their own. On weekdays, when it was invariably closed, the church of Le Moreux looked like a dismal empty barn; but for half an hour every Sunday Abbé Cognasse swept down on it like a tempest, feared by everybody and terrorising the parish with his capriciousness and his violence.

Marc, who was acquainted with the situation, could not think of Férou without feeling much compassionate sympathy. In that well-to-do village of Le Moreux, he, the schoolmaster, alone was unable to satisfy his hunger. The horrible misery which assails so many poor schoolmasters became in his case most tragically acute. He had made his _début_ at Maillebois as an assistant teacher, with a salary of nine hundred francs,[2] when he was twenty-four years of age. And now, after six years' work, exiled to Le Moreux on account of his bitter disposition, he still only received a thousand francs a year, or, allowing for the amount deducted for the pension fund, sixty-five francs a month--that is to say, fifty-two sous a day.[3] Yet he had a wife and three little girls to keep! Black misery reigned in the damp old hovel which served as a school, the food was often such as dogs would have scorned to touch, the girls went about shoeless, the wife did not possess a decent gown. And indebtedness was always increasing, the threatening, deadly indebtedness in which so many humble servants of the State become engulfed, while those at the head of affairs are often wickedly paid six times as much as their services deserve.

How great was the courage, the heroism which Férou needed to try to hide that misery, to remain erect in his threadbare frock-coat, to hold his rank as a man of letters, a monsieur who by the regulations was forbidden to carry on any commercial calling whatever. Morning after morning the struggle began afresh, night was only reached by force of energy and will. That shepherd's son, whose keenly intelligent mind had retained great independence, discharged his duties passionately, as often as not without any show of resignation. His wife, a stout and pleasant blonde, formerly assistant to her aunt, who kept a shop at Maillebois, where Férou had met and married her honestly enough, after getting her into trouble, gave him it is true some little help, attending for instance to the girls, teaching them to read and sew, while he had on his hands the ill-bred, dense, and malicious boys. Under all the circumstances was it surprising that he sometimes yielded to the discouragement which comes from ungrateful toil, to the sudden rebellion of his suffering heart? Born poor, he had always suffered from poverty, ill fed and ill clad, and now that he was a monsieur his poverty became the more frightfully bitter. Around him he saw only happy folk, peasants possessed of lands, able to eat their fill, proud of the crown-pieces they had put by. Most of them were brutish, scarcely able to write. They invariably needed his help when a letter had to be drafted. Yet he, the only man of intellect, education, and culture among them, often lacked a franc to buy himself a couple of new collars or to pay for the repair of his old shoes. And the others treated him as a lackey, overwhelmed him with scorn, jeered at his ragged coat, of which, at heart, they were jealous.

But the comparison which they drew between him, the schoolmaster, and Abbé Cognasse, the priest, was particularly unfavourable to Férou. The schoolmaster was so poorly paid and so wretched, he was treated impertinently by his pupils, and disdainfully by their parents; he was destitute, too, of all authority, unsupported by his superiors; whereas the priest, far more liberally remunerated, receiving moreover all sorts of presents in addition to his stipend, was backed up by his bishop and petted by the devout, whilst as for authority he spoke like one who had only to address himself to his Master to bring as he pleased thunder, or rain, or sunshine on the crops. Thus, although Abbé Cognasse was always quarrelling with the folk of Le Moreux, and although they had lost their faith and had almost ceased to follow the observances of religion, he still reigned over them. And thus, on the other hand, schoolmaster Férou, tortured by his life of indigence, gorged with bitterness, turned into a Socialist by sheer force of circumstances, drew bad reports upon himself by expressing subversive views with respect to that social system which condemned him, the representative of intelligence and knowledge, to starve, whilst all around him stupidity and ignorance possessed and enjoyed.

[Footnote 2: About $175 per annum.]

[Footnote 3: About 50 cents.]

The winter proved very severe that year. Already in November Jonville and Le Moreux were buried in snow and ice. Marc heard that two of Férou's little girls were ill and that their father was scarcely able to provide them with broth. He strove to assist him, but he himself was very poor, and had to obtain Mademoiselle Mazeline's help in the good work. Like Férou indeed, Marc, as schoolmaster, only received a salary of one thousand francs a year, but his duties as parish clerk were better remunerated than his colleague's. Again, the building in which the Jonville boys' and girls' schools were lodged--the former village parsonage, restored and enlarged--was more healthy than that of Le Moreux. Nevertheless, the young man hitherto had only made both ends meet by the liberality of Madame Duparque, his wife's grandmother, who sent frocks for Louise, linen for Geneviève, besides little presents in money at certain seasons of the year. Since the Simon case, however, she had given nothing, and Marc was almost relieved, for the harsh words accompanying each of her presents had often hurt his feelings. But how straitened did the home now become, and what toil, courage, and economy were needed to live and discharge one's office with dignity!

