Chapter 3

During the year which followed, a year full of anxiety, uneasiness, and contention, the Church made a supreme effort to regain her power. Never had her position been more critical, more threatened, than during that desperate battle, by which the duration of her empire might be prolonged for a century, or perhaps two centuries, should she win it. In order to do so it was necessary she should continue to educate and train the youth of France, retain her sway over children and women, and avail herself of the ignorance of the humble in such wise as to mould them and make them all error, credulity, and submissiveness, even as she needed them to be in order to reign. The day when she might be forbidden to teach, when her schools would be closed, and disappear, would prove for her the beginning of the end, when she would be annihilated amidst a new and free people, which would have grown up outside the pale of her falsehoods, cultivating an ideal of reason and humanity. And the hour was a grave one. That Simon affair, with the expected return and triumph of the innocent prisoner, might deal a most terrible blow to the Congregational schools by glorifying the secular ones. Meantime Father Crabot, who wished to save Judge Gragnon, was so compromised himself that he had disappeared from society and hidden himself, pale and trembling, in his lonely cell. Father Philibin, who had been consigned to an Italian convent, was spending the remainder of his days in penitence, unless indeed he were already dead. Brother Fulgence, removed by his superiors in punishment for the discredit which had fallen on his school, a third of whose pupils had already quitted it, was said to have fallen dangerously ill in the distant department whither he had been sent. Finally, Brother Gorgias had fled, fearing that he might be arrested, and feeling that his principals were forsaking him, willing to sacrifice him as an expiatory victim. And this flight had increased the anxiety of the defenders of the Church, who lived only with the thought of fighting a last and merciless battle when the Simon affair should come before the Rozan Assize Court.

Marc also, while lamenting Simon's ill health, which delayed his return to France, was preparing for that same battle, fully realising its decisive importance. Almost every Thursday, sometimes with David, sometimes alone, he repaired to Beaumont, calling first on Delbos, to whom he made suggestions, and whom he questioned about the slightest incidents of the week. And afterwards he went to see Salvan, who kept him informed of the state of public opinion, every fluctuation of which set all classes in the town agog. In this wise, then, one Thursday, Marc paid a visit to the Training College, and on quitting it went down the Avenue des Jaffres, where, close to the cathedral of St. Maxence, he was upset by a most unexpected meeting.

On one of the deserted sidewalks of the avenue, at a spot where scarcely anybody was ever seen after four o'clock, he perceived Genevi�ve seated on a bench, and looking very downcast, weary, and lonely in the cold shadow falling from the cathedral, whose proximity encouraged the moss to grow on the trunks of the old elms.

For a moment Marc remained motionless, quite thunderstruck. He had met his wife in Maillebois at long intervals, but invariably in the company of Madame Duparque; and on those occasions she had passed through the streets with absent-minded eyes, on her way, no doubt, to some devotional exercise. This time, however, they found themselves face to face, in perfect solitude, parted by none. Genevi�ve had seen him, and was looking at him with an expression in which he fancied he could detect great suffering, and an unacknowledged craving for help. Thus he went forward, and even ventured to seat himself on the same bench, though at some little distance from her, for fear lest he should frighten her and drive her away.

Deep silence reigned. It was June, and the sun, descending towards the horizon in a vast stretch of limpid sky, transpierced the surrounding foliage with slender golden darts; while little wandering zephyrs already began to cool the warm afternoon atmosphere. And Marc still looked at his wife, saying nothing, but feeling deeply moved as he noticed that she had grown thinner and paler, as if after a serious illness. Her face, crowned by splendid fair hair, and with large eyes which once had been all passion and gaiety, had not only become emaciated, but had acquired an expression of ardent anxiety, the torment of a parching thirst, which nothing could assuage. Her eyelids quivered, and two tears, which she vainly tried to force back, coursed down her cheeks. Then Marc began to speak—in such a way that it seemed as if he had quitted her only the previous day, such indeed was his desire to reassure her.

'Is our little Cl�ment well?' he asked.

She did not answer immediately, for she feared, no doubt, that she might reveal the emotion which was choking her. The little boy, who had lately completed his fourth year, was no longer at Dherbecourt. Having removed him from his nurse, Genevi�ve now kept him with her in spite of all her grandmother's scoldings.

'He is quite well,' she said at last in a slightly tremulous voice, though on her side also she strove to affect a kind of indifferent quietude.

'And our Louise,' Marc resumed, 'are you satisfied with her?'

'Yes: she does not comply with my desires; you have remained the master of her mind; but she is well behaved, she studies, and I do not complain of her.'

Silence fell again, embarrassment once more stayed their tongues. That allusion to their daughter's first Communion, and the terrible quarrel which had parted them, had been sufficient. Yet the virulence of that quarrel was necessarily abating day by day, the girl herself having assumed all responsibility by her quiet resolve to await her twentieth year before making any formal confession of religious faith. In her gentle way she had exhausted her mother's resolution; and indeed a gesture of lassitude had escaped the latter when speaking of her, as if she had referred to some long-desired happiness, all hope of which had fled. A few moments went by, and then Marc gently ventured to put another question to her: 'And you, my friend, you have been so ill: how are you now?'

She shrugged her shoulders in a hopeless way, and was again obliged to force back her tears. 'I? Oh, I have long ceased to know how I am! But no matter, I resign myself to live since God gives me the strength to do so.'

So great was Marc's distress, so deeply was his whole being stirred by a quiver of loving compassion at the sight of such great suffering, that a cry of intense anxiety sprang from his lips: 'Genevi�ve, my Genevi�ve, what ails you? what is your torment? Tell me! Ah, if I could only console you, and cure you!'

Thus speaking, he came nearer to her on the bench, near enough indeed to touch the folds of her gown, but she hastily drew back. 'No, no, we have nothing more in common,' she exclaimed. 'You can no longer do anything for me, my friend, for we belong to different worlds.... Ah! if I were to tell you! But of what use would it be? You would not understand me!'

Nevertheless, she went on speaking; and in short and feverish sentences, never noticing that she was confessing herself, she told him of her torture, her daily increasing anguish, for she had reached one of those distressful hours when the heart instinctively opens and overflows. She related how, unknown to Madame Duparque, she had escaped that afternoon from Maillebois, in order to speak with a famous missionary, Father Athanase, whose pious counsels were at that time revolutionising the pious folk of Beaumont. The missionary was merely sojourning there for a short time, but it was said that he had already worked some marvellous cures—a blessing, a prayer, from his lips having restored angelic calmness to the unappeasable souls of women who were racked by their yearning for Jesus. And Genevi�ve had just left the neighbouring cathedral, where for two hours she had remained in prayer, after confessing to that holy man her unquenchable thirst for divine happiness. But he had merely absolved her for what he called excess of pride and human passion, and by way of penitence had told her to occupy her mind with humble duties, such as the care of the poor and the sick. In vain afterwards had she striven to humble, annihilate herself, in the darkest, the loneliest chapel of St. Maxence; she had not found peace, she had not satisfied her hunger; she still glowed with the same craving—a return for the gift of her whole being to the Deity, that gift which she had tendered again and again, though never once had it brought real peace and happiness to her flesh and her heart.

As Marc listened to what she said, he began to suspect the truth, and whatever might be his sadness at seeing his Genevi�ve so wretched, a quiver of hope arose within him. Plainly enough, neither Abb� Quandieu nor even Father Th�odose had satisfied the intense need of love that existed in her nature. She had known love, and she must still love the man, the husband, whom she had quitted, and who adored her. Mere mystical delights had left her unsatisfied and irritated. She was now but the proud, stubborn daughter of Catholicism, who turns desperately to harsher and more frantic religious practices, as to stronger stupefacients, in order to numb the bitterness and rebellion induced by increasing disillusion. Everything pointed to it: the revival of motherliness in her nature, for she had taken little Cl�ment back, and busied herself with him, and she even found some consolation in Louise, who exercised a gentle healing influence over her, leading her back a little more each day towards the father, the husband. Then, also, there were her dissensions with her terrible grandmother, and her dawning dislike for the little house on the Place des Capucins, where she at last felt she could no longer live, for its coldness, silence, and gloom were deathly. And, after failing with Abb� Quandieu and Father Th�odose, her sufferings had led her to make a supreme attempt with that powerful missionary, to whom she had transferred her faith, that miracle-working confessor, whom she had hastened to consult in secret for fear lest she might be prevented, and who, by way of relief, had only been able to prescribe practices which, in the circumstances, were childish.

'But, my Genevi�ve,' Marc cried again, carried away, losing all thought of prudence, 'if you are thus beset, thus tortured, it is because you lack our home! You are too unhappy: come back, come back, I entreat you!'

Her pride bristled up, however, and she answered: 'No, no, I shall never go back to you. I am not unhappy: it is untrue. I am punished for having loved you, for having been part of you, for having had a share in your crime. Grandmother does right to remind me of it when I am so weak as to complain. I expiate your sin, God strikes me to punish you, and it is your poison which burns me beyond hope of relief.'

'But, my poor wife, all that is monstrous. They are driving you mad! If it is true that I set a new harvest in you, it is precisely on that harvest that I rely to ensure our happiness some day. Yes, we became so blended one with the other that we can never be wholly parted. And you will end by returning to me: our children will bring you back. The pretended poison which your foolish grandmother talks about is our love itself; it is working in your heart, and it will bring you back.'

