Chapter 4

On the morrow, a Thursday, Marc, who had scarcely slept that night, had just risen when he received an early visit from his daughter Louise. She, having heard of his return, had escaped for a moment from her grandmother's house. And, throwing her arms wildly about her father's neck, she exclaimed: 'Oh! father, father, what a deal of sorrow you must have had, and how pleased I am to be able to kiss you!'

A big girl nowadays, Louise was fully acquainted with the Simon affair, and shared all the faith, all the passion for justice displayed by that dearly-loved father, the master whose lofty mind was her guide. Thus her cry was instinct with the revolt and despair into which she had been cast by the monstrous proceedings at Rozan.

But, on thus seeing her before him and feeling her embrace, Marc thought of Genevi�ve's letter, to which his sleeplessness that night had been largely due. 'And your mother,' he asked, 'do you know that she has written to me, and that she is now on our side?'

'Yes, yes, father, I know it. She spoke of it to me.... Ah! if I were to tell you of all the quarrels there were when grandmother saw mamma beginning to read everything, procuring documents which had never been in the house before, and going out every morning to buy the full report of the new trial. Grandmother wanted to burn everything, so mamma shut herself up in her own room and spent all her time there.... And I also read everything; mamma allowed me to do so. Oh! papa, what a dreadful affair—that poor man, that poor innocent, overwhelmed by so many cruel people! If I could, I should love you all the more for having loved and defended him!'

She again threw her arms about her father's neck and kissed him with heartfelt fervour. And he, in spite of his sufferings, began to smile as if some delicious balm had somewhat calmed the smarting of his wounds. And while he smiled he pictured his wife and his daughter reading together, learning the truth, and at last returning to him. 'Her letter, her dear letter,' he said in an undertone, 'what consolation and hope it gave me! Will not joy return after so many misfortunes?'

Then he anxiously questioned Louise: 'So your mother spoke to you of me? Does she understand, does she regret our torments? I always felt that she would come back to me when she knew the truth.'

But the girl prettily raised a finger to her lips. She, in her turn, was smiling. 'Oh! papa,' she said, 'don't try to make me say what I can't say yet. I should be telling a falsehood if I spoke positively. Our affairs are in a good way, that is all.... Remain patient a little longer, remain confident in your daughter, who tries to be as reasonable and affectionate as you are.'

Then she gave him some bad news about Madame Berthereau. For several years the latter had been suffering from a heart complaint, which recent events seemed to have suddenly aggravated. Madame Duparque's fits of anger, the outbursts with which she made the dark, dismal little house shake at all hours of the day, proved very prejudicial to the sick woman, for they brought on shuddering and stifling fits, which she could hardly overcome. At present, in order to escape those nervous frights, she no longer went down into the little sitting-room, but remained on a couch in her bed-chamber, gazing from morn till night at the deserted Place des Capucins, with those poor, melancholy eyes of hers, in which one read such keen regret for the joys she had lost so long ago.

'Oh! we don't amuse ourselves at all now,' Louise continued. 'Mamma remains in her room, grandmamma Berthereau in hers, and grandmamma Duparque goes up and down, bangs the doors, and quarrels with P�lagie when she finds nobody to scold.... But I don't complain, for I shut myself up as well, and work. Mamma has agreed to it, you know; I shall go up for admission to the training school in six months' time, and I hope to get in.'

Just at that moment, S�bastien Milhomme, who was free that day, arrived from Beaumont, all anxiety to embrace his former master, of whose return he had heard. And almost immediately afterwards came Joseph and Sarah, who, on behalf of their mother and the Lehmanns, whom the reconviction of Simon had overwhelmed, wished to thank Marc for his heroic if vain efforts. The brother and sister related what a thunderbolt had fallen on the wretched shop in the Rue du Trou on the previous evening, when David had telegraphed the frightful tidings. Madame Simon had preferred to await them there with her parents and her children, such great hostility had she encountered in that clerical town of Rozan, where, moreover, her modest means did not allow her to live. And the mournful house was again in tears, acquainted only with the iniquitous verdict and ignorant of what might now happen, all decision as to the future being postponed until the return of David, who, for the time, had remained near his brother.

The eyes of Joseph and Sarah were still red and swollen, for they had spent a tearful, feverish night without a moment's quiet rest; and as, while speaking of their father, they again began to sob, S�bastien, carried away by his feelings, kissed his good friend Sarah, while Louise, taking hold of Joseph's hands, and likewise shedding tears, na�vely sought to console him somewhat by speaking of her great affection for him. She was seventeen and he twenty. S�bastien was a year or two older, and Sarah was eighteen. Marc felt moved as he saw those young folk there before him, quivering with youth, intelligence, and kindliness. And a thought, which had occurred to him and brought him a delightful hope already in the days when he had seen them playing as children, now returned. Might they not, indeed, be predestined consorts, such as would produce the happy harvest of the future, who would bring broader hearts and more liberal minds to the great work of to-morrow?

But although his daughter's visit gave Marc no little comfort for the time, he became very downcast on the ensuing days, so distressful was the spectacle which his poor poisoned and dishonoured country now presented. The crime of crimes had been committed, and France did not rise against it! During the long struggle for revision Marc had already failed to recognise in her the generous, magnanimous, liberating, and justice-dealing country to which he had dedicated such lofty and passionate love. But never had he thought it possible that she would sink to that base level, and become a deaf, harsh, sleepy, and cowardly France, making her bed in shame and iniquity!

How many years and generations would be needed to arouse her from that abominable somnolence? For a moment Marc despaired; he deemed his country lost; it was as if he could hear F�rou's maledictions arising from the grave: 'France doomed, completely rotted by the priests, poisoned by a filthy press, sunk in such a morass of ignorance and credulity that never would one be able to extricate her.' On the morrow of the monstrous verdict of Rozan he had still imagined an awakening to be possible, he had awaited a rising of upright consciences and healthy minds; but none had stirred, the bravest seemed to hide themselves away in their corners, and the supreme ignominy took its course, thanks to the universal imbecility and cowardice.

As he went about Maillebois, Marc caught sight of Darras, who now pulled a very long face, though he was simply in despair at the mayoralty again escaping him, owing to the triumph of the clerical party. Then, on meeting Fernand Bongard, the Doloirs and the Savins, his former pupils, Marc felt greatly distressed, for he now realised, decisively, that he had been able to impart to them little if any social equity and civic courage. Fernand shrugged his shoulders, bent on knowing nothing. The Doloirs had again begun to doubt Simon's innocence; while as for the twin Savins, if they remained convinced of it, they argued that they could not effect a revolution by themselves, and that, after all, one Jew more or less was a matter of no importance. Terror reigned, people hurried home, resolved to compromise themselves no further. Things were even worse at Beaumont, whither Marc repaired to see if he could not arouse some influential people and persuade them to attempt a last effort to have the infamous verdict set aside. Lemarrois, to whom he thus ventured to apply, seemed to take him for a madman; and discarding his usual courteous kindliness, he plainly, almost roughly, told him that the affair was ended, and that any attempt to revise it would be insane, for the country was utterly sick and weary of the whole business. It had become most hurtful as a basis for political action, and if the clerical reactionaries were allowed an opportunity to exploit it any further, the Republic would certainly be undone at the approaching elections. The elections indeed! That was again the great argument. The only policy was to bury the supreme iniquity in even deeper silence than after the first trial. There was no need of any understanding to that effect. The deputies, the senators, the prefect, the officials, all sank instinctively into perfect silence, in the dread they felt at the thought of the twice condemned but innocent man. And once again former Republicans and Voltaireans like Lemarrois drew yet nearer to the Church, whose help they thought they might require to resist the rising tide of Socialism. Lemarrois, personally, had been pleased to see his adversary Delbos defeated at Rozan, and in resorting to a cowardly policy of silence he was largely influenced by a desire to let Simon's compromised champions drown themselves. Amid that general d�b�cle only Marcilly retained his amiable smile. He had already held the portfolio of Public Instruction in a Radical ministry, and felt certain of securing it again, some day, in a Moderate one. And so convinced was he now of the irresistible power of his suppleness and his freely-bestowed hand-shakes that, alone amongst those to whom Marc applied, he gave him a cordial greeting; and, without making any express promise, allowed him to hope for everything should he (Marcilly) return to power.