Marc, who loved his profession, had returned to it with a kind of dolorous ardour, and nobody, on seeing him at work, punctually discharging each duty through those first winter months so hard to the poor, had any suspicion of the sombre grief, the bitter despair, which he hid so jealously beneath a brave assumption of tranquillity. He had remained sorely hurt ever since the condemnation of Simon; the wound dealt him by that monstrous iniquity would not heal. In moments of privacy he lapsed into black reveries, and Geneviève often heard him exclaim: 'It is frightful! I thought I knew my country, and I did not know it!'

Yes, how had it been possible for such an infamous thing to take place in France, the France of the Great Revolution, which Marc had regarded hitherto as the deliverer and justiciar promised to the world? He loved his country dearly for its generosity, for its independent courage, for all the noble and great work which he thought it was destined to accomplish. And now it allowed--nay, actually demanded--the condemnation of an innocent man! And it reverted to the old-time imbecility, the barbarity of ancient days! Had it been changed, had it been poisoned to bring about that dementia? Grief and shame haunted him; it was as if he himself had had a share in that crime. And with his eager passion for truth and his craving to impose it upon all, he felt intolerable discomfort when he saw falsehood triumph, and found himself powerless to fight and destroy it by shouting aloud the truth which he had sought so zealously. He lived through the affair again, he still sought and sought, without discovering anything more, so great was the tangle created by invisible hands. And after his long hours of teaching, such despair at times came over him in the evening that Geneviève gently cast her arms about him and kissed him tenderly, desirous of giving him a little comfort.

'You will make yourself ill, my poor friend,' she said. 'Don't think of those sad things any more.'

Tears came to his eyes, so deeply was he touched. In his turn, he kissed her tenderly. 'Yes, yes,' he answered, 'you are right, one must be brave. But how can I help it? I cannot prevent myself from thinking, and it is great torment.'

Then smiling, and raising a finger to her lips, she led him to the cot where little Louise was already fast asleep. 'You must only think of our darling; you must say to yourself that we are working for her. She will be happy if we are.'

'Yes, that would be the more sensible course. But, then, is not our happiness to come from the happiness of all?'

Geneviève had evinced much sense and affection throughout the affair. She had been grieved by the demeanour of her grandmother towards her husband, to whom, during the last days spent at Maillebois, even Pélagie, with spiteful affectation, had never spoken. Thus, when the young people had quitted the house on the Place des Capucins, the parting had been a very cold one; and since that time Geneviève had contented herself with calling on her relations at long intervals, by way of avoiding a complete rupture. Now that she was back at Jonville she had again ceased to attend Mass, for she did not wish to give Abbé Cognasse any opportunity to approach her and endeavour to undermine her affection for her husband. Evincing no interest in the quarrel between the Church and the school, she was content to cling to Marc's neck; and, like a woman who has given herself entirely to the loved one, it was in his arms that she sought a refuge, even when heredity and the effects of a Catholic education prevented her from fully approving his actions. Perhaps in the Simon affair she did not think as he did, but she knew how loyal, generous, and just he was, and she could not blame him for acting according to his conscience. Nevertheless, like a sensible woman, she occasionally recalled him to prudence. What would have become of them and their child if he had compromised himself so far as to lose his position? At the same time, they loved each other so much, they were still so full of passion one for the other, that no quarrel between them had a chance of becoming serious. The slightest disagreement ended in an embrace, a great quiver, and a rain of ardent kisses.

'Ah, my dear, dear Geneviève, when one has given oneself, one can never take oneself back!'

'Yes, yes, my dear Marc, I am yours; I know how good you are; do with me as you please.'

He allowed her all freedom. Had she gone to Mass he would not have tried to prevent her. Whatever might be his own views, he wished to respect her liberty of conscience. And, as christening was a usual thing, he had not thought of opposing the baptism of little Louise. When at times he felt worried by the divergence of religious views, he asked himself if love did not suffice as a remedy for everything, if one did not always end by agreeing, whatever catastrophe might befall, when every evening there came the closest union, husband and wife having but one heart and one being.