'Never!... God would strike us down, both of us,' she retorted. 'You drove me from our home by your blasphemy. If you had really loved me, you would not have taken my daughter from me, by refusing to let her make her first Communion. How can I return to a home of impiety where it would not even be allowable for me to pray? Ah! how wretched I am; nobody, nobody loves me, and heaven itself will not open!'

She burst into sobs. Filled with despair by that frightful cry of distress Marc felt that it would be useless and cruel to torture her further. The hour for reunion had not yet come. Silence fell between them once more, while in the distance, on the Avenue des Jaffres, the cries of some children at play rose into the limpid evening atmosphere.

During their impassioned converse they had at last drawn nearer to each other on the lonely bench; and now, seated side by side, they seemed to be reflecting, their glances wandering away amid the golden dust of the sunset. At last Marc spoke again, as if finishing his thoughts aloud: 'I do not think, my friend, that you gave for a moment any credit to the abominable charges with which certain people wished to besmirch me � propos of my brotherly intercourse with Mademoiselle Mazeline.'

'Oh! no,' Genevi�ve answered quickly, 'I know you, and I know her. Do not imagine that I have become so foolish as to believe all that has been said to me.'

Then with some slight embarrassment she continued: 'It is the same with me. Some people, I know it, have set me among the flock which Father Th�odose is said to have turned into a kind of cour galante. In the first place I do not admit that anything of the kind exists. Father Th�odose is, perhaps, rather too proud of his person, but I believe his faith to be sincere. Besides, I should have known how to defend myself—you do not doubt it, I hope?'

In spite of his sorrow Marc could not help smiling slightly. Genevi�ve's evident embarrassment indicated that there had been some audacity on the part of the Capuchin, and that she had checked it. Assuming this to be the case Marc felt the better able to understand why she was so perturbed and embittered.

'I certainly do not doubt it,' he responded. 'I know you, as you know me, and I am aware that you are incapable of wrong-doing. I have no anxiety respecting Father Th�odose on your account, whatever another husband of my acquaintance may have to say.... Yet all the same I regret that you were so badly advised as to quit worthy Abb� Quandieu for that handsome monk.'

A fugitive blush which appeared on Genevi�ve's cheeks while her husband was speaking told him that he had guessed aright. It was not without a profound knowledge of woman in her earlier years, when an amorosa may exist within the penitent, that Father Crabot had advised Madame Duparque to remove her daughter from the charge of old Abb� Quandieu and place her in that of handsome Father Th�odose. The Catholic doctors are well aware that love alone can kill love, and that a woman who loves apart from Christ never wholly belongs to Christ. The return of Genevi�ve to her husband and her sin was fatal unless she should cease to love, or rather unless she should love elsewhere. But, as it happened, Father Th�odose was not expert in analysing human nature, he had blundered with respect to the passionate yet loyal penitent confided to his hands, and had thus precipitated the crisis, provoking repugnance and rebellion in that distracted, suffering woman, who, without as yet returning to sober reason, saw the glorious, mystical stage-scenery of the religion of her childhood collapse around her.

Well pleased with the symptoms which he fancied he could detect, Marc asked somewhat maliciously: 'And so Father Th�odose is no longer your confessor?'

Genevi�ve turned her clear eyes upon him, and answered plainly: 'No, Father Th�odose does not suit me, and I have gone back to Abb� Quandieu, who, as grandmother rightly says, lacks warmth, but who quiets me at times, for he is very kind.'

For a moment she seemed to ponder. Then, in an undertone, she allowed another avowal to cross her lips: 'All the same, the dear man does not know how greatly he has increased the torment in which I live by what he said to me about that abominable affair——'

She stopped short, and Marc, guessing the truth, becoming quite impassioned now that this subject was broached, continued: 'The Simon affair, eh? Abb� Quandieu believes Simon to be innocent, does he not?'

Genevi�ve had cast her eyes towards the ground. For a moment she remained silent; then said, very faintly: 'Yes, he believes in his innocence; he told me so with great mystery in the choir of his church, at the foot of the altar, before our Lord who heard him.'

'And you yourself, Genevi�ve, tell me, do you now believe in Simon's innocence?'

'No, I do not, I cannot. You must remember that I should never have left you had I believed him innocent, for his innocence would have meant the guilt of the defenders of God. You, by defending him, charged God with error and falsehood.'

Marc well remembered the circumstances. He again saw his wife bring him the news of the revision, growing exasperated at the sight of his delight, exclaiming that there was no truth or justice outside heaven, and at last fleeing from the house where her faith was outraged. And now that she seemed to him to be shaken he desired more ardently than ever to convince her of the truth, for he felt that he would win her back as soon as with the triumph of truth her mind should awaken to the necessity of justice.

'But once more, Genevi�ve, my Genevi�ve, it is impossible that you, who are so upright and so sincere, whose mind is so clear when the superstitions of your childhood do not cloud it—it is impossible that you should believe such gross falsehoods. Inform yourself, read the documents.'

'But I am fully informed, I assure you, my friend; I have read everything.'

'You have read all the documents which have been published? All the inquiry of the Court of Cassation?'

'Why, yes! I have read everything that has appeared in Le Petit Beaumontais. You know very well that grandmother takes that paper every morning.'

With a violent gesture Marc gave expression to his disgust and indignation. 'Ah well, my darling, you are, indeed, fully informed! The vile print you speak of is a sewer of poison, which disseminates only filth and falsehood. Documents are falsified in it, texts are mutilated, and the poor credulous minds of the poor and the lowly are gorged with stupid fables.[1]... You are simply poisoned like many other worthy folk.'

[1] This is exactly what happened in the Dreyfus case. If, apart from all those who, hating Dreyfus as a Jew, were resolved a priori to regard him as guilty whatever might be the evidence, there are still millions of Frenchmen who honestly retain a belief in his culpability, this is because scores of French newspapers—those owned or patronised by the Nationalist party and the Roman Catholic Church—deliberately falsified and mutilated documents and evidence, serving to their readers only such particulars as tended to indicate the prisoner's guilt. It is hardly too much to say that half of France is still ignorant of the real facts of the Dreyfus case. We are often told that the press has much power for good: never was its power for evil more strikingly exemplified than in that lamentable affair, from the effects of which France is still suffering.—Trans.

She herself, no doubt, was conscious that the folly and impudence of Le Petit Beaumontais were excessive, for again she cast down her eyes, and looked distressed.

'Listen!' Marc resumed. 'Let me send you the complete verbatim report of the Court's inquiry, with the documents annexed to it; and promise me that you will read everything attentively and straightforwardly.'

But at this suggestion she vivaciously raised her head: 'No, no; send me nothing. I do not wish it.'

'Why?'

'Because it is useless. There is no need for me to read anything.'

He looked at her, again feeling discouraged and grieved.

'Say rather that you won't read.'

'Well, yes, if you prefer it that way, I won't read anything. As grandmother says: "What is the use of it?" Ought one not always to distrust one's reason?'

'You won't read anything because you fear you might be convinced, because you already doubt the things which, only yesterday, you regarded as certainties.'

She interrupted him with a gesture of fatigue and unconcern, but he continued: 'And the words of Abb� Quandieu pursue you; you ask yourself with terror how a holy priest can believe in an innocence which, if recognised, would compel you to curse all the years of error with which you have tortured our poor home.'

This time she did not even make a gesture, but it was apparent that she had resolved to listen no further. For a moment her glance remained fixed on the ground. Then she slowly said: 'Do not amuse yourself by increasing my sorrow. Our life has been shattered. It is all over. I should deem myself still more guilty than now if I were to go back to you. And what personal relief could it give you to imagine that I made a mistake, and that I have not found my grandmother's house to be the home of peace and faith in which I thought I was taking refuge? My sufferings would not cure yours.'

This, as Marc felt, was almost a confession—an acknowledgment of her secret regret at having quitted him, and of the anxious doubts into which she had sunk. Once more, therefore, he exclaimed: 'But if you are unhappy, say it! And come back; bring the children with you; the house still awaits you! It would be great joy, great happiness.'

But she stood up and repeated, like one who obstinately remains blind and deaf: 'I am not unhappy. I am being punished, and I will endure my punishment to the end. And if you have any pity for me, remain here; do not try to follow me. Should you meet me again, too, turn your head away, for all is ended, all must be ended, between us.'

Then she went off along the deserted avenue, amid the paling gold of the sunset, her figure quite sombre, tall, and slim; and all that Marc could still see of her beauty was her splendid fair hair, which a last sunbeam irradiated. He obediently refrained from moving, but, hoping for a last glance of farewell, he watched her as she walked away. She did not turn, however; she disappeared from view among the trees, while the evening wind, now rising, passed with a chilling quiver beneath the foliage.

When Marc painfully rose to his feet, he was amazed to see his good friend Salvan standing before him, with a happy smile on his lips. 'Ah! my fine lover, so this is how I catch you giving assignations in lonely corners! I saw you already some time ago, but remained watching, for I did not wish to disturb you.... So this is why you remained with me such a short time when you called at the college this afternoon, Master Slyboots!'

Sadly shaking his head, Marc walked away beside his old friend. 'No, no,' he said, 'we merely met by chance, and my heart is quite lacerated.'

Then he recounted the meeting, and the long conversation from which he had just emerged feeling more convinced than ever that the rupture was definitive. Salvan, who had never consoled himself for having promoted a marriage which, however happy at the outset, was ending so badly, and who recognised that he had acted with great imprudence in wedding free thought to the Church, listened attentively, ceasing to smile, yet looking fairly satisfied.