For the moment the Congregations became triumphant. What a relief it was to think that Father Crabot, his accomplices and his creatures, were saved! Ex-presiding Judge Gragnon gave a grand dinner, followed by a reception, to which flocked all the members of the judicial world, with many functionaries and even university men. They smiled and shook hands, well pleased at finding themselves alive after incurring such serious danger. Every morning Le Petit Beaumontais celebrated the victory of the valiant soldiers of God and the country. Then, all at once, it became silent, in compliance no doubt with some hint received from exalted spheres. The fact was that amid all the stir of victory everybody began to detect moral defeat. Fear of the morrow revived, and it was deemed prudent to divert people's minds.

Moreover, the Rozan jurors had now made revelations; it was known that they had convicted Simon merely by a majority of seven to five, and that on quitting the court they had unanimously signed a recommendation for pardon. They could not have confessed more plainly the mortal embarrassment in which they had been placed, the cruel necessity of confirming the former verdict of Beaumont, even though they retained little doubt of the prisoner's innocence. And the extraordinary course taken by that jury, which, in the most contradictory way, at one moment condemned Simon and at another absolved him, tended to make his innocence manifest to everybody. A pardon was felt to be so necessary and so inevitable that nobody was surprised when one was signed a few days later. Le Petit Beaumontais thought fit to insult the dirty Jew a last time, but even the managers of that unprincipled rag heaved a sigh of relief, glad to be at last delivered from the abominable part they had played for so many years.

David was beset by a final anguish, a frightful struggle of conscience, in connection with that pardon. His brother's strength was quite spent, fever consumed him, he was so exhausted, both physically and morally, that, doubtless, he would merely return to prison to die there. And, on the other hand, a weeping wife and children awaited him, still hoping that they might save him by dint of care and love. Nevertheless, David at first rejected the idea of a pardon, and, before everything else, wished to consult Marc, Delbos, and the other valiant defenders of the innocent prisoner; for he well understood that, even if the pardon would not deprive Simon of the right of some day establishing his innocence, it would rob the others of their most powerful means of prosecuting that cause of justice to which they had given their lives. But, however grieved they might be, all bowed to the suggestion of a pardon, and David then accepted it. At the same time it was felt by Marc and Delbos that the Congregations had good reason to be triumphant, for, humanly, the Simon affair was ended by that pardon, in consequence of which it would no longer stir the multitude to a sense of equity and generosity.

The question of Simon's future was speedily settled. It was impossible to take him back to Maillebois, where Madame Simon had decided to remain a little longer with her children, Joseph and Sarah, who were awaiting the reopening of the neighbouring training schools. David once more took everything on himself. He had long previously formed his plans, which were to dispose of his sand and gravel pits, and acquire a marble quarry in a lonely valley of the Pyrenees—an excellent affair, which a friend had recommended to him and which he had carefully studied. He meant to remove Simon thither, taking him as a partner, and assuredly the mountain air and the delight of active life would restore his health within six months' time. As soon as the installation should be effected Madame Simon might rejoin her husband, and even the children might end the vacation in their father's company. All this was carried into effect with remarkable precision and despatch. Simon was conjured away from Rozan, which was still in an agitated state, and for a time nobody even suspected that he had been removed. He travelled unrecognised, vanishing with David into that lonely valley, embosomed amid lofty peaks. It only became known by a newspaper article that his family had joined him. From that moment he altogether disappeared, and people even began to forget his existence.

On the very day when the Simon family found itself reunited in that Pyrenean solitude, Marc repaired to the Training College of Beaumont, whither an urgent letter from Salvan had summoned him. And as soon as they had shaken hands they began to talk of the Simons, evoking the sweet and touching scene which was being enacted far away—indeed at the other end of France.

'We must all take it as our reward,' said Salvan. 'If we have not yet managed to make the affair yield the great social lesson and the penalties that attach to it, we have at least brought this happiness to pass, we have restored the poor martyr to his wife and his children.'

'Yes,' said Marc, 'I have been thinking of it ever since this morning. I can picture them all together, smiling, in peace, under the broad blue sky. And, for that poor man so long fastened to his chain, what a delight it must be to be able to walk about freely, inhaling the freshness of the mountain springs, the pure odours of the plants and trees! The dear children, too, and the dear wife, how happy they must feel to see their dream realised, to have him beside them again, to take him about like a big child just recovering from a severe illness, and watch him reviving to health and strength!... You are right, it is our reward—the only one.'

He paused, then added in a lower voice with some of the bitterness of a combatant who laments that his weapon should have been broken in his hand: 'Our r�le is quite over. A pardon was inevitable, no doubt, but it has deprived us of all power of action. We can only wait for the crop of good grain we have sown—that is, if ever it will sprout up in the hard ground where we have scattered it.'

'Oh! it will rise, never fear, my friend,' Salvan exclaimed. 'We must never despair of our poor, great country. It may be deceived, it may deceive itself, but it always returns to truth and reason. Let us rest satisfied with our work, it will bear fruit in the future.' Then, after a pause, he continued in a thoughtful way: 'But I agree with you that our victory will not be immediate. The times are really execrable; never have we passed through a more troublous and threatening period. And, indeed, if I asked you to call to-day, it was in order to talk to you of the present disquieting situation.'

Then he acquainted Marc with what he had learnt. Since the trial at Rozan, all the recognised Simonists, all the brave men who had become compromised in the affair, had found themselves exposed to the vengeance of the Congregations, the hatred of the egotistical and cowardly multitude. Undoubtedly they would be made to pay heavily in their interests and their persons for the crime they had committed by supporting the cause of truth and justice.

'Have you heard that nobody now bows to Delbos at the Palace of Justice?' said Salvan. 'Half the cases confided to him have been withdrawn. Clients regard him as being altogether too compromising. He has to begin his career afresh; and at the next elections he will certainly be defeated again, for the affair has led to disruption even in the Socialist ranks.... For my own part, I shall probably be dismissed——'

'Dismissed? You!' interrupted Marc in accents of surprise and grief.

'Why, yes, my friend. You are not ignorant of the fact that Mauraisin has long coveted my post. He never man�uvred otherwise than in order to dislodge me. His prolonged flirtation with the Church party has been simply a matter of tactics in order to secure its support in the hour of victory. After the inquiry of the Court of Cassation he certainly felt frightened, and began to say that he had always regarded Simon as innocent. But, since Simon was reconvicted, Mauraisin has again been barking with the clerical pack, feeling convinced that Le Barazer will be compelled to dismiss me by the pressure brought to bear on him by all the victorious reactionary forces. It will astonish me very much if I am still here when the new term begins in October.'

Marc again began to express his grief; and, moreover, he refused to believe Salvan. He recalled all the services which the latter had rendered, and set forth the necessity of persevering with the great work of saving France from falsehood and credulity. 'You cannot leave before your task is accomplished,' he added; 'there remains so much for you to do. Although Le Barazer has never spoken out plainly, he has been at heart on our side, and I am sure that he will never be guilty of such a bad action as to dismiss you.'