If the Simon affair continued to haunt Marc, it was because he was unable to cease occupying himself with it. He had vowed that he would never rest until he should discover the real culprit; and he kept his word, influenced more by passion than by strict duty. On Thursdays, when his afternoons were free, he hastened to Maillebois to call at the Lehmanns' dark and dismal shop in the Rue du Trou. The condemnation of Simon had fallen on that wretched dwelling like a thunderbolt. Public execration seemed to cast the convict's family, his friends, and even the few acquaintances who remained faithful to him, out of the pale of humanity. Lehmann and his wife, who evinced such wretched resignation to their lot, were forsaken by their customers, and would have starved had they not secured some poorly-paid piece-work for Parisian clothiers. But it was particularly Madame Simon, the mournful Rachel, and her little children, Joseph and Sarah, who suffered from the savage hatred assailing their name. It had been impossible for the children to return to school. The town-lads hooted them, pelted them with stones, and one day the little boy came home with his lip badly cut by a missile. As for the mother, who had assumed mourning and whose beauty became the more dazzling in the plain black gown which she always wore, she spent her days in weeping, relying only on some prodigy for salvation. Alone among the inmates of the desolate house, amid the yielding grief of the others, did David remain erect, silent and active, still seeking and still hoping.

He had allotted to himself a superhuman task--that of saving and rehabilitating his brother. He had sworn to him at their last interview that he would dedicate his life to the work of penetrating the frightful mystery, of discovering the real murderer, and of dragging the truth into the broad light of day. Thus he had definitively placed the working of his sand and gravel pits in the hands of a reliable manager, knowing that if he should lack money he would from the outset find his efforts crippled. Personally, he devoted himself entirely to his search for the truth, ever following up the slightest clues, ever deep in the quest for new facts. If it had been possible for his zeal to weaken, the letters from Cayenne, which his sister-in-law at long intervals received from his brother, would have sufficed to inflame his courage. Simon's departure, his embarkation with other unhappy beings, the awful voyage, the arrival yonder amid all the horrors of the penal settlement--those were scorching memories which threw David into indescribable agitation, which returned amid dreadful shudders at each and every hour. And now came letters, doctored and amputated by the officials, yet allowing one to detect beneath each phrase the cry of one who was enduring intolerable torture, the revolt of an innocent man for ever brooding over his pretended crime, and at a loss to understand why it was that he should expiate another's deed. Was not madness at the end of that devouring anguish? Simon alluded gently to the thieves and assassins, his companions; and one could divine that his hatred was directed against the keepers, the torturers, who, uncontrolled, far removed from the civilised world, became like the wild men of primeval caverns, gloating over the sufferings they inflicted upon other men. It was a sphere of mire and blood; and one evening a pardoned convict recounted such horrible particulars to David, in Marc's presence, that the two friends, their bleeding hearts wrung by terror and compassion, were stirred to furious protest and cried their pain aloud.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Marc could not refrain from shrugging his shoulders.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'But how, my dear?'

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

'But you pulled him out of the well?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was certain that the elementary schools would prove the battle-ground of the social contest; for the one real question was to decide what education should be given to those masses which, little by little, would assuredly dispossess the middle class of its usurped power. Victorious over the expiring nobility in 1789, the _bourgeoisie_ had replaced it, and for a whole century it had kept possession of the entire spoils, refusing to the masses their equitable share. At present the _rôle_ of the _bourgeoisie_ was finished; it acknowledged it, by going over to reaction, desperate as it felt at the idea of having to part with power, terrified by the rise of the democracy which was certain to dispossess it. Voltairean when it had thought itself in full and peaceful enjoyment of its conquests, clerical now that in its anxious need it found it had to summon reaction to its help, it was worn out, rotted by abuse of power, and the ever advancing social forces would eliminate it from the system. The energy of to-morrow would be found in the masses, in them slumbered humanity's huge reserve force of intelligence and will. Marc's only hope now was in those children of the people who frequented the elementary schools from one to the other end of France. They constituted the raw material out of which the future nation would be fashioned, and it was necessary to educate them in such wise that they might discharge their duty as freed citizens, possessed of knowledge and will power, released from all the absurd dogmas, errors, and superstitions which destroy human liberty and dignity.