'But that is not so bad,' he said at last. 'You surely did not expect that our poor Genevi�ve would throw herself at your head, and entreat you to take her back? When a woman leaves her husband to give herself to God, as your wife did, her pride prevents her from acknowledging in that way the distress she now feels at having failed to find the contentment she anticipated. None the less, in my opinion, Genevi�ve is passing through a frightful crisis, which may bring her back to you at any moment.... If truth should enlighten her, she will act at once. She has retained too much sense to be unjust.'

And again becoming gay and animated, Salvan went on: 'I never told you, my friend, of the attempts I made with Madame Duparque of recent years. As they resulted in nothing, there was no occasion for me to vaunt them to you. However, when your wife acted so inconsiderately, when she left you, I thought of giving her a little lecture, for I was an old friend of her father's, and, besides, I had been her own guardian. That circumstance naturally gave me admittance to the dismal little house on the Place des Capucins. But you can have no idea of the ferocious manner in which the terrible old grandmother received me. She would not leave me alone with Genevi�ve for a moment, and she interrupted every conciliatory phrase of mine with imprecations intended to fall on you. Nevertheless, I think I managed to say what I wished to say. True, the poor child was in no fit state to listen to me. When Catholic training revives, the ravages which religious exaltation may cause in a woman's brain are frightful. Genevi�ve, for her part, appeared well-balanced and healthy when you married her; but that unfortunate Simon affair sufficed to shatter all equilibrium. She would not even listen to me; her answers were so wild and foolish as to make one's reason stagger. Briefly, I was beaten. I was not exactly turned out of doors, but, after two subsequent attempts made at long intervals, I lost all hope of introducing a little reasonableness into that abode of insanity, where poor Madame Berthereau, in spite of her sufferings, seemed the only person who retained a little good sense.'

'You see very well that there is no hope,' responded Marc, who remained very gloomy. 'One cannot reclaim people when they so stubbornly persist in refusing to make themselves acquainted with the truth.'

'Why not?' asked Salvan. 'I'm done for, that's true. It would be useless for me to make any fresh attempt; they would stop up their eyes and ears beforehand in order to see and hear nothing. But remember that you have the most powerful of helpers, the best of advocates, the shrewdest of diplomatists, the most skilful of captains, and in fact the most triumphant of conquerors at work in that house!'

He laughed, and, growing quite excited, resumed: 'Yes, yes, your charming Louise, whom I'm very fond of, and whom I regard as a prodigy of good sense and grace. The firm and yet gentle behaviour of that young girl, ever since her twelfth year, has been that of a heroine. I know of no loftier or more touching example. Seldom does one meet with such precocious sense and courage. And she is all deference and affection, even when she refuses to do what her mother desires, by reason of her promise to you respecting her first Communion. Now that she has acquired the right to keep that promise, you should see how prettily, how sedately, she man�uvres to effect the conquest of that house where everybody is against her. Even her grandmother becomes tired of scolding. But her dexterity is most marvellous with her mother, whom she encompasses with an active worship, with all sorts of attentions, as if dealing with some convalescent patient whose physical and moral strength must first of all be restored, in order that she may afterwards return to ordinary life. She seldom speaks to her mother of you, but she accustoms her to live in an atmosphere which is full of you, full of your thoughts and your love. She is there like your other self, never pausing in her endeavours to bring about the return of the wife and mother, by reconnecting the severed bond with her own caressing hands. And if your wife returns to you, my friend, it will be the child who will bring her back, the all-powerful child, whose presence ensures health and peace in one's home.'

Marc listened, feeling deeply moved, and reviving to hope. 'Ah! may it be true,' said he; 'nevertheless my poor Genevi�ve is still very ill.'

'Let your little healer do her work,' Salvan responded: 'the kiss she gives her mother every morning brings life with it.... If Genevi�ve suffers such torture it is because life is struggling within her, and wresting her a little more each day from the deadly crisis in which you nearly lost her. As soon as good Mother Nature triumphs over mystical imbecility, she and your children will be in your arms.... Come, my friend, be brave. It would be hard indeed if, after restoring poor Simon to his family, your own domestic happiness should not be assured by the triumph of truth and justice.'

They shook hands in brotherly fashion, and Marc, who returned to Maillebois somewhat comforted, found himself on the morrow in the thick of the fight again. The flight of Brother Gorgias had had a disastrous effect in the little town, and the great days of the affair were now beginning afresh. There was not a house whose inmates did not quarrel and fight over the possible guilt of that terrible Christian Brother, who, in disappearing from the scene, had impudently written to Le Petit Beaumontais to explain that, as his cowardly superiors had decided to abandon him to his enemies, he was about to place himself in safety, in order that he might be free to defend himself when and how he pleased.

A much more important feature of this letter was, however, a revised statement which Gorgias made in it to account for the presence of the famous copy-slip in the paper gag found near Z�phirin's body. No doubt the complicated story of a forgery, invented by his leaders, who were unwilling even to admit that the copy-slip had come from the Brothers' school, had always been regarded by Gorgias as idiotic. He must have thought it stupid to deny the origin of the slip and the authenticity of the initialling. Although every expert in the world might ascribe that initialling to Simon, it would remain his, Gorgias's, handiwork in the estimation of all honest and sensible folk. However, as his superiors had threatened to abandon him to his own resources if he did not accept their version of the affair, he had resigned himself and relinquished his own. It was to the latter that he now reverted, for since the missing corner bearing the school stamp had been found at Father Philibin's, he regarded his superiors' version as utterly ridiculous. It seemed to him absurd to pretend, as the Congregations did, that Simon had procured a stamp, or had caused one to be made, with the deliberate intention of ruining the Brothers' school. Now, therefore, realising that his supporters were on the point of forsaking and sacrificing him, Gorgias left them of his own accord, and by way of intimidation revealed a part of the truth. His new version, which upset all the credulous readers of Le Petit Beaumontais, was that the copy-slip had really come from the Brothers', and had been initialled by himself, but that Z�phirin had assuredly taken it home with him from the school, even as Victor Milhomme had taken a similar slip, in spite of all prohibitions; and that Simon had thus found it on the table in his victim's room on the night of the abominable crime.

A fortnight after the appearance of this version the newspaper published a fresh letter from Brother Gorgias. He had taken refuge in Italy, he said; but he abstained from supplying his exact address, though he offered to return and give evidence at the approaching trial at Rozan if he received a formal guarantee that his liberty would not be interfered with. In this second letter he still called Simon a loathsome Jew, and declared that he possessed overwhelming proof of his guilt, which proof, however, he would only divulge to the jury at the Assize Court. At the same time this did not prevent him from referring to his superiors, notably Father Crabot, in aggressive and outrageous terms fraught with all the bitter violence of an accomplice once willingly accepted but now cast off and sacrificed. How idiotic, said he, was their story of a forged school stamp! What a wretched falsehood, when the truth might well be told! They were fools and cowards, cowards especially, for had they not acted with the vilest cowardice in abandoning him, Gorgias, the faithful servant of God, after sacrificing both the heroic Father Philibin and the unhappy Brother Fulgence? Of the latter he only spoke in terms of indulgent contempt; Fulgence, said he, had been a sorry individual, unhinged, and full of vanity; and the others, after allowing him all freedom to compromise himself, had got rid of him by sending him to some distant spot under the pretext that he was ill. As for Father Philibin, Gorgias set him on a pinnacle, called him his friend, a hero of dutifulness, one who displayed passive obedience to his chiefs, who on their side employed him for the dirtiest work, and struck him down as soon as it was to their interest to close his mouth. And this hero, who was now suffering untold agony in a convent among the Apennines, was depicted by Gorgias as a martyr of the faith, even as he had been depicted in print, with a palm and a halo, by some of the ardent anti-Simonists.

From this point Gorgias proceeded to glorify himself with extraordinary vehemence, wild and splendid impudence. He became superb; he displayed such a mixture of frankness and falsehood, energy and duplicity, that, if the fates had been propitious, this base rascal might assuredly have become a great man. Even as his superiors were still pleased to admit, he remained a model cleric, full of admirable, exclusive, militant faith, one who assigned to the Church the royalty both of heaven and of earth, and who regarded himself as the Church's soldier, privileged to do everything in her defence. At the head of the Church was the Deity, then came his superiors and himself, and when he had given an account of his actions to his superiors and the Deity, the only thing left for the rest of the world was submission. Moreover, his superiors were of no account when he deemed them to be unworthy. In that case he remained alone in the presence of heaven. Thus, on days of confession, when God had absolved him, he regarded himself as the unique, the one pure man, who owed no account of his actions to anybody, and who was above all human laws. Was not this indeed the essential Catholic doctrine, according to which the ministers of the faith are rightly amenable to the divine authority alone? And was it not only a Father Crabot, full of social cowardice, who could trouble himself about imbecile human justice, and the stupid opinions of the multitude?

In this second letter, moreover, Brother Gorgias admitted, with a serene lack of shame, that he himself occasionally sinned. He then beat his breast, cried aloud that he was but a wolf and a hog, and humbly cast himself in the dust at the feet of God. Having thus made atonement, he became tranquil and continued to serve the Church in all holiness until the clay of creation cast him into sin again, whereupon fresh absolution became necessary. But in any case he was at least a loyal Catholic, he had the courage to confess, and the strength to endure penitence, whereas all those dignitaries of the Church, those Superiors of the Religious Orders, of whom he complained so bitterly, were liars and poltroons, who trembled before the consequences of their transgressions—who, like base hypocrites, concealed them or else cast them upon others in their terror of the judgment of men.