Salvan smiled somewhat sadly. 'In the first place,' he answered, 'nobody is indispensable; I may disappear, but others will rise to continue the good work we have begun. Mauraisin may take my place, but I am convinced that he will do no great harm, for he will not retain it long, and he will be forced to follow in my footsteps. Some work, you see, when once it has been begun, is accomplished by the very force of human evolution, and remains independent of any particular, individual men.... But one might think by the way you talk that you did not know Le Barazer. We are, personally, of little account in his intricate republican diplomacy. He was on our side, that is certain; he would be with us still if we had won the battle. But our defeat has placed him into the greatest possible embarrassment. He really has but one desire, to save his work, the system of secular and compulsory education of which he was one of the creators. Thus, as the Church has regained power for the moment and threatens his work, he will resign himself to necessary sacrifices and temporise until he is able to speak as a master in his turn. Such is his nature, and we cannot alter him.'

Salvan continued in this strain, enumerating all the influences which were being brought to bear on Le Barazer. Rector Forbes, who was so desirous of quietude and who so greatly feared worries with the minister, had plainly told him that he must satisfy the demands of the opposition deputies. These, at the head of whom Count Hector de Sangleb�uf distinguished himself by his violence, were making every effort to secure the dismissal of all the notorious Simonists belonging to the civil and the educational services. And none of the Republican deputies, not even the radical Lemarrois, moved; indeed, they consented to that hecatomb in order to pacify public opinion, anxious as they were to lose as few electors as possible. At present, also, professors and masters followed the example of Principal Depinvilliers, attending Mass with their wives and daughters every Sunday. Then, at the Lyc�e of Beaumont, the chaplain reigned supreme; religious exercises were becoming compulsory; all pupils who refused attendance were badly noted, harassed and ill-treated until no resource was left them but to comply or quit. Father Crabot made his hand felt at that Lyc�e with the same reactionary authority that he displayed in the management of the College of Valmarie. And the increasing audacity of the Congregations was demonstrated by the fact that the Jesuit professors of Valmarie now openly acknowledged their standing, whereas previously, in order to defeat the laws, they had outwardly passed themselves off as secular priests.

'That is how we stand,' Salvan concluded. 'Thanks to the reconviction of Simon, they speak as masters, and wring whatever they please from the universal cowardice and imbecility.... It is already said that Mademoiselle Rouzaire is to be appointed head-mistress of the chief girls' school in Beaumont. Jauffre, now at Jonville, is also to be appointed here, it seems; for he has threatened to turn against Abb� Cognasse if there should be any further delay in rewarding his services. Finally, Doutrequin, once a Republican, who has rallied to the Church from a deplorable aberration of patriotism, has secured two suburban schools for his sons, who have made Nationalism and Anti-Semitism their chief dogmas, so that we are now once more in a period of acute reaction—the last we shall witness, I hope, pending the day when the country will spit out the poison which is killing it.... And if I am dismissed, my friend—you suspect it, do you not?—you will be dismissed also.'

Marc smiled. He now understood why Salvan had sent for him in all haste. 'So I am condemned?' he said.

'Yes, I am afraid so; and I wished to warn you of it immediately.... Oh! the thing is not settled yet; Le Barazer remains silent, biding his time, as it were, and saying nothing of his intentions. But you can have no idea of the assaults he has to withstand, particularly with respect to yourself. Naturally enough, it is your dismissal that is most urgently demanded. I was talking to you just now of that big simpleton Sangleb�uf, that puppet whose strings are pulled by the old Marchioness de Boise, whom he drives to despair, I hear, so clumsily does he execute the movements which she directs. Well, three times already Sangleb�uf has bounced up to the Pr�fecture to threaten Le Barazer with an interpellation in the Chamber of Deputies if he does not come to an understanding with Prefect Hennebise to annihilate you. You would be already dead, I think, if it had not been for the arrogance of that ultimatum. But it isn't possible for Le Barazer to resist much longer, my poor friend. And you mustn't bear him any malice. Remember all the quiet obstinacy and diplomatic skill with which for many years he supported you. He always found some means of saving you by granting compensations to your adversaries. But now it is all over, I have not even spoken to him about you. All efforts on your behalf would be useless. You must let him act as he pleases. Doubtless he is only delaying his decision in order to devise something ingenious; for he himself does not like to be defeated, and he will never relinquish his efforts on behalf of his work, that system of secular and compulsory education which alone can give us a new France.'

Marc smiled no longer; indeed, he had become very sad. 'It will be a great blow,' he answered. 'I shall leave the best of myself behind me in that school of Maillebois, among those dear lads whom I regard almost as my own children.... Besides, what shall I do if my career is thus brought to an end? I am not competent to take up any other useful work, and how painful it will be to see the work I have been doing interrupted, left unfinished at the very moment when, more than ever, truth has need of sturdy workers.'

But Salvan in his turn bravely smiled, and, taking hold of Marc's hands, said to him: 'Come, don't lose your courage. We shall surely find something to do; we sha'n't remain with our arms crossed.'

Then Marc, feeling comforted, replied: 'You are right! When a man like you is struck, one can follow him into disgrace without thought of shame. The future, at all events, belongs to us.'

A few more days went by. At Maillebois the victorious Congregations were endeavouring to turn the situation to pecuniary account. Great efforts were made to restore the former prosperity of the Brothers' school, several families were won over, and it seemed likely that at the new term the school would gain a dozen fresh pupils. Meantime the Capuchins showed extraordinary audacity. Was it not, after all, the glorious St. Antony of Padua who had managed everything, obtained everything from the benevolence of heaven? Indeed, it could not be denied. It was to him that one owed the reconviction of Simon, thanks to the franc and two-franc pieces which so many pious souls had dropped into the saint's collection-boxes while asking him to bring about the annihilation of the Jew. Thus a fresh miracle had been performed. Never before had the saint's power been manifested in so lofty a manner, and as a natural result offerings poured in from all sides. Moreover, Father Th�odose, encouraged, inspired by this success, conceived a masterly plan to reap another large harvest of money by the saint's aid. He launched an extraordinary financial affair with mortgage bonds on Paradise, each bond being of five francs' value. The district was flooded with circulars and prospectuses explaining the ingenious working of these investments in celestial felicity. Each bond comprised ten coupons of half a franc, representing good works, prayers, and masses payable as interest here below, and redeemable in heaven at the cashier's office of the miracle-working St. Antony. Premiums were also offered in order to attract subscribers. Twenty bonds gave one a right to a coloured statuette of the saint, and a hundred ensured one an annual Mass. Finally, the prospectus explained that the name of St. Antony's Bonds was given to this scrip, because it was the saint who would redeem it a hundredfold in the next world. And the announcement ended with these words: 'Such supernatural guarantees make these bonds absolutely safe. No financial catastrophe can threaten them. Even the destruction of the world, at the end of time, would leave them in force, or rather would at once place the holders in the enjoyment of the full capitalised interest.'[1]

[1] As some readers might think this an invention on M. Zola's part, it is as well to mention that the prospectus referred to was actually issued by a French religious community.—Trans.