No happiness was possible, whether moral or material, save in the possession of knowledge. The view inspired by the Gospel dictum, 'Happy the poor in spirit,'[8] had held mankind in a quagmire of wretchedness and bondage for ages. No, no! The poor in spirit are perforce mere cattle, fit flesh for slavery and for suffering. As long as there shall be a multitude of the poor in spirit, so will there be a multitude of wretched beings, mere beasts of burden, exploited, preyed upon by an infinitesimal minority of thieves and bandits. The happy people will one day be that which is possessed of knowledge and will. It is from the black pessimism based on sundry passages of the Bible that the world must be delivered--the world, terrified, crushed down for more than two thousand years, living solely for the sake of death. Nothing could be more dangerous than to take the old Semite doctrine as the only moral and social code. Happy, on the contrary, are those who know--happy the intelligent, the men of will and action, for the kingdom of the world shall belong to them! That was the cry which now arose to Marc's lips, from his whole being, in a great transport of faith and enthusiasm.

[Footnote 8: This is how the French render the well-known words of the Sermon on the Mount, as given in Matthew v. 2. It will be remembered that in Luke vi. 20, only the word 'poor' is given, 'in spirit' being omitted. I must confess that I do not know what the 'higher criticism' has to say of this inconsistency, and I am not learned enough to express an opinion of any value on the Greek texts.--_Trans._]

And all at once he arrived at a decision: he would accept Salvan's offer, he would come to Maillebois as elementary master, and he would contend against the Church, against that contamination of the people, of which he had witnessed one of the delirious fits at the ridiculous ceremony held that afternoon. He would work for the liberation of the humble, he would strive to make them free citizens. To win back those masses whom he saw weighed down by ignorance and falsehood, incapable of justice, he would go to the children and to the children's children, instruct them, and, little by little, create a people of truth who, then alone, would become a people of justice. That was the loftiest duty, the most pressing good work, that on which depended the country's very salvation, its strength and glory in its liberating and justice-bringing mission through the ages and through the other nations. And if, after three days' hesitation and anguish at the idea of imperilling the happiness he enjoyed in Geneviève's arms, a moment had sufficed for Marc to arrive at that weighty decision, was it not that he had also found himself confronted by the serious problem of the position of woman, whom the Church had turned into a mere stupefied serf, an instrument of falsity and destruction?

What would they become as wives and mothers, those little girls whom Mademoiselle Rouzaire now led to the Capuchins? When the Church had seized them and held them by their senses, their weakness, and their sufferings, it would never release them; it would employ them as terrible engines of warfare, to demolish men and pervert children. So long as woman, in her ancient contest with man, with respect to unjust laws and iniquitous moral customs, should thus remain the property and the weapon of the Church, social happiness would remain impossible, war would be perpetuated between the disunited sexes. And woman would only at last be a free creature, a free companion for man, disposing of herself and of her happiness for the happiness of her husband and her child, on the day when she should cease to belong to the priest, her present master--he who disorganised and corrupted her.

With respect to Marc himself, was it not an unacknowledged fear, the dread of some drama, which might ravage his own household, that had made him tremble and recoil from the prospect of doing his duty? The sudden decision he had taken might mean a struggle at his own hearth, the necessity of doing his duty to those of his own home, even though his heart might bleed cruelly the while. He knew that now; thus there was some heroism in the course he chose with all simplicity, with all enthusiasm for the good, work which he hoped to prosecute. The highest _rôle_ and the noblest in a nascent democracy is that of the poor and scorned elementary schoolmaster, appointed to teach the humble, to train them to be happy citizens, the builders of the future City of Justice and Peace. Marc felt it was so, and he suddenly realised the exact sense of his mission, his apostleship of Truth, that fervent passion to acquire Truth, certain and positive, then cry it aloud and teach it to all, which had ever possessed him.

Raising his eyes to the railway station, the young man suddenly perceived that it was past four o'clock. The train which he and his wife were to have taken had gone, and it would be necessary to wait till six, when the next one started. Almost immediately afterwards he saw Geneviève approaching, looking much distressed, and carrying little Louise in her arms in order to get over the ground more rapidly. 'Ah! my friend, you must forgive me, I quite forgot the time,' she exclaimed. 'Grandmother detained me, and seemed so annoyed by my impatience to join you that I ended by no longer noticing how time slipped by.'

She had seated herself on the bench beside him, with Louise on her lap. He smilingly inclined his head and kissed the child, who had raised her little hands to pull his beard. And he quietly answered: 'Well, we will wait till six o'clock, my dear. There is nobody to interfere with us, we can remain here. Besides, I have something to tell you.'