At the outset Brother Gorgias's passionate recriminations had seemed to be prompted merely by his anger at being so brutally abandoned after serving as a docile instrument; but at present veiled threats began to mingle with his reproaches. If he himself had always paid for his transgressions like a good Christian, there were others, he said, who had not done so. Yet some day assuredly they would be forced to make atonement, should they continue to try the patience of heaven, which would well know how to set up an avenger, a justiciary to proclaim the unconfessed, unpunished crimes. In saying this Gorgias was evidently alluding to Father Crabot and the mysterious story of the acquisition of the Countess de Qu�deville's immense fortune—that splendid domain of Valmarie, where the Jesuit College had been subsequently established.

Several confused versions of that story had been current, and certain particulars were now recalled: The old but still beautiful Countess becoming extremely pious, and engaging Father Philibin, then a young man, as tutor to her grandson, Gaston, the last of the Qu�devilles, who was barely nine years old. Next, Father Crabot arriving at the ch�teau and becoming the confessor, the friend, and some even said the lover, of the still beautiful Countess. Finally, the accident, the death of little Gaston, who had been drowned while walking out with his tutor, his death allowing his grandmother to bequeath the family estate and fortune to Father Crabot, through the medium of a clerical banker of Beaumont. And it was also remembered that among little Gaston's playmates there had been a gamekeeper's son, a lad named Georges Plumet, whom the Jesuits of Valmarie subsequently protected and assisted, and who was none other than the present Brother Gorgias.

The latter's violent language and threatening manner recalled all those half-forgotten incidents, and revived the old suspicion that some dark deed might link the gamekeeper's humble son to the powerful clerics who ruled the region. Would that not explain the protection which they had so long given him, the audacious manner in which they had shielded him, and at last even made his cause their own? Doubtless their first impulse had been to save the Church, but a little later they had done their utmost to make that terrible Ignorantine appear innocent; and if they had now sacrificed him, it must be because they deemed it impossible to defend him any longer. Perhaps, too, Brother Gorgias only wished to alarm them in order to wring from them as much money as possible. That he did alarm them was certain; one could detect that they were greatly disturbed by the letters and articles of that dreadful chatterer, who was ever ready to beat his breast and cry his sinfulness and that of others aloud. Moreover, in spite of the seeming abandonment in which he was left, one could divine that he was still protected, powerfully even if secretly; while his sudden intervals of silence, which lasted at times for weeks, plainly indicated that friendly messages and money had been sent to him.

His admissions and his threats quite upset the rank and file of the clerical faction. It was horrible! He profaned the temple, he exposed the secrets of the tabernacle to the unhealthy curiosity of unbelievers! Nevertheless, a good many devout folk remained attached to him, impressed by the uncompromising faith with which he bowed to God alone, and refused to recognise any of the so-called rights of human society. Besides, why should one not accept his version of the affair, his admission that he had really initialled the copy-slip, that it had been carried away by Z�phirin, and utilised by Simon for a diabolical purpose? This version was less ridiculous than that of his superiors: it even supplied an excuse for what Father Philibin had done, for one could picture the latter losing his head, and tearing off the stamped corner of the slip, in a moment of blind zeal for the safety of his holy mother, the Church.

To tell the truth, however, a far greater number of laymen, those who were faithful to Father Crabot, as well as nearly all the priests and other clerics clung stubbornly to the Jesuits' revised version of the incident—that of Simon forging the paraph, and using a false stamp. It was an absurd idea, but the readers of Le Petit Beaumontais became all the more impassioned over it, for the invention of a false stamp added yet another glaring improbability to the affair. Every morning the newspaper repeated imperturbably that material proofs existed of the making of that false stamp, and that the recondemnation of Simon by the Rozan Assize Court could no longer be a matter of doubt for anybody.

The rallying word had been passed round, and all 'right-minded' people made a show of believing that the Brothers' school would triumph as soon as the impious adversaries of the unfortunate Brother Gorgias should be confounded. The school greatly needed such a victory, for, discredited as it was by the semi-confessions and unpleasant discoveries of recent times, it had just lost two more of its pupils. Only the final overthrow of Simon and his return to the galleys could restore its lustre. Until then it was fit that Brother Fulgence's successor should remain patiently in the background, while Father Th�odose, the Superior of the Capuchins,—who also triumphed, even when others were being ruined,—skilfully exploited the situation by urging his devotees to make little periodical offerings, such for instance as two francs a month, to St. Antony of Padua, in order that the saint might exert his influence to keep the good Brothers' school at Maillebois.

However, the most serious incident of the turmoil in the town was supplied by Abb� Quandieu, who had long been regarded as a prudent Simonist. At that time it had been said that Monseigneur Bergerot, the Bishop, was behind him, even as Father Crabot was behind the Capuchins and the Brothers of the Christian Doctrine. As usual, indeed, the Seculars and the Regulars confronted each other, the priests resenting the efforts which were made by the monks to divert all worship and revenue to their own profit. And in this instance, as in fact in all others, the better cause was that of the priests, whose conception of the religion of Christ was more equitable and human than that of the monks. Nevertheless, Monseigneur Bergerot had been defeated, and by his advice Abb� Quandieu had submitted and had done penance by attending an idolatrous ceremony at the Capuchin Chapel.

But all the disastrous disclosures and occurrences of recent times—first Father Philibin shown guilty of perjury and forgery, then Brother Fulgence spirited away after compromising himself, then, too, Brother Gorgias absconding and almost confessing his guilt—had stirred the parish priest of Maillebois to rebellion, and revived his former belief in Simon's innocence. Nevertheless he would probably have remained silent, in a spirit of discipline, if Abb� Cognasse, the priest of Jonville, had not gone out of his way to allude to him in a sermon, saying that an apostate priest, a hireling of the Jews, a traitor to his God and his country, was unhappily at the head of a neighbouring parish. On hearing this, Abb� Quandieu's Christian ardour asserted itself; he could no longer control the grief he felt at seeing 'the dealers of the Temple,' as he called them, betraying the Saviour who was all truth and justice. Thus, in his sermon on the following Sunday, he spoke of certain baleful men who were slaying the Church by their abominable complicity with the perpetrators of the vilest crimes. One may picture the scandal, the agitation, that ensued in the clerical world, particularly as it was asserted that Monseigneur Bergerot was again behind Abb� Quandieu, and was determined this time that fanatical and malignant sectarians should not be allowed to compromise religion any further.

At last, while passion was thus running riot, the new trial began before the Rozan Assize Court. It had been possible to bring Simon back to France, though he was still ailing, imperfectly cured as yet of the exhausting fevers which had delayed his return for nearly a year. During the voyage it had been feared that he would not be put ashore alive. Moreover, for fear of disorder, violence, and outrage, it had been necessary to practise dissimulation with respect to the spot where he would land, and bring him to Rozan at night time by roundabout ways which none suspected. At present he was in prison near the Palace of Justice, having only a street to cross in order to appear before his judges. And pending that event he was closely watched and guarded, defended also, like the important and disquieting personage he had become, one with whose fate that of the whole nation was bound up.

The first person privileged to see him was Rachel his wife, whom that reunion, after so many frightful years, cast into wild emotion. Ah! what an embrace they exchanged! And how great was the grief she displayed after that visit, so thin, so weak had she found him, so aged, too, with his white hair! And he had showed himself so strange, ignorant as he still was of the facts, for the brief communication by which the Court of Cassation had informed him of the approaching revision of his case had given no particulars. It had not surprised him to hear of the revision, he had always felt that it would some day take place; and this conviction, in spite of all his tortures, had lent him the strength to live in order that he might once more see his children and give them back a spotless name. But how dark was the anguish in which he had remained plunged, his mind ever dwelling on the frightful enigma of his condemnation, which he could not unravel! His brother David and Advocate Delbos, who hastened to the prison, ended by acquainting him with the whole monstrous affair, the terrible war which had been waged for years respecting his case, between those perpetual foes, the men of authoritarian views who defended the rotten edifice of the past, and the men of free thought who went towards the future. Then only did Simon understand the truth and come to regard his personal sufferings as mere incidents, whose only importance arose from the fact that they had led to a splendid uprising in the name of justice, which would benefit all mankind. Moreover, he did not willingly speak of his torments; he had suffered less from his companions, the thieves and murderers around him, than from his keepers, those ferocious brutes who were left free to act as they pleased, and who, like disciples of the Marquis de Sade, took a voluptuous delight in torturing and killing with impunity. Had it not been for the strength of resistance which Simon owed to racial heredity, and his cold logical temperament, he would twenty times have provoked his custodians to shoot him dead. And at present he talked of all those things in a quiet way, and evinced a na�ve astonishment on being told of the extraordinary complications of the drama of which he was the victim.