The success was enormous. In a few weeks' time thousands of bonds had been sold. Those devotees who were too poor to buy a whole one clubbed together, and then divided the coupons. Credulous and suffering souls eagerly risked their money in this new lottery, whose great prize was to be the realisation of a fondly dreamt-of eternity of happy life. It was certainly rumoured that Monseigneur Bergerot intended to prohibit this impudent speculation which scandalised the more reasonable Catholics; but in the unpleasant position in which the prelate had been placed by the defeat of the Simonists, whom he was accused of having stealthily supported, he was doubtless afraid to do so. Though it greatly distressed him to abandon the Church to the rising tide of superstition, he had found that he could place little reliance on his clergy, and thus he had never had the courage to resist the all-powerful Congregations. Aged as he now was, he had become weaker still, only retaining enough strength to kneel and beg God's forgiveness for thus suffering the merchants to invade the temple. But Abb� Quandieu, the priest of St. Martin's, could not bear that desecration any longer. All his Christian resignation forsook him when the so-called Bonds of St. Antony made their appearance. Such trafficking was too outrageous, and he gave expression in the pulpit to his revolt as a minister of Christ, his grief at beholding the base downfall of that great Christianity which had renewed the world, and which so many illustrious minds had raised to the purest summits of ideality. Then he paid a last visit to his Bishop and friend, Monseigneur Bergerot, and finding him unable to continue the struggle, feeling too that he himself was vanquished and paralysed, he resigned his cure and withdrew to a little house in the outskirts of Maillebois, intending to dwell there on a scanty income, outside that Church whose policy of hatred and whose basely superstitious worship he could no longer serve.

The Capuchins deemed the opportunity favourable for a fresh triumph in celebration of what Father Th�odose styled the flight of their former adversary. By careful man�uvring the Bishop had been induced to appoint a young curate of the arriviste school, a creature of Father Crabot's, to the parish of Maillebois, and the idea was to bear a superb statue of St. Antony, all red and gold, in solemn procession from the Capuchin Chapel to St. Martin's, where it would be set up in great pomp. This would be the crowning consecration of the victory which had been achieved, the conquest of the parish by the Congregation, the monks becoming its sovereign masters, able to disseminate on every side the idolatrous worship, by which they hoped to bleed and abase the community, and turn it into the ignorant flock of the days of servitude. The procession, which took place one warm day in September, with the co-operation of all the clergy of the district, proved magnificent, and was attended by a great concourse of people who repaired to Maillebois from all points of the department. Only the Place des Capucins and a short lane really separated the chapel from the church, but a roundabout line of route was selected; they crossed the Place de la R�publique and marched along the whole high street, in this wise promenading St. Antony from one to the other end of the town. Mayor Philis, surrounded by the clerical majority of the Municipal Council, followed the painted statue, which was borne on a platform draped with red velvet. Although it was holiday time, the whole of the Brothers' school had been mobilised, boys had been specially recruited, dressed, and provided with candles. Behind them came the Daughters of Mary and numerous pious brotherhoods, sisterhoods, and other associations, an interminable string of devotees, to say nothing of all the nuns brought expressly from the Beaumont convents. Only Monseigneur Bergerot was wanting. As it happened he had sent a letter of regret, having fallen ill two days previously.

Never before had Maillebois been possessed by such religious fever. People knelt on the foot pavements, men shed tears, three girls fell to the ground in hysterical fits, and had to be carried to a chemist's shop. In the evening the benediction at St. Martin's amid the pealing of the bells was quite dazzling. And not a doubt remained; surely the town was now redeemed and forgiven; by that grandiose ceremony Providence signified its willingness to wipe out for ever the vile memory of Simon the Jew.

It so happened that Salvan came to Maillebois that day in order to see Madame Berthereau, respecting whom he had received some extremely disquieting news. And he had just quitted the little house in the Place des Capucins when he caught sight of Marc, who, on his way home after a visit to the Lehmanns, had found his progress barred by the interminable procession. They shook hands in silence; then for some time were compelled to remain waiting. When the last of the monks had gone by behind the idol all ablaze with gilding and red paint, they just exchanged a glance and took a few steps in silence.

'I was going to call on you,' said Salvan at last.

Marc fancied that he had brought him news of his dismissal. 'Is it signed then?' he inquired. 'Am I to pack my trunks?'

'No, no, my friend; Le Barazer has given no signs of life as yet. He is preparing something.... But our dismissal is certain, you must take a little patience.' Then, ceasing to jest, he added with an expression of grief: 'The fact is, I heard that Madame Berthereau was at the last stage and I desired to see her.... I have just left her, and her end is certainly very near.'

'Louise came to warn me of it yesterday evening,' Marc replied. 'I should have liked to call at once, as you have done. But Madame Duparque has signified that she will immediately quit the house if I should dare to set foot in it on any pretext. And though Madame Berthereau, as I know, would like to see me, she is afraid to give expression to her desire, for fear of some scandal beside her death-bed.... Ah! my friend, one can never overcome the hatred of a bigot.'

They walked on, again preserving silence. At last Salvan resumed: 'Yes, Madame Duparque keeps good guard, and for a moment I thought that she would not let me go upstairs. At all events she did not quit me; she kept a watch on everything I said, either to the patient or your wife.... She is certainly afraid that something may result from the blow which is about to fall on the house. Yes, Madame Berthereau, her daughter, is about to escape from her by death, and she fears, perhaps, that Genevi�ve, her granddaughter, may also free herself.'

Marc halted, and, giving his friend a keen glance, inquired: 'Did you notice any sign of that?'

'Well, yes; but I did not wish to mention it to you, for it would distress me to give you any false hope.... But it was in connection with that procession, that barefaced idolatry which we witnessed just now. It appears that your wife absolutely refused to attend it. And that is why I found Madame Duparque at home. She, of course, was very desirous of displaying her piety in the front rank of all the devotees, but she feared that if she should absent herself for a single moment, you or some other soul-snatcher might get into the house and rob her of her daughter and granddaughter. So she remained at home, and you can imagine with what cold fury she received me, trying to transpierce me with those eyes of hers, which are like rapiers.'

Marc was becoming excited: 'Ah! so Genevi�ve refused to attend that procession! She understood its hurtfulness, its baseness and folly, then; and she is returning in some degree to the healthy common-sense she used to show?'

'No doubt,' Salvan answered. 'I believe that she felt particularly hurt by those ridiculous mortgage bonds on Paradise.... Ah! what a master-stroke, my friend! Never before was human imbecility exploited to such a degree by religious impudence.'

While conversing the friends had slowly directed their steps towards the railway station, where Salvan intended to take the train in order to return to Beaumont. He did so, and Marc, on quitting him, felt once again full of hope.

As Salvan had indeed suggested, Genevi�ve—in that little house of the Place des Capucins, which had become yet more mournful and frigid now that death hovered over it so threateningly—was assailed by another crisis which was gradually transforming her. At first she had been thunderstruck by the revelation of the truth, the certainty of Simon's innocence, which the perusal of all the documents had brought her—that terrible light whose blaze had revealed to her the infamy of the holy men whom she had hitherto accepted as the directors of her conscience and her heart. All came from that, doubt penetrated into her mind, faith took flight, she could not do otherwise than reflect, examine and judge everything. A feeling of disquietude had already come upon her at the time when she quitted Father Th�odose; and the latter's Bonds of St. Antony, that base attempt to exploit the credulity of the public, had suddenly shown her his venality and disgusted her with him. Moreover, not only did the monk's character decline in her estimation to the lowest level, but the worship he represented—that religion which had cast her into transports of mystical desire likewise lost its semblance of holiness. What! must she accept that unworthy trafficking, that idolatrous superstition, if she desired to remain a practising Catholic, steadfast in her faith? She had long bowed to beliefs and mysteries, even when her natural good sense had covertly protested against them; but there were limits to everything. She could not countenance that flotation of shares in heaven; she refused to walk behind that St. Antony, bedaubed with red and gold and carried about like a guy or an advertisement, to increase the multitude of subscribers. And the revolt of her reason gathered additional strength when she thought of the retirement of Abb� Quandieu, the gentle and paternal confessor, to whom she had returned when the suspicious ardour of Father Th�odose had alarmed her. If such a man as the Abb� felt unable to abide in the Church, such as it had been made by the clerical policy of hatred and domination, was it not certain that all upright souls would henceforth find it difficult to remain in it?