But Louise wanted to play, and, stamping on her father's thighs, she cast her arms about his neck.

'Has she been good?' he asked.

'Oh! she always is at grandmother's; she's afraid of being scolded. But now, you see, she wants to have her revenge.'

When the young woman had managed to reseat the child on her lap again, she inquired of her husband: 'What is it you want to tell me?'

'Something which I did not previously speak to you about, as I had not made up my mind. I am offered the post of schoolmaster here, at Maillebois, and I am going to accept it. What do you think of it?'

She looked at him in amazement, at first unable to reply. And for a moment in her eyes he plainly detected a gleam of joyous surprise, followed, however, by increasing anxiety.

'Yes, what do you think of it?' he repeated.

'I think, my friend, that it is advancement, such as you did not expect so soon--only, the position will not be an easy one here, amid such exasperated passions--your opinions, too, being known to everybody.'

'No doubt. I thought of that, but it would be cowardly to refuse the fight.'

'But to speak quite plainly, my friend, I very much fear that if you accept the post it will lead to a complete rupture with grandmother. With mother we might still get on. But, as you know, grandmother is intractable; she will imagine that you have come here to do the work of Antichrist. It means certain rupture.'

A pause, full of embarrassment, followed. Then Marc resumed: 'So you advise me to refuse? You also would disapprove of it: you would not be pleased if I came here?'

She again raised her eyes to his, and with an impulse of great sincerity replied: 'Disapprove of what you do? You grieve me, my friend: why do you say that? Act as your conscience bids, do your duty as you understand it. You are the only good judge, and whatever you do will be well done.'

But, though she spoke those words, he could detect that her voice was trembling, as if with fear of some unconfessed peril which she felt to be near at hand. There came a fresh pause, during which her husband took hold of her hands and caressed them lovingly in order to reassure her.

'So you have quite made up your mind?' she asked.

'Yes, quite: I feel that I should be acting wrongly if I acted otherwise.'

'Well, as we still have an hour and a half to wait for our train, I think we ought to return to grandmother's at once, to acquaint her with your decision.... I want you to behave frankly with her, not as if you were hiding things.'

The young woman was still looking at her husband, and at that moment all that he read in her glance was a great deal of loyalty mingled with a little sadness.

'You are right, my darling,' he answered; 'let us go to grandmother's at once.'

They walked slowly towards the Place des Capucins, delayed somewhat by the little legs of Louise, whom her mother held by the hand. But the close of that fine April day was delightful, and they covered the short distance in a kind of reverie, without exchanging a word. The square had become deserted again, the ladies' house seemed to be wrapped in its wonted somnolence. They found Madame Duparque seated in the little drawing-room, resting her ailing leg on a chair, while she knitted stockings for some charity. Madame Berthereau was embroidering near the window.

Greatly astonished by Geneviève's return, and particularly by the presence of Marc, the grandmother dropped her knitting, and, without even telling them to sit down, waited for them to speak. When Marc had acquainted her with the position, the offer made to him, his decision to accept it, and his desire to inform her of it in a deferential way, she gave a sudden start, then shrugged her shoulders.

'But it is madness, my boy,' said she; 'you won't keep the appointment a month.'

'Why not?'

'Why? Because you are not the schoolmaster we require. You are well aware of the good spirit of the district, where religion is securing such splendid triumphs. And with your revolutionary ideas your position would be untenable, you would soon be at war with the whole population.'

'Well, I should be at war. Unfortunately one has to fight in order to be victorious.'

Thereupon the old lady became angry: 'Don't speak foolishly!' she exclaimed. 'There seems to be no end to your pride and rebellion against religion! But you are only a grain of sand, my poor boy, and I really pity you when I see you imagining yourself strong enough to conquer in a battle in which both Heaven and man will annihilate you!'

'It is not I who am strong, it is reason, it is truth.'

'Yes, I know.... But it is of no consequence! Just listen to me! I will not have you here as schoolmaster. I am anxious for my tranquillity and honourability. It would be too much grief and shame for me to see our Geneviève here, in Maillebois, as the wife of a man denying both God and country, and scandalising all pious souls by his actions. It is madness, I tell you! You will immediately refuse.'