Having secured a citation as a witness, Marc obtained leave of absence, and, a few days before the trial began, he took up his abode at Rozan, where he found David and Delbos already in the thick of the supreme battle. He was surprised by the nervousness and anxious thoughtfulness of David, who was usually so brave and calm. And it seemed to him that Delbos, as a rule so gaily valiant, was likewise uneasy. As a matter of fact it was for the latter a very big affair, in which he risked both his position as an advocate and his increasing popularity as a Socialist leader. If he should win the case he would doubtless end by beating Lemarrois at Beaumont; but unfortunately all sorts of disquieting symptoms were becoming manifest. Indeed Marc himself, after reaching Rozan full of hope, soon began to feel alarmed amid his new surroundings.

Elsewhere, even at Maillebois, the acquittal of Simon appeared certain to everybody possessed of any sense. Father Crabot's clients, in their private converse, did not conceal the fact that they felt their cause to be greatly endangered. The best news also came from Paris, where the Ministers regarded a just d�nouement as certain, lulled into confidence as they were by their agents' reports respecting the Court and the jury. But the atmosphere was very different at Rozan, where an odour of falsehood and treachery pervaded the streets, and found its way into the depths of men's souls. This town, once the capital of a province, and now greatly fallen from its former importance, had retained all its monarchical and religious faith, all the antiquated fanaticism of a past age, which elsewhere had disappeared.[2] Thus it supplied an excellent battle-ground for the Congregations, which absolutely needed a decisive victory if they were to retain their teaching privileges and control the future. And never had Marc more fully realised how deeply Rome was interested in winning that battle; never had he more plainly detected that behind the slightest incidents of that interminable and monstrous affair there was papal Rome, clinging stubbornly to its dream of universal domination—Rome which, at every step over the paving-stones of Rozan, he found at work there, whispering, striving, and conquering.

[2] If proof were wanted to show that by Rozan M. Zola means Rennes, the fanatical ex-capital of Brittany, it would be found in the passage given above.—Trans.

Delbos and David advised him to observe extreme prudence. They themselves were guarded by detectives for fear of some ambush; and he, on the very morrow of his arrival, found shadowy forms hovering around him. Was he not Simon's successor, the secular schoolmaster, the enemy of which the Church must rid itself if it desired to triumph? And the stealthy hatred by which Marc felt himself to be encompassed, the menace of an evil blow in some dark corner, sufficed to show him that the battle had sunk to the very lowest level, and that his adversaries were indeed those men of blind, bigoted violence, who through the ages had tortured, burnt, and murdered their fellow-beings in their mad dream of staying the march of mankind!

That much established, Marc understood the terror weighing on the town, the dismal aspect of its houses, whose shutters remained closed, as if an epidemic were raging. As a rule, there is little animation in Rozan during the summer, and at that moment the town seemed emptier than ever. Pedestrians hastened their steps, glancing anxiously around them as they went their way in the broad sunshine; shopkeepers stood at their windows, inspecting the streets as if they feared some massacre. The selection of the jury particularly upset those trembling folk; there was much melancholy jogging of heads when the names of the chosen jurors were made public. It was evidently considered a disaster to have one among one's relatives.

Churchgoers abounded among the petty rentiers, manufacturers, and tradespeople of that clerical centre, where lack of religion was regarded as a shameful blot, and proved extremely prejudicial to one's pecuniary interests. Frantic was the pressure exercised by mothers and wives, led by all the priests, abb�s, and monks of the six parish churches and the thirty convents, whose bells were always ringing. At Beaumont, in former times, the Church had been obliged to work with some discretion, for it had found itself in the presence of both an old Voltairean bourgeoisie and of revolutionary faubourgs. But there was no need for it to beat about the bush in that sleepy city of Rozan, whose traditions were entirely pious. The workmen's wives went to Mass, the women of the middle class formed all sorts of religious associations; and thus a holy crusade began; none refused to help in defeating Simon. A week before the trial the whole town had become a battlefield; there was not a house that did not witness some combat waged for the good cause. The wretched jurors shut themselves up, no longer daring to go out, for strangers accosted them in the streets, terrified them with evil glances or passing words, in which there lurked a threat to punish them in their pockets or their persons if they did not behave as good Catholics, and re-condemn the dirty Jew.

Marc was rendered yet more anxious by some information he received respecting Counsellor Guybaraud, who was to preside over the Assize Court, and Procureur Pacart, who was to conduct the prosecution. The first had been a pupil of the Valmarie Jesuits, to whom he owed his rapid promotion, and had married a very wealthy and very pious hunchbacked girl, whom he had received from their hands. The latter, an ex-demagogue, had been vaguely compromised in some gambling affair, and, becoming a frantic anti-semite, had rallied to the Church, from which he expected a post in Paris. Marc felt particularly distrustful of Pacart on observing how insidiously the anti-Simonists affected anxiety respecting his attitude, as if indeed they feared some revival of his revolutionary past. While they never ceased praising the lofty conscientiousness of Guybaraud, they spoke of Pacart with all sorts of reservations, in order, no doubt, to enable him to play the heroic part of an honest man, overcome by the force of truth, on the day when he would have to ask the jury for Simon's head. The very circumstance that the clericals went about Rozan dolefully repeating that Pacart was not on their side made Marc distrustful, for information from a good source had acquainted him with the undoubted venality of this man, who was ready for the vilest bargaining in his eager desire to regain a semblance of honour in some high position.

However, the desperate and deadly battle became at Rozan a subterranean one. The affair was not lightly prosecuted in drawing-rooms among the smiles of ladies, as at Beaumont. Nor was there any question of a liberal prelate like Monseigneur Bergerot resisting the Congregations from a dread lest the Church should be submerged and swept away by the rising tide of base superstition. This time the contest was carried on in the darkness in which great social crimes take their course; all that appeared on the surface was some turbid ebullition, a kind of terror sweeping through the streets as through a city stricken with a pestilence. And Marc's anguish arose particularly from that circumstance. Instead of again witnessing the resounding clash of Simonists and anti-Simonists, as at Beaumont, he was confronted by the stealthy preparations for a dark crime, for which a Guybaraud and a Pacart were doubtless the necessary chosen instruments.

Every evening David and Delbos repaired to the large room which Marc had rented in a lonely street, and ardent friends of all classes surrounded them. These formed the little sacred phalanx; each visitor brought some news, contributed suggestions and courage. They were determined that they would not despair. Indeed, after an evening spent together they felt inspirited, ready for fresh encounters. And they were aware that their enemies met in a neighbouring street, at the house of a brother-in-law of Judge Gragnon, who, having been summoned as a witness by the defence, was staying there, receiving all the militant anti-Simonists of the town—a procession of frocks and gowns that slipped into the house as soon as night had fallen. Father Crabot had slept there twice, it was said, and had then returned to Valmarie, where with a great display of humility he had cloistered himself in penitence.

Suspicious characters prowled about that sparsely populated district; the streets were not safe; and, accordingly, when David and Delbos quitted Marc at night, their friends accompanied them home in a band. One night a shot was fired; but the detectives, though always on the watch, could find nobody to arrest. But the favourite weapon of the priests is venomous slander, moral murder, perpetrated in a cowardly fashion in the dark. And Delbos became the chosen victim. On the very day when the trial was to begin, the number of Le Petit Beaumontais which reached Rozan contained an abominable disclosure, full of mendacity, a shamefully travestied story, half a century old, about the advocate's father. The elder Delbos, though of peasant stock, had become a goldsmith, in a small way, in the neighbourhood of the Bishop's residence at Beaumont; and the newspaper charged him with having made away with certain sacred vessels which had been entrusted to him for repair. The truth was that the goldsmith, robbed by a woman whom he was unwilling to denounce, had found himself obliged to pay the value of the stolen goods. There had been no prosecution; the affair had remained obscure; but one had to read that filthy print to realise to what depths of malevolence and ignominy certain men could descend. That painful, forgotten, buried misfortune of the father's was cast in the face of the son with an abundance of spurious particulars, vile imaginings, set forth in language which was all outrage and mire. And the desecrator of the grave, the murderously-minded libeller who wrote those things, had plainly obtained the documents he published from the very hands of Father Crabot, to whom they had been communicated, no doubt, by some priestly archivist. It was hoped that this unexpected bludgeon-blow would strike Delbos full in the heart, assassinate him morally, discredit him as an advocate, annihilate him to such a point that he would have neither the strength to speak nor the authority to gain a hearing in the defence of Simon.

However, the trial began one Monday, a hot day in July. Apart from Gragnon, whom it was intended to confront with Jacquin, the foreman of the first jury, several witnesses had been cited for the defence. Mignot, Mlle. Rouzaire, Daix, Mauraisin, Salvan, S�bastien and Victor Milhomme, Polydor Souquet, the younger Bongards, Doloirs, and Savins were all on the list. Fathers Crabot and Philibin, Brothers Fulgence and Gorgias had also been cited, though it was known that the last three would not appear. On the other side the Procureur de la R�publique had contented himself with recalling the witnesses for the prosecution who had given evidence at the first trial. And the streets of Rozan had at last become animated with witnesses, journalists, and inquisitive folk, arriving in fresh batches by each succeeding train. Already at six o'clock in the morning a crowd assembled near the Palace of Justice eager to catch a glimpse of Simon. But a considerable military force had been set on foot, the street was cleared, and Simon crossed it between two rows of soldiers, set so closely together that none of the onlookers could distinguish his features. It was then eight o'clock. That early hour had been chosen in order to avoid the oppressive heat of the afterpart of the day when one would have stifled in the court-room.