Doubtless, however, Genevi�ve's evolution would not have been so rapid if certain preparatory work had not been already effected in her, slowly and without her knowledge. In order that one might fully understand those first causes, it was necessary to recall the whole of her story. Inheriting much of her father's nature—tender, gay, and amorous—she had fallen in love with Marc, carried away by such ardent passion that, in order to have that modest schoolmaster as her husband, she was willing to dwell with him almost in poverty, in the depths of a lonely village. Weary, too, in her eighteenth year, of the mournful life she had led beside Madame Duparque, the idea of liberty had attracted her; and for a moment it had seemed as if she had cast aside all her pious training, for with her husband she had displayed such youthful enchantment that he had been able to think she was wholly his. Moreover, if any fears lurked within him, he had dismissed them, setting himself to worship her, imagining he would be powerful enough to recast her in his own image, and so carried away by the happiness of the hour that he deferred that moral conquest till some other time.

But her past had revived, and again he had shown weakness, delaying action under the pretext of respecting the freedom of her conscience, and allowing her to return to religious observances. All her childhood then came back, the mystical poison which had not been eliminated from her system asserted itself, and the crisis which fatally assails the souls of women nourished on errors and falsehoods arrived, her case being aggravated by her frequentation of that bigoted and domineering woman, her grandmother. Then a whole series of incidents—the Simon case, the postponement of Louise's first Communion—had precipitated the rupture between husband and wife. In Genevi�ve there glowed a desire for the au-del� of passion, a hope of finding in heaven the divine and boundless bliss promised to her formerly in her girlish days; and her love for Marc had simply become dimmed amid her dream of the ecstasies which the canticles celebrate, an ever loftier and ever deceptive delight. But in vain had others excited her, lied to her, set her against her husband, by promising to raise her to the highest truth, the most perfect felicity. The failure, the defeat she ever encountered, sprang from her abandonment of the only natural and possible human happiness; for never since that time had she been able to content her longings. She had lived, indeed, amid increasing distress without either repose or joy, however stubbornly she might declare that she had found felicity in her deceptive and empty chimeras.

Even now she did not confess in what a void she had ever remained after her long prayers on the old flagstones of chapels, her useless Communions, when she had vainly hoped to feel the flesh and blood of Jesus mingling with her own in a union of eternal rapture. But good Mother Nature each day was winning her back, restoring her a little more to health and human love; while the old poison of mysticism became in an increasing degree eliminated at each successive defeat of religious imposture. Cast for a time into great perturbation, she strove to divert her thoughts, to stupefy herself, by stern and painful religious practices in order that she might not be compelled to understand that her love for Marc had reawakened, that she craved for rest in his embrace, in the one, sole, eternal certainty which makes of husband and wife the emblems of health and happiness.

But quarrels had broken out between Madame Duparque and Genevi�ve, and had grown more and more frequent and bitter. The grandmother felt that her granddaughter was escaping from her. She watched her closely, made her almost a prisoner; but, whenever a dispute arose, Genevi�ve always had the resource of shutting herself up in her own room. There she could dwell upon her thoughts, and she did not answer even when the terrible old woman came up and hammered at the door. In this way she secluded herself on two successive Sundays, refusing to accompany her grandmother to vespers, in spite of both entreaties and threats.

Madame Duparque, now seventy-eight years old, had become a most uncompromising bigot, fashioned in that sense by a long life of absolute servitude to the Church. Reared by a rigid mother, she had found no affection in her husband, whose mind had been set on his business. For nearly five and twenty years they had kept a draper's shop in front of the Cathedral of St. Maxence at Beaumont, a shop whose custom came chiefly from the convents and the parsonages. And it was towards her thirtieth year that Madame Duparque, neglected by her husband and too upright to take a lover, had begun to devote herself more and more to religious observances. She checked her passions, she quieted them amid the ceremonies of the ritual, the smell of the incense, the fervour of the prayers, the mystical assignations she made with the fair-haired Jesus depicted in pious prints. Having never known the transports of love, she found sufficient consolation in the society of priests. And not only did she derive happiness from the unctuous gestures and caressing words of her confessor, but even his occasional rigour, his threats of hell and all its torments, sent a delightful quiver coursing through her veins. In blind belief and strict adherence to the most rigid practices, she found, too, not only satisfaction for her deadened senses, but the support and governance she needed in her weakness as a daughter of the ages. The Church knows it well; it does not conquer woman only by the sensuality of its worship, it makes her its own by brutalising and terrorising her. It treats her as a slave habituated to harsh treatment for centuries, a slave who ends by feeling a bitter delight in her very servitude.

Thus Madame Duparque, broken to obedience from her cradle days, was one of the subjugated daughters of the Church, one of those creatures whom it distrusts, strikes, and disciplines, turning them into docile instruments, which enable it to attack men and conquer them in their turn. When, after losing her husband and liquidating her business, Madame Duparque had installed herself at Maillebois, her one occupation, her one passion had become the practice of that authoritarian piety, by which she strove to remedy the spoiling of her life, and obtain compensation for all the natural joys, all the human forms of happiness, which she had never known. And the roughness with which she tried to impose her narrow, chilling faith upon her granddaughter Genevi�ve was due, in some degree certainly, to the regret she felt at having never experienced the felicity of love, which she would have liked to forbid her grandchild, as if it were indeed some unknown and perchance delightful hell, where she herself would never set foot.

But between the grandmother and the granddaughter there was the doleful Madame Berthereau. She likewise seemed to be only a devotee bent beneath the rule of the Church, which had taken possession of her from the moment of her birth. Never for a single day had she ceased to follow its observances. With loving weakness her husband, Berthereau the freethinker, had accompanied her to Mass. But she had also known his love, the ardent passion with which he had always encompassed her, and the recollection of it possessed her for ever. Though many years had elapsed since his death, she still belonged to him; she lived on that one memory, ending her days in solitude, in the arms of that dear shade. This explained her long spells of silence, the resigned, retiring manner she preserved in the mournful little house to which, as to a convent, she had withdrawn with her daughter Genevi�ve. She had never thought of marrying again; she had become a second Madame Duparque, rigidly and meticulously pious, clad invariably in black, and showing a waxen countenance, a cowed and crushed demeanour under the rough hand which weighed so heavily on the house. At the utmost a faint twinge of bitterness appeared on her tired lips, and a fugitive gleam of rebellion shone in her submissive eyes when at times the memory of her dead husband, awakening within her, filled her amid the frigid empty life of religious observances in which she agonised with bitter regret for all the old happiness of love. And of recent times only the sight of her daughter Genevi�ve's frightful torment, that struggle of a woman for whom priest and husband were contending, had been able to draw her from the shrinking self-surrender of a recluse taking no interest in the cares of worldly life, and lend her enough courage to face her terrible mother.

And now Madame Berthereau was near her death, well pleased, personally, by the prospect of that deliverance. Nevertheless, as her strength ebbed away, day by day, she felt more and more grieved at having to leave Genevi�ve struggling in torture, and at the mercy of Madame Duparque. When she herself was gone, what would become of her poor daughter in that abode of agony, where she had suffered so dreadfully already? To the poor dying woman the thought of going off like that, without doing anything, saying anything that might save her daughter, and help her to recover a little health and happiness, became intolerable. It haunted her, and one evening, when it was still possible for her to speak gently and very slowly, she mustered sufficient courage to satisfy her heart.

It was an evening in September—a mild and rainy one. Night was at hand, and the little room, which, with its few old pieces of walnut furniture, had an aspect of conventual simplicity, was gradually growing dim. As the sick woman could not lie down, for she then at once began to stifle, she remained in a sitting posture, propped up by pillows, on a couch. Although she was only fifty-six, her long sad face, crowned by snowy hair, looked very aged indeed, worn and blanched by the emptiness of her life. Genevi�ve sat near her in an armchair, and Louise had just come upstairs with a cup of milk, the only nourishment which the ailing woman could still take. A heavy silence was lulling the house to sleep, the last clang of the bells of the Capuchin Chapel having just died away in the lifeless atmosphere of the little deserted square.