Madame Berthereau, sorely grieved by this sudden dispute, lowered her head over her embroidery in order that she might not have to intervene. Geneviève remained erect, but had become very pale, while little Louise, whose hand she still held, felt so frightened that she hid her face in the folds of her mother's skirt. But Marc was determined to remain calm, and without even raising his voice he answered:

'No, I cannot refuse. I have come to a decision, and I merely desired to inform you of it.'

At this Madame Duparque, although she was scarcely able to move, by reason of her attack of gout, lost all self-control. As a rule nobody dared to resist her, and she was exasperated at now finding herself confronted by such quiet determination. A wave of terrible anger rose within her, and words she would rather have left unspoken rushed from her lips: 'Come! say everything,' she cried; 'confess it, you are only coming here in order that you may busy yourself on the spot with that abominable Simon case! Yes! you are on the side of those ignoble Jews; you still think of stirring up all that filth, and pouncing upon some innocent to send him yonder, in the place of the vile assassin who was so justly condemned! And that innocent, you are still stubbornly seeking him among the worthiest of God's servants! Is that not so? Confess it! Why don't you confess it?'

Marc could not help smiling; for he fully understood that the real cause of all the anger with which he was assailed was indeed the Simon case, the dread lest he should take it in hand again, and at last discover the real culprit. He could divine that behind Madame Duparque there stood her confessor, Father Crabot, and that the Jesuits and their allies, in order to prevent him from carrying on a campaign at Maillebois, were determined to tolerate there no schoolmaster who was not virtually in their hands.

'Why, certainly,' he answered in his quiet way, 'I am still convinced of my comrade Simon's innocence, and I shall do everything I can to demonstrate it.'

Madame Duparque in her rage jerked herself first towards Madame Berthereau and then towards Geneviève. 'You hear him, and you say nothing! Our name will be brought into that campaign of ignominy. Our daughter will be seen in the camp of the enemies of society and religion!... Come, come, you who are her mother ought to tell her that such a thing is out of question, that she must prevent such infamy for the honour of herself and that of all of us.'

The old lady's last words were addressed to Madame Berthereau, who, utterly scared by the quarrel, had now let her embroidery fall from her hands. For a moment she remained silent, for it cost her an effort to emerge from the gloomy self-effacement in which she usually lived. At last, making up her mind, she said: 'Your grandmother is right, my girl. Your duty requires that you should not tolerate actions in which you would have your share of responsibility before God. Your husband will listen to you if he loves you. Indeed, you are the only one who can speak to his heart. Your father never went against my desires in matters of conscience.'

Geneviève turned towards Marc, at the same time pressing little Louise to her side. She was stirred to the depths of her being: all her girlhood at the Convent of the Visitation, all her pious training and education, seemed to revive, filling her with vertigo. And yet she repeated what she had already said to her husband: 'Marc is the only good judge; he will do what he deems to be his duty.'

Despite her ailing leg, Madame Duparque had managed to struggle to her feet. 'Is that your answer?' she cried wrathfully. 'You, whom we brought up in a Christian manner--you who were well beloved by God--you already deny Him, and live religionless, like some beast of the fields? And you choose Satan without making even an effort to overcome him? Ah, well, your husband is only the more guilty, and he shall be punished for that also; you will be punished both of you, and God's curse shall extend even to your child!'

She stretched forth her arms, and stood there in such a threatening posture that little Louise, who was terror-stricken, began to sob. Marc quickly caught up the child and pressed her to his heart, while she, as if eager for his protection, flung her arms around his neck. And Geneviève likewise drew near and leant against the shoulder of the man to whom she had given her life.

'Be gone! be gone! all three of you!' cried Madame Duparque. 'Go to your folly and your pride, they will work your ruin! You hear me, Geneviève: there shall be no more intercourse between us until you come back here in all humility. For you will come back some day; you belonged to God too long for it to be otherwise; besides, I shall pray to Him so well that He will know how to win you back entirely.... But now be gone, be gone, I will have nothing more to do with you!'

Torn by anguish, her eyes full of tears, Geneviève looked at her distracted mother, who was weeping silently. So heartrending was the scene that the young woman again seemed to hesitate; but Marc gently took her hand and led her away. Madame Duparque had already sunk into her arm-chair, and the little house relapsed into its frigid gloom and dismal silence.

On the following Thursday Marc repaired to Beaumont to inform Salvan that he accepted his offer. And early in May he received the appointment, quitted Jonville, and installed himself at Maillebois as head-master of the Boys' Elementary School.