The scene was very different from that presented by the brand new assize-hall of Beaumont, where a profusion of gilding had glittered in the crude light that streamed in by the lofty windows. At Rozan the assizes were held in an ancient feudal castle; the hall was small and low, panelled with old oak, and scarcely lighted by the windows of a few deep bays. One might have thought the place to be one of those dark chapels where the Inquisition pronounced sentence. Only a few ladies could possibly be admitted, and all of them, moreover, wore sombre garb. Most of the seats were occupied by the witnesses, and even the little standing-room usually allowed to the public had to be curtailed. The audience, packed since seven o'clock in that stern and mournful room, preserved a relative silence, through which swept a stealthy quiver. If the eyes of the onlookers remained ardent their gestures were restrained; they had come there for a subterranean execution, a work of suppression which had to be accomplished far from the light, with the least noise possible.

As soon as Marc was seated beside David, who went in with the witnesses, he experienced a feeling of anguish, a stifling sensation, as if the walls were about to crumble and bury them. He had seen all eyes turn in their direction. David, particularly, aroused great curiosity. Then Marc felt moved, for Delbos had just come in, looking pale but resolute amid the evil glances of most of the spectators, who were eager to ascertain if he had been upset by the infamous article which had appeared that morning. However, the advocate, as if arrayed in an armour of valour and contempt, remained for some time standing there, displaying only smiling strength and indifference.

Marc then interested himself in the jurors, scrutinising them as they entered, one by one, anxious as he was to ascertain to what kind of men the great task of reparation was confided. And he perceived the insignificant faces of various petty tradespeople, petty bourgeois, with a chemist, a veterinary surgeon, and two retired captains. On all those faces one found an expression of mournful disquietude, the signs of a desire to hide internal perturbation. The worries which had assailed those men since their names had become known had pursued them to that hall. Several had the wan countenances of devotees, of shaven, canting beadles, while others, red and corpulent, looked as if they had doubled their usual ration of brandy that morning in order to instil a little courage into their paunches. Behind them one could divine the entirety of that old priestly and military city with its convents and its barracks; and one shuddered to think that those men, whose minds and consciences had been deformed, stifled, by their surroundings, should be entrusted with such a work of justice.

But a buzzing spread through the hall, and all at once Marc experienced the most poignant thrill of emotion he had ever known. He had not seen Simon since his return, and now he suddenly perceived him, standing behind Delbos. And terrible was the apparition of that bent and emaciated little man, with ravaged features and bald cranium, on which only a few scanty white locks remained. What! that wreck, that puny remnant of a man was his old comrade, whom he had known so vivacious and refined! If Simon had never possessed any great physical gifts, if his voice had been weak, his gestures inelegant, at least a brazier of youth and faith had glowed within him. And the galleys had only given back that poor, broken, crushed being, a mere shred of humanity, in whom nought of the past subsisted save two flaming eyes, which alone proclaimed the invincible will and courage he preserved. One recognised him only by those eyes; and they, too, explained how he had been able for so many years to resist suffering, for their expression told of the world of fancy, of pure ideality, in which he had always lived. Every glance was turned upon him, but he did not seem conscious of it, such was the power he possessed of isolating himself. He gazed at the assembly in an absent-minded way until at last a smile of infinite tenderness came over his face as he perceived his brother David. Marc, who sat beside the latter, then felt him tremble in every limb.

It was a quarter past eight o'clock when the usher's call rang out, and the Court entered. The assembly arose and then sat down again. Marc, who remembered the violence of the spectators at Beaumont, who from growls had passed to vociferations, was astonished by the heavy quietude preserved by the present onlookers, though he divined that they were swayed by the same passions, and remained mutely eager for slaughter, as if they were lying in ambush in some sombre nook. The sight of the prisoner had scarcely wrung a low murmur from them; and now while the judges took their seats, they relapsed into their attitude of dark expectancy. Again, compared with the rough and jovial Gragnon, the new presiding judge, Guybaraud, surprised one by his perfect courtesy, his unctuous gestures, his insinuating speech. He was a little man, whose manner was all smiles and gentleness, but an odour of the sacristies seemed to emanate from his person, and his grey eyes were as cold and as cutting as steel. Nor was the difference less remarkable between the former Procureur de la R�publique, the brilliant Raoul de La Bissonni�re, and Pacart, the present one, who was very long, slender, and lean, with a yellow, baked face, as if he were consumed by a desire to efface his equivocal past and make a rapid fortune.

After the first formalities, when the jury had been empanelled, an usher called the names of the witnesses, who, one by one, withdrew. Marc, like the others, had to leave the hall. Then, in a leisurely way, President Guybaraud began to interrogate Simon, putting his questions in a tone of voice that suggested the coldness of a blade, handled with deadly skill and precision. That interminable examination, which lingered over the slightest incidents of the old affair, and insisted on the charge which the inquiry of the Court of Cassation had destroyed, proved quite a surprise. Some clearing of the ground, an examination on the questions set by the supreme jurisdiction, was all that had been expected; but it at once became evident that the Assize Court of Rozan did not intend to take any account of the facts established by that jurisdiction, and that the presiding judge meant to avail himself of his discretionary powers to deal with the entire case from the very beginning. Soon, indeed, by the questions which he asked, one understood that nothing of the old indictment had been relinquished. It was again alleged that Simon had returned from Beaumont by rail, that he had reached Maillebois at twenty minutes to eleven o'clock, and that soon afterwards he had committed the crime. At this point, however, the new version of the Jesuits—necessitated by the discovery at Father Philibin's—was interpolated, and the prisoner was accused of having procured a copy-slip, of having caused a false stamp to be made, and of having forged on the slip the initials of Brother Gorgias. Thus that childish story, which Gorgias himself had deemed so idiotic that he had admitted the authenticity of the slip and the paraph, was retained. While nothing was abandoned of the original charges, a gross invention was brought forward in support of them; and everything was again based on the famous report of the experts, Masters Badoche and Trabut, who clung to their original statements in spite of Brother Gorgias's formal admissions. And the Procureur de la R�publique, as if to leave no doubt of his own views, intervened in order to extract precise statements from the prisoner with respect to his denials on the question of the false stamp.

Simon's demeanour during that long examination was regarded as pitiful. Many of his partisans had dreamt of him as a justiciar, armed with the thunderbolts of heaven, and rising like an avenger from the grave into which he had been thrust by iniquitous hands. And as he answered politely in a voice which still quivered feverishly, and with none of the outbursts that had been anticipated, the disappointment was extreme. His enemies once more began to say that he virtually confessed his crime, the ignominy of which they found stamped upon his unprepossessing countenance. Only at one moment did he become excited, display any passionate fervour. This was when the judge spoke to him of the false stamp of which he heard for the first time. It should be added that no proof was supplied respecting that stamp; the prosecution contented itself with relating that an unknown workman had confided to a woman that he had secretly done a curious job for the schoolmaster of Maillebois. Confronted, however, by the sudden violence of Simon, the judge did not insist on the point, particularly as Delbos had risen, prepared to raise an 'incident.' And the public prosecutor merely added that, though they had failed to find the unknown workman, he reserved to himself the right of insisting on the serious probability of the alleged occurrence.

In the evening, when David related what had occurred at that first sitting, Marc, who divined some fresh iniquity, felt a pang at the heart. Assuredly the greatest crime of all was now in preparation. He was not astonished by the calm and unobtrusive bearing of Simon, who was confident in the strength of his innocence, and incapable of an outward show of emotion. bad effect which had been produced; while, from the aggressive coldness of the presiding judge, and the importance the latter gave to the most trivial matters, already elucidated, he derived a disastrous impression, a quasi-certainty that a fresh conviction was impending. On hearing him, David, from whom he thought it wrong to hide his anxiety, could only with difficulty restrain his tears, for he also had quitted the Palace of Justice in despair, full of a dreadful presentiment.

[3] This was a marked characteristic of the unfortunate Captain Dreyfus, whose demeanour at the trial at Rennes produced such an unfavourable impression on sundry foolish English 'special correspondents,' that they veered round and began to regard the prisoner as guilty, quite irrespective of the evidence. As one who has witnessed many criminal trials, who has been a juror and the foreman of a jury, I feel that everything that has been written to my knowledge in English literature respecting the 'proper' demeanour of an innocent man is nonsense and nothing else.—Trans..

However, the following days, which were entirely devoted to the hearing of evidence, brought back some courage and illusion. The former witnesses for the prosecution were first examined, and one again beheld a procession of railway employ�s and octroi officials, who contradicted one another on the question whether Simon, on the night of the crime, had returned to Maillebois by train or on foot. Marc, who wished to follow the case, had asked Delbos to have him called as soon as possible, and this being done he gave evidence respecting the discovery of poor little Z�phirin's body. He was then able to seat himself once more beside David, who still occupied a corner of the small space allotted to the witnesses. And thus Marc was present at the first 'incident' raised by the counsel for the defence, who had retained all his bravery and self-possession in spite of the cruel blow which had lately struck him in the heart.

He rose to demand the attendance of Father Philibin and Brothers Fulgence and Gorgias, who, said he, had been duly cited. But the presiding judge briefly explained that the citations had reached neither Father Philibin nor Brother Gorgias, both of whom, no doubt, were abroad, though their exact whereabouts was not known. As for Brother Fulgence, he was seriously ill, and had sent a medical certificate to that effect. Delbos insisted, however, with respect to Brother Fulgence, and ended by obtaining a promise that he should be visited by a sworn medical man. Then, also, the advocate was unwilling to content himself with a letter in which Father Crabot, while urging his occupations, his confessional duties, as an excuse for absence, declared that he knew nothing whatever of the affair; and, in spite of the acrimonious intervention of the Procureur de la R�publique, Delbos again carried his point—that the Court should insist on the attendance of the Rector of Valmarie. However, this first collision fomented anger, and from that moment conflicts continually arose between the judge and the advocate.