'My daughter,' at last said Madame Berthereau in accents which came from her lips very faintly and slowly, 'as we are alone, I beg you to listen to me, for I have various things to tell you, and it is quite time I should do so.'

Genevi�ve, surprised, and anxious as to the effect which this supreme effort might have on her mother, wished her to remain silent. But Madame Berthereau made such a resolute gesture that the young woman merely inquired: 'Do you wish to speak to me alone, mother? Would you like Louise to go away?'

For a moment Madame Berthereau preserved silence. She had turned her face towards the girl, who, tall and charming, with a lofty brow and frank eyes, gazed at her in affectionate distress. And the old lady ended by murmuring: 'I prefer Louise to remain. She is seventeen, she also ought to know.... Come and sit here, close beside me, my darling.'

Then, the girl having seated herself on a chair by the side of the couch, Madame Berthereau took hold of her hands. 'I know how sensible and brave you are,' she said, 'and if I have sometimes blamed you, I none the less acknowledge how frank you are.... To-day, do you know, now that I am near my last hour, I believe in nothing save kindness.'

Again she paused for a moment, reflecting, and turning her eyes towards the open window, towards the paling sky, as if she were seeking her long life of dejection and resignation in the farewell gleam of the sun. Then her eyes came back to her daughter, at whom for a while she remained gazing with an expression of indescribable compassion.

'It grieves me extremely, my Genevi�ve, to leave you so unhappy,' she said. 'Ah! do not say no. I sometimes hear you sobbing overhead, at night, when you are unable to sleep. And I can picture your wretchedness, the battle which rends your heart.... For years now you have been suffering, and I have not had even enough bravery to succour you.'

Hot tears gathered suddenly in Genevi�ve's eyes. The evocation of her sufferings at that tragic hour quite upset her. 'Mother, I beg you, do not think of me,' she stammered; 'my only grief will be that of losing you.'

'No, no, my girl; each has to go in turn, satisfied or in despair, according to the life which he or she has chosen. But those who remain behind ought not to persevere obstinately in useless suffering when they may still be happy.' And joining her hands, and raising them with a gesture of ardent entreaty, Madame Berthereau added: 'Oh! my girl, I beg you, do not remain a day longer in this house. Make haste, take your children, and go back to your husband.'

Genevi�ve did not even have time to answer. A tall black form was before her, for Madame Duparque had slipped noiselessly into the room. Always prowling about the house, haunted by an everlasting suspicion of sin, she began to worry herself directly she was at a loss to tell where Genevi�ve and Louise might be. If they had hidden themselves did it not follow that they must be doing something evil? Moreover, the old woman never liked to leave them long with Madame Berthereau for fear lest something forbidden should be said. That evening, therefore, she had crept up the stairs as quietly as possible, with her ears on the alert; and, hearing certain words, she had gently opened the door, thus catching the others in flagrante delicto.

'What is that you say, my daughter?' she demanded, her rasping voice ringing with angry imperiousness.

The sick woman, pale already, became quite ghastly at that sudden intervention, while Genevi�ve and Louise remained thunderstruck, alarmed also as to what might now happen.

'What is that you say, my daughter?' Madame Duparque repeated. 'Are you not aware that God can hear you?'

Madame Berthereau had sunk back on her pillows, closing her eyes as if to collect her courage. She had so greatly hoped that she might be able to speak to Genevi�ve alone, and avoid a battle with her redoubtable mother. All her life long she had avoided any such collision, any such struggle, feeling that she would be beaten in it. But now she had only a few hours left her to be good and brave; and so she opened her eyes, and dared—at last—to speak out.

'May God indeed hear me, mother! I am doing my duty,' she said. 'I have told my daughter to take her children and return to her husband, for she will only find real health and happiness in the home which she quitted so imprudently.'

Madame Duparque, who waved her arms violently, had been minded to interrupt her at the first word she spoke. But awed, perhaps, by the majesty of death, which was already gathering in the room, embarrassed too by the heartfelt cry of that poor enslaved creature, whose reason and whose love were at last freeing themselves from their shackles, the terrible old lady allowed her daughter to finish her sentence. A pause, fraught with infinite anguish, then followed between those four women who were thus gathered together, and who represented four generations of their line.

There was a certain family resemblance between them; they were all tall, they had long faces and somewhat prominent noses. But Madame Duparque, now eight and seventy, and displaying a harsh jaw and rigidly wrinkled cheeks, had grown lean and sallow in the practice of narrow piety; whereas Madame Berthereau, who had reached her fifty-sixth year, showed more flesh and suppleness, in spite of her malady, and still retained on her livid face the gentleness bequeathed by the brief love which she had tasted, and which she had ever mourned. From those two solemn women, dark-haired in their younger days, had sprung Genevi�ve, fair and gay, refined by paternal heredity, loving and lovable, and still very charming at seven and thirty years of age. And Louise, the last, who would soon be in her eighteenth year, was in her turn a brunette, with hair of a deep gilded brown, inherited from her father, Marc, who had also bestowed on her his broad forehead, and his large bright eyes, glowing with passion for truth.

In like way one detected among those four women the progress of moral evolution. First there was the great-grandmother, a serf of the Church, one whose flesh and mind had been absolutely subjugated, who had become a passive instrument of error and domination; next there was the daughter, who had remained a practising and conquered Catholic, but who was disturbed, tortured by her brief experience of human happiness; then came the struggling granddaughter, in whose poor heart and mind Catholicism was fighting its last battle, who was almost rent atwain between the mendacious nothingness of her mystical education, and the living reality of her wifely love and motherly tenderness, who needed, too, all her strength to free herself; and finally there was the great-granddaughter, who was at last freed, who had escaped the clutch which the priest sets upon women and children, and who, all youth and health, had reverted to happy nature, to the glorious beneficence of the sunlight.

But in faint, slow accents Madame Berthereau was repeating: 'Listen, my Genevi�ve! Do not remain here any longer. As soon as I am gone, go away—go as speedily as you can.... My misfortunes began on the day when I lost your father. He adored me. The only hours that I ever really lived were those that I spent beside him; and I have often reproached myself for not having then appreciated them more, for in my stupidity I was ignorant of their value, and I only understood how delightful, how unique they had been, when I came here, a widow, loveless, for ever cut off from the world.... Ah! the icy cold of this house, how often has it made me shiver! Ah! the silence and the gloom in which I have gone on dying for years, not even daring to open a window to inhale a little life, so foolish and so cowardly I was!'

Erect and motionless, Madame Duparque still refrained from interrupting her daughter; but on hearing that cry of dolorous rebellion she could not restrain a gesture of protest. 'I will not prevent you from speaking, my daughter,' she said when the other paused, 'though if you have a confession to make it would be better to send for Father Th�odose.... But since you were not wholly God's, why did you seek refuge in this house? You knew very well that here you would find none but God.'

'I have confessed,' the dying woman answered gently. 'I shall not go off without receiving extreme unction, for I belong to God entirely, I can only belong to Him now.... And even if I suffered so much from the loss of my husband, I never regretted having come here. Where else could I have gone? I had no other refuge. I was too closely linked to religion to attempt to seek other happiness, even for an instant. Thus I have lived the life I was bound to live.... But my daughter, in her turn, is suffering too cruelly, and I will not have her begin my sorry story over again, and fade away in the void in which I have agonised for so many years, for she is free, and she still has a husband who adores her.... You hear me, you hear me, do you not, my daughter?'