The day's sitting ended amidst an outburst of emotion, occasioned by the unexpected character of the evidence given by assistant-teacher Mignot. Mademoiselle Rouzaire, as bitter and as positive as ever, had just reaffirmed that, at about twenty minutes to eleven o'clock, she had heard the footsteps and the voice of Simon coming in and speaking with Z�phirin—which evidence had weighed so heavily on the prisoner at the previous trial—when Mignot, following her at the bar, retracted the whole of his former statements in a tone of wondrous frankness and emotion. He had heard nothing; he was now convinced of Simon's innocence, and adduced the weightiest reasons. Mademoiselle Rouzaire was then recalled, and there came a dramatic confrontation, in which the schoolmistress ended by losing ground, becoming embarrassed in her estimate of the hour, and finding nothing to answer when Mignot pointed out that it was impossible to hear from her room anything that took place in little Z�phirin's. Marc was recalled to confirm Mignot's demonstration, and at the bar he found himself for a moment beside Inspector Mauraisin, who, being asked for his opinion respecting the prisoner and the witnesses, endeavoured to get out of his difficulty by indulging in extravagant praise of Mademoiselle Rouzaire's merits, while saying nothing particular against Mignot or Marc, or even Simon, at a loss as he was to tell what turn the case might take.

The next two sittings of the Court proved even better for the defence. The question of hearing a part of the evidence in camera, which had impassioned people at the first trial, was not even put, for the presiding judge did not dare to raise it. It was in public that he interrogated Simon's former pupils, boys at the time of the crime but now grown men, for the most part married. Fernand Bongard, Auguste and Charles Doloir, Achille and Philippe Savin came in succession to relate the little they remembered, and their statements were favourable to the prisoner rather than the reverse. Thus ended the abominable legend built up by the help of the former proceedings in camera, the legend of horrible charges with which, it had been said, one could not possibly soil the ears of an audience composed partially of women.

However, the sensational evidence of the sitting was that given by S�bastien and Victor Milhomme. In accents of emotion S�bastien, now two and twenty years of age, explained the falsehood of his childhood, the alarm of his mother, the suppression of the truth, which he and she had expiated after prolonged torture. And he stated the facts such as they really were, how he had seen a copy-slip in the hands of his cousin Victor, how that slip had disappeared, how it had been found again, and given up when his mother, grief-stricken beside his bed of sickness, had deemed herself punished for her bad action. As for Victor, when his turn came to testify, in order to please his mother, who did not wish to compromise the stationery business any further, he feigned total forgetfulness, the obtuseness of a big fellow who had no memory. No doubt he must have brought the copy-slip from the Brothers' school, as it had been found, but he knew nothing, he could say nothing further.

Finally, another of the Brothers' former pupils, Polydor Souquet, now a servant in a Beaumont convent, appeared at the bar, and was questioned very pressingly by Delbos respecting the manner in which Brother Gorgias had escorted him home on the night of the crime, the incidents which had occurred on the road, the words that had been exchanged, and the hour. But all that Delbos could extract from Polydor were some evasive answers, and malicious glances promptly tempered by an affectation of stupidity. How could one remember after so many years? the witness asked. The excuse was too convenient, and the Procureur de la R�publique began to show signs of anxious impatience, while the onlookers, though they failed to understand why the advocate insisted so much with an apparently insignificant witness, felt as it were a quiver of the truth passing through the atmosphere—the truth suspected, but once more taking flight.

People were stirred again at the next sitting of the Court, though it began with the interminable demonstrations of the experts, Masters Badoche and Trabut, who, disregarding even the admissions of Brother Gorgias himself, obstinately refused to recognise his initials, an F and a G, in the incriminated paraph, in which they alone recognised those of Simon, an E and an S interlaced, but, it was true, illegible. For more than three hours these men piled argument upon argument, demonstration on demonstration, calmly persevering in their lunacy. And the marvel was that the presiding judge allowed them to go on, and listened to them with manifest complacency, while the Procureur made a show of taking notes, and asked the experts for precise information on certain points, as if the prosecution still adopted their system. In presence of this mise-en-sc�ne, even reasonable people in the hall began to hesitate. And, after all, why not? For in matters of handwriting one could never tell.

But at the close of the sitting an incident, which did not last ten minutes, upset everybody. Clad in black from head to foot, ex-investigating Magistrate Daix, who had been cited by the defence, appeared at the bar. He was scarcely fifty-six years old, but he looked seventy; thin and bent, his hair quite white, his face so emaciated that little of it, save the slender, blade-like nose, seemed to remain. He had lately lost his wife, and people talked of the torturing life which that ugly, coquettish, ambitious woman had led him in her despair that nothing ever raised them from their narrow circumstances, not even the condemnation of that Jew Simon, on which she had insisted and from which she had hoped to derive so much. And now that his wife was no longer beside him, Daix, timid and anxious, painstaking in his profession, an honest man at heart, had come there to relieve his conscience, distracted as he was by the deeds which had been wrung from his weakness, his craving to have peace at home. He did not positively speak of all those things, he did not even admit that after his investigations he had felt that the only possible decision was an order to stay further proceedings. But he allowed Delbos to question him, and when his present opinion was asked, he replied plainly that the inquiry of the Court of Cassation had destroyed his work, the original indictment, and that for his own part he now regarded Simon as innocent. Then he withdrew amidst the silent stupefaction of the onlookers. The apparition of that man in mourning garb, the admissions made by him in slow and sorrowful accents, had stirred every heart.

That evening, in Marc's large room, where Simon's friends met after every sitting of the Court in order to discuss matters, Delbos and David expressed keen satisfaction, a conviction that success was almost certain now, so great, apparently, was the impression which Daix's evidence had produced on the jury. Nevertheless, Marc remained anxious. He told the others of certain rumours which were circulating concerning the stealthy doings of ex-President Gragnon, who had been carrying on a subterranean campaign ever since his arrival at Rozan. Marc was aware that, even as the friends of the defence met in his own room, in like way mysterious meetings took place every night at Gragnon's in an adjoining street. And there the partisans of the prosecution certainly decided on the line they would pursue on the morrow, invented the answers which it would be best to give, planned the incidents which they felt ought to be raised, in particular preparing the evidence in accordance with the result of the day's sitting. For instance, whenever that sitting was regarded as unfavourable to the prosecution, one might be sure that there would be some surprise detrimental to the prisoner, at the outset of the sitting on the morrow. Moreover, Father Crabot had been again seen slipping into Gragnon's house. Several people also declared that they had seen young Polydor Souquet leaving it. And others alleged that at a very late hour they had met in the street a lady and a gentleman who looked extremely like Mademoiselle Rouzaire and Inspector Mauraisin. But the worst was some mysterious work, which centred round those jurors who were notoriously on the side of the Church, and of which Marc obtained an inkling, though his informant could not give him full particulars. Gragnon did not commit such a blunder as to ask those men to call at his house, nor did he, indeed, address himself to them personally; but he made others call on them, and show them, so it was said, an irrefutable proof of Simon's guilt, a terrible document, which the most serious reasons prevented him from making public, though he was resolved to employ it, all the same, should the defence drive him to extremities. And this information made Marc feel anxious, for he scented some fresh abomination in it. Thus, on the evening of the day when Daix had dealt the prosecution such a severe blow, he predicted to his friends some deed of retaliation on the enemy's part, some sample of the thunder which Gragnon, according to his own account, had in his pocket.

The following sitting of the Court was, indeed, one of the gravest and most exciting. Jacquin, the foreman of the first jury, in his turn came forward to relieve his conscience. In simple language he related how President Gragnon, on being summoned by the jurors, who had wished to consult him respecting the penalty attaching to their verdict, had entered their room carrying a letter, and looking very much disturbed. And he had shown them that letter, which bore Simon's signature, followed by a postscriptum and a paraph, which last was identical with the one on the copy-slip tendered as evidence. Several jurymen, who had hesitated previously, then declared themselves convinced of the prisoner's guilt. He, Jacquin, had retained no further doubts; and for the peace of his conscience he had been well pleased at thus acquiring certainty. At that time he had not known that such a communication was illegal. It was only later that he had discovered such to be the case, and had experienced great distress of mind until, at last, the postscriptum and the paraph being recognised as forgeries, he had resolved, like a good Christian, to make amends for his involuntary error. A shudder of awe sped through those who heard him, when in his quiet way he added a last detail: He had heard the very voice of Jesus telling him to speak out, one evening when, tortured by remorse, he was kneeling in a dim chapel of St. Maxence.

Then Gragnon was summoned to the bar, and at first tried the effect of the rough frankness which he had so often assumed in his browbeating judicial days. He was still fat, though his fears had made him pale; and, striving to hide his prolonged anguish beneath the impudence of a bon vivant, he pretended that he no longer remembered petty details. And well—yes, he believed he had gone into the jurors' room carrying the letter which he had just received. He had been upset by it, and had shown it to the others in a moment of emotion, scarcely realising the nature of his action, and being only desirous of establishing the truth. He had never regretted that communication, so fully was he convinced of the authenticity of the postscript and the paraph. In his opinion the assertion that they were forgeries remained to be proved. Then, as he formally charged Jacquin with having read the letter aloud to the other jurors, and of having commented on it, the ex-foreman was recalled, and a sharp dispute ensued. At last Gragnon convicted the architect of some error or forgetfulness respecting the perusal of the letter; and thereupon he triumphed while the spectators began to hiss the honest witness, who from that moment was suspected of having sold himself to the Jews.