With a gesture of tender entreaty, she held out her poor waxen hands, and Genevi�ve fell upon her knees beside her, with big tears rolling down her cheeks, so deeply was she stirred by that extraordinary scene, that poignant awakening of love at the very hour of death.

'Mother, I beg you, mother,' she said, 'do not continue to grieve about my sufferings. You rend my heart by thinking only of me when we are all here, with the one desire to give you a little comfort, whereas you, it seems, wish to go off in despair.'

Increasing excitement had now gained possession of Madame Berthereau. Taking Genevi�ve's head between her hands, she gazed into her eyes and answered, 'No, no, listen to me. There is only one thing that can make me happy before I leave you, and that is a certainty that you will not lead a life of sacrifice and torture as I have done. Give me that last consolation, do not let me go without your promise.... I shall repeat what I have said as long as I have strength to do so. Leave this house of error and death, return to your home, your husband. Give him back his children, love each other with all your strength. Life lies in that, and truth, aye, and happiness also.... I beg you, my girl, promise me, swear to me that you will comply with my last desire.'

Then, as Genevi�ve, utterly upset, choking with sobs, gave her no answer, Madame Berthereau turned towards Louise, who, likewise distracted, was now kneeling at the other side of the couch. 'Help me, my dear granddaughter,' she said, 'I know what your views are. I have noticed your efforts to lead your mother home. You are a little fairy, a very sensible little person, and you have done a great deal to give a little quietness to all four of us.... Your mother must make me a promise, is it not so? Tell her that she will make me very joyful indeed by promising me to be happy.'

Louise had caught hold of the poor woman's hands, and kissing them she stammered: 'Oh! grandmother, grandmother, how good you are, and how I love you!... Mother will remember your last wishes, she will reflect, and act as her heart bids her, you may be sure of it.'

Madame Duparque meanwhile had not for a moment departed from her rigidity. Her eyes alone seemed to be alive in her frigid, wrinkled face. And furious anger blazed in them while she strove to restrain herself from any brutal action. At last she growled huskily: 'Be quiet, all three of you! You are unhappy infidels, rebelling against God, who will punish you with the flames of hell.... Be quiet, I tell you, don't let me hear another word! Am I no longer mistress here? You, my daughter, your illness has impaired your mind, I am willing to grant it. You, my granddaughter, have Satan in you, and I excuse you for having failed as yet to drive him out, in spite of your penitence. And you, my great-granddaughter, I still hope that when I am free to correct you I shall prevent you from going to damnation.... Be quiet, my children, I tell you. If it were not for me you would not exist! It is I who command here, and you would be guilty of yet another mortal sin if you should not obey me!'

Her stature seemed to have increased, and her voice had risen while, with fierce gestures, she thus spoke in the name of her Deity of anger and vengeance. But, in spite of her commands, her daughter, who already felt freed from her domination by the approach of death, was bold enough to continue: 'I have been obeying for more than twenty years, mother, I have preserved silence for more than twenty years; and if my last hour were not at hand, perhaps I should be so cowardly as to obey and keep silent now.... But I have gone through too much. All that has tortured me, all that I have left unsaid would choke me in my grave, and even there the cry I have stifled so long would rise from my lips.... Oh! my daughter, promise me, promise me what I ask!'

Then Madame Duparque, beside herself, exclaimed in a rougher voice: 'Genevi�ve, I, your grandmother, forbid you to speak!'

It was Louise who, seeing that her mother was still sobbing, waging a most frightful battle, with her face close pressed to the blanket spread over the couch, took upon herself to answer in her resolute yet deferential way: 'Grandmother, one must be kind to grandmother who is so ill. Mother also is very ailing, and it is cruel to upset her like this. Is it not right that each should act according to her conscience?'

Thereupon, without giving Madame Duparque time to intervene again, Genevi�ve, whose heart melted, touched as it was by her daughter's courageous gentleness, raised her head, and kissed the dying woman with intense emotion: 'Mother, mother, you may sleep in peace, I will not let you carry away any bitter thought on my account.... Yes, I promise you I will remember your desire, I promise you I will do all that my love for you may advise me to do.... Yes, yes, there is only kindness, there is only love: therein lies the only truth.'

Then, as Madame Berthereau, exhausted, but with a divine smile brightening her face, pressed her daughter to her bosom, Madame Duparque made a last threatening gesture. The twilight had now fallen, and only the pale gleam of the broad, cloudless sky, where the first stars were shining, lighted up the room; while the open window admitted the deep silence that rose from the deserted square, broken only by the laugh of a child. And as everything thus sank into a quiescence through which swept the august breath of coming death, the old woman, who in her obstinacy would neither see nor hear, added these words: 'You belong to me no more, neither daughter, nor granddaughter, nor great-granddaughter. One impelling the other, you are, all three of you, on the road to eternal damnation! Go, go! God casts you off, and I cast you off also!'

Then she departed, shutting the door roughly behind her. In the dim quiet room the mother remained agonising between her daughter and her granddaughter, all three united in the same embrace. And for a long, long while they continued weeping, their tears full of delightful comfort as well as bitter grief.

Two days later Madame Berthereau died, in a very Catholic spirit, after receiving extreme unction, as she had desired. At the church the stern demeanour of Madame Duparque, clad in the deepest mourning, was much remarked. Only Louise accompanied her. Genevi�ve had been obliged to take to her bed again, overcome by such a nervous shock that she seemed no longer able to see or hear. For three days longer she thus remained in bed with her face turned to the wall, unwilling to answer anybody, even her daughter. She must have suffered terribly; distressful moans escaped her, fits of weeping shook her from head to foot. When the grandmother went up to her, obstinately remaining there, lecturing her, and pointing out the necessity of appeasing the divine anger, the attacks became yet more violent, there were convulsions and shrieks. And Louise, who wished her mother to be spared any such aggravation of her torment, in the supreme struggle which was almost rending her asunder, ended by bolting the door, and remaining there as a sentinel, forbidding access to everybody.

On the fourth day came the d�nouement. P�lagie alone managed to force an occasional entry in order to attend to certain work. Sixty years of age, with a sullen face, a large nose, and thin lips, the servant had become not only very thin, almost withered, but also insufferable in manner. Ever mumbling sour words, she actually overruled her terrible mistress, and often turned the work-girls, whom the latter engaged to help her, into the street. Madame Duparque kept her, however, for she was an old retainer, an old instrument who had always been ready at hand. Indeed, her mistress could hardly have lived if she had not had that underling, that serf beside her to extend, as it were, her domination over all around. She employed her as a spy, as the executor of base designs, and in return she herself belonged to her, having to put up with all the bad temper, all the additional worry and dolefulness with which the other filled the house.

On the morning of the fourth day, after the first breakfast, P�lagie, having gone upstairs to fetch the cups and plates, hastened down again, quite scared, and said to her mistress: 'Does madame know what is going on up there? They are packing their trunks!'

'The mother and daughter?'

'Yes, madame. Oh! they are making no secret of it. The girl goes from one room to the other, carrying armfuls of linen.... If madame cares to go up, the door is wide open.'

Frigidly, without answering, Madame Duparque went up. And she indeed found Genevi�ve and Louise actively engaged in packing two trunks, as if for immediate departure, while little Cl�ment, who was scarcely six years old, sat very quietly on a chair, watching the preparations. The mother and daughter just raised their heads when the old lady entered, then went on with their work again.

A moment of silence followed; finally, Madame Duparque, not a muscle of whose face stirred, but who seemed to become yet more frigid and stern, inquired: 'Do you feel better, then, Genevi�ve?'

'Yes, grandmother. I have still some fever, but I shall never get well if I remain shut up here.'

'So you have decided to go elsewhere, I see. Where are you going?'