In vain did Delbos repeatedly intervene, striving to exasperate Gragnon and unmask him, by forcing him to an explosion, the production of the famous document which it was said would clench everything. The ex-judge, who retained all his self-possession, and who was satisfied with having escaped immediate danger by casting a doubt on his adversary's veracity, relapsed into evasive answers. It was noticed, however, that one of the jurors caused a question to be put to him—a question which nobody understood, but which was whether he did not possess some knowledge of another document bearing on the authenticity of the copy-slip. Gragnon answered enigmatically, that he abided by his previous declarations, and was unwilling to enter into other matters, however certain they might be. And thus that sitting of the Court, which, at the outset, had seemed likely to ruin the prosecution, ended to its advantage. In Marc's room in the evening, Simon's friends again began to despair.

The examination of the witnesses dragged on during a few more sittings. The doctor appointed to visit Brother Fulgence had returned with a report that the Brother's condition was very serious, and that it was impossible to bring him to Rozan. In like manner Father Crabot avoided the embarrassment of attendance by feigning a sudden accident—a severe sprain. In vain did Delbos make an application for his evidence to be taken by commission. President Guybaraud, who at the outset had shown himself so phlegmatic, now sabred everybody and everything in his eagerness to bring the case to an end. He treated Simon harshly, as if, indeed, he were already a condemned man; being emboldened to this course by the singular calmness of the prisoner, who still listened to the witnesses with curiosity and stupefaction, as if the extraordinary adventures of somebody else were being recounted to him. Only on two or three occasions did some extremely mendacious testimony prompt him to a little rebellion; for the most part he contented himself with smiling and shrugging his shoulders.

At last Pacart, the Procureur de la R�publique, addressed the Court. Tall and thin, he was addicted to long, nervous gestures, and affected an unadorned, mathematically precise kind of eloquence. In presence of the plainly-worded judgment of the Court of Cassation, his task was not easy. But his tactics were very simple, he took no account of that judgment, he did not once allude to the long inquiry which had ended in a decision to send the affair for trial by another Assize Court. He quietly reverted to the old indictment, based himself on the report of the experts, and accepted the revised account of the copy-slip, holding that the school-stamp as well as the initialling had been forged. He even spoke of that stamp in a positive way, as if he held a proof that it had been forged but could not produce it. As for Brother Gorgias, he regarded him simply as an unfortunate man, perhaps mentally unhinged, assuredly in need, and of a passionate nature—one who, after proving an undisciplined and compromising son of the Church, had quitted it and sold himself to the Jews. And Pacart concluded by asking the jurors to put an end to this affair, which was so disastrous for the peace of the country, by saying once more on which side the culprit really was, whether among the Anarchists and the Cosmopolites—who sought to destroy all belief in God and country—or among the men upholding faith, respect, and tradition, to whom, for ages past, France had owed her grandeur.

Then Delbos spoke during two sittings. Eager and nervous, endowed with passionate eloquence, he also dealt with the affair from the very beginning. But he did so in order to destroy the allegations in the old indictment, with the help of the arguments supplied by the Court of Cassation's inquiry. Not one of those allegations was worth anything. It was proved that Simon had returned home on foot on the night of the crime; that he had reached Maillebois at twenty minutes to twelve o'clock, an hour after the crime had been committed. Again, there was proof that the copy-slip had been stamped at the Brothers' school and initialled by Brother Gorgias, whose admissions on the subject were not even necessary, for counter experts, in a memorable report addressed to the Court of Cassation, had destroyed the extraordinary farrago of Masters Badoche and Trabut. Then Delbos turned to the new story of the forged stamp. No proof of this had been supplied. Nevertheless, he insisted on the subject; for he divined that some supreme abomination lurked beneath all that stealthy man�uvring compounded of mere allegation and reticence. A sick workman, it was said, had told a woman a vague story about a stamp which he had made for the Maillebois schoolmaster. Where was that woman? Who was she? What was her calling? As nobody would or could reply, he (Delbos) had a right to conclude that this story was one of those absurd lies such as Le Petit Beaumontais was in the habit of retailing. However, if he was able to picture the whole crime as it must have taken place—Brother Gorgias returning after he had escorted Polydor home, pausing before Z�phirin's open window, finally entering the room, and at last succumbing to his ungovernable passions—he admitted that there was a gap in his narrative. Where had Gorgias found the copy-slip? For the rascal was right when he jeeringly inquired if schoolmasters usually walked about in the evening with copy-slips in their pockets. Undoubtedly the number of Le Petit Beaumontais had been in the pocket of his own cassock, whence he had taken it in order to gag his victim. And the slip must have been there also. But how had that happened? Delbos suspected the truth, and if he had questioned Polydor Souquet so pressingly it was in order to extract it from him. He had failed in that endeavour, the witness having met him with an assumption of hypocritical stupidity. But, after all, what did that obscure point matter? Was not Gorgias's guilt absolutely manifest? His alleged alibi was based solely on a series of false statements. Everything proved his guilt—his flight, his semi-confessions, the criminal efforts made to save him, and the dispersal of his accomplices—Father Philibin hiding himself in some Italian convent; Brother Fulgence seeking refuge at a distance, and shielding himself with a diplomatic illness; and Father Crabot withdrawing to his cell, where Providence had visited him with a very salutary sprain. Was it not also in order to save Gorgias that President Gragnon had illegally communicated a forgery to the first jurors, as had been proved by the evidence of architect Jacquin? Amidst the accumulation of crimes, that one alone ought to have sufficed to open the eyes of the most prejudiced. And Delbos ended by depicting the frightful sufferings experienced by Simon, the fifteen years of transportation which he had endured amidst the most cruel physical and moral tortures, while ever stubbornly raising his cry of innocence. The advocate added that, like the Procureur de la R�publique, he also desired to have the affair ended, but ended by an act of justice which would redound to the honour of France; for if the innocent man should be struck down again, the shame of France would be indescribable, and a future full of incalculable evils would lie before her.

There was no reply from the prosecution, the case was closed, and the jury at once withdrew to its retiring-room.[4] It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, and for more than an hour the spectators remained waiting, silent and anxious, in no wise resembling the audience at Beaumont, which had been so tumultuous and violent. The hall was very hot, and the atmosphere seemed as heavy as lead. There was little conversation, though occasionally the Simonists and the anti-Simonists glanced askance at one another. One might have fancied oneself in some funeral chamber where the life or death of a nation, the whole dolorous question of its future, was being decided. At last the jury reappeared, the judges came in, and amidst lugubrious silence the foreman arose: He was a little grey, lean man, a goldsmith, enjoying the custom of the local clergy. His shrill voice was distinctly heard. On the question of guilt the verdict was 'Yes,' by a majority; while 'extenuating circumstances' were unanimously granted. At Beaumont the jury had been unanimous with respect to guilt, and only a small majority had favoured the admission of extenuating circumstances. And now, after expediting the formalities, President Guybaraud hastily pronounced a sentence of ten years' solitary confinement. That done, he withdrew, and Pacart, the Procureur de la R�publique, followed him, after bowing to the jury as if to thank them.

[4] At French criminal trials the judges no longer sum up the evidence before the verdict is given. That privilege was taken from them by a special law several years ago, in consequence of their scandalous abuse of it.—Trans.

Marc, meantime, had glanced at Simon, on whose face he only detected a kind of faint smile, a painful contraction of the lips. Delbos, beside himself, was clenching his fists. David, whose emotion was too intense, had not returned into Court, but was awaiting the decision outside. The thunderbolt had fallen, and Marc felt a deadly chill in every vein. It was a frigid horror: the supreme iniquity, in which just minds had refused to believe, the crime of crimes, which had seemed impossible a few hours earlier, which reason had rejected, had suddenly become a monstrous reality. And there were no ferocious cries of joy, there was no onslaught like that of cannibals rushing to a feast of blood, as at Beaumont. Though the hall was full of rabid anti-Simonists, the frightful silence continued, such was the horror which froze one and all to their very bones. Only a long shudder, a stifled groan, sped through the throng. And they went out without a word, without a push, in a dark stream like some funeral assembly choking with emotion, stricken with fear. And outside Marc found David sobbing.

So the Church was victorious—the Brothers' school would revive to life, while the secular school would again become the ante-room of hell, the satanic den where children were corrupted both in mind and body. The desperate and gigantic effort made by the Congregations and by almost all the clergy had again retarded their defeat, which was certain in the future. For years, however, one would again see the young generations stupefied by error, rotted by lies. The forward march of mankind would be hampered afresh until the day when free thought—invincible and still pursuing its course in spite of everything—should at last deliver the people by science, which alone could render it capable of truth and equity.

On the following evening, when Marc returned to Maillebois, exhausted by fatigue and quite heart-broken, he found a letter of three lines awaiting him: 'I have read the whole of the inquiry, I have followed the trial. The most monstrous of crimes has been committed. Simon is innocent.—Genevi�ve.'