A quiver came over Genevi�ve, who once more raised her head, showing her eyes, which were still red with weeping: 'I am going where I promised my mother I would go. For four days past the struggle has been killing me.'

Another pause ensued. 'Your promise did not seem to me a formal one; I regarded your words as mere words of consolation,' said Madame Duparque at last. 'So you are going back to that man? You can have very little pride!'

'Pride! Ah, yes, I know, it is by pride that you have kept me here so long.... But I have had plenty of pride. Many a time, though I have wept all night long, I have refused to admit my error.... But now I understand the stupidity of my pride, the wretchedness into which I have sunk is too great.'

'You unhappy creature! Has neither prayer nor penitence been able to rid you of the poison, then? That poison is mastering you again, and it will end by casting you into eternal punishment should you relapse into your abominable sin.'

'What poison are you talking of, grandmother? My husband loves me, and, in spite of everything, I love him still. Is that poison? I have struggled for five years; I wished to give myself entirely to God; why did not God fill the aching void of my being, in which I desired to receive Him alone? Religion has satisfied me neither as to wifely happiness nor as to motherly tenderness, and if I am now going back to that happiness and tenderness, it is because of the downfall of that heaven in which I have found only deception and falsehood.'

'You are blaspheming, my girl, and you will be punished for it by the most cruel sufferings.... If the poison which has tortured you did not come from Satan, it follows that it must have come from God. Faith is forsaking you; you are on the high road to negation, to absolute perdition.'

'That is true; for months now I have believed a little less each day. I did not dare to confess it to myself, but amid all my bitterness of feeling something was slowly destroying the beliefs of my childhood and youth.... How strange it was! All my childhood full of chimeras, all my pious youth had revived within me, with all the fine mysteries and ceremonies of worship, when I first sought refuge here. But when I again endeavoured to plunge into the au del� of the mysteries, when I strove to give myself to Jesus amid the chants and the flowers, those dreams gradually faded, became mere deceptive fancies, in which nought of my being found contentment.... Yes, the poison must have been my training, the errors in which I grew up, which brought me so much suffering when they revived, and of which I shall only be cured when the evil ferment is completely eliminated.... Shall I ever be cured? I hardly know. There is still such strife within me!'

Madame Duparque was restraining herself, for she well understood that violence on her part would seal her rupture with the young woman and the girl, who, with the little boy, seated on his chair, listening attentively without understanding, were all that remained of her race. Thus she was minded to make a last effort, and addressing herself to Louise, she said: 'You, my poor child, are the most to be pitied, and I shudder when I think of the pit of abomination into which you are casting yourself.... If you had made your first Communion all these sorrows would have been spared us. God is punishing us for having failed to overcome your impious resistance. Yet there is still time, and what favours would you not obtain from His infinite mercy if you would only submit, and approach the Holy Table as a humble handmaiden of Jesus!'

But the girl responded gently: 'Why revert to that, grandmother? You know very well what promise I gave my father. I cannot vary in my answer; I will come to a decision when I am twenty; I shall then see if I have faith.'

'But, you unhappy, obstinate child, if you go back to that man, who has wrecked both your mother's life and your own, your decision can be told in advance! You will remain without any belief, any religion at all, like a mere beast of the fields!'

Then, as the daughter and mother deferentially preserved silence, and even resumed their packing in order to curtail a useless and painful discussion, the old lady gave expression to a last desire: 'Well, if you have both resolved to go, at least leave me the little boy—leave me Cl�ment. He will redeem your folly, I will bring him up in the love of God, I will make a holy priest of him, and at least I shall not be alone; there will be two of us to pray that the divine anger may not fall upon you on the terrible Day of Judgment.'

But Genevi�ve had sprung to her feet. 'Leave Cl�ment!' she exclaimed; 'why, it is largely on his account that I am going. I no longer know how to bring him up; I wish to restore him to his father, in order that we may come to an understanding and endeavour to make a man of him.... No, no, I am taking him with me!'

Then Louise, who also stepped forward, added very gently and respectfully: 'Why do you say that you will remain alone, grandmother? We do not wish to forsake you, we will often come to see you, every day if you will allow us. And we will love you well, and try to show you how much we desire to make you happy.'

Madame Duparque could restrain herself no longer. The flood of anger which she had found it so difficult to check flowed over and carried her away with a rush of furious words: 'That's enough! Keep quiet! I will listen to you no longer! But you are quite right, pack your boxes and be off! Be off, all three of you, I cast you out! Go and join that cursed man, that bandit who spat on God and His ministers to endeavour to save that filthy Jew, who has been twice condemned!'

'Simon is innocent!' cried Genevi�ve, in her turn losing all restraint; 'and those who caused him to be condemned are liars and forgers!'

'Yes, yes, I know; it is that affair which has ruined you and is separating us. You imagine the Jew to be innocent; you can no longer believe in God. But your imbecile justice is the negation of divine authority. And for that reason all is quite over between us.... Go, go as quickly as possible with your children! Don't soil this house any longer, don't bring any more thunderbolts upon it! You are the sole cause of its misfortunes.... And, mind, don't set foot here again; I cast you off, I cast you off for ever! When once you have crossed the threshold you need never knock at the door, it will not be opened to you. I have no children left, I am alone in the world, and I will live and die alone!'

As she spoke, the old woman, nearly in her eightieth year, drew up her lofty figure with a fierce energy. Her voice was still strong, her gestures were commanding ones. She cursed, she punished, she exterminated after the fashion of her Deity of wrath and death. And afterwards she descended the stairs with a pitiless tread, and shut herself in her room, waiting there till the last children of her flesh should be gone for ever.

It so happened that Marc, that very same day, received a visit from Salvan, who found him in the large classroom, which was quite bright with the glow of the September sunshine. The vacation would come to an end in another ten days, and, though Marc hourly expected to be informed of his dismissal, he was consulting his books and notes as if preparing for the new school year. However, by Salvan's grave if smiling demeanour, he at once understood the truth.

'This time it's done, is it not?' he exclaimed.

'Mon Dieu, yes, it's done, my friend. Quite a long list of changes, appointments, and promotions, prepared by Le Barazer, has been signed.... Jauffre will leave Jonville and come to Beaumont, which is fine advancement for him. That clerical Chagnat goes from Le Moreux to Dherbecourt, which is scandalous when one remembers what a brute the fellow is.... For my part, I am simply pensioned off to make room for Mauraisin, who triumphs.... And you, my friend——'

'I am dismissed, eh?'

'No, no, you have simply fallen into disgrace. You are sent back to Jonville in the place of Jauffre, and Mignot, your assistant, who is compromised with you, is to take Chagnat's post at Le Moreux.'

Marc raised a cry of happy surprise: 'But I am delighted!'

Salvan, who had come expressly to acquaint him with the news, indulged in a hearty laugh. 'That is Le Barazer's diplomacy, you see! That is what he was preparing, when, according to his habit, he endeavoured to gain time. He has ended by satisfying that terrible Sangleb�uf and all the other reactionaries by appointing Mauraisin to succeed me, and promoting Jauffre and Chagnat. And this has enabled him to retain your services and those of Mignot. Outwardly he seems to blame you, but he does not intend to disown you entirely. Besides, he is leaving Mademoiselle Mazeline here, and in your place is appointing Joulic, one of my best pupils, a man of free and healthy mind. Thus Maillebois, Jonville, and Le Moreux will be henceforth provided with excellent masters, ardent missionaries of the future.... That is the position, and, I tell you once again, nobody can alter Le Barazer; one must take him as he is and feel pleased, even when what he does is only half of what one would like to see.'

'I am delighted,' Marc repeated. 'It was more particularly the prospect of having to quit the profession altogether that grieved me. Thinking of the new term I felt sorrowful all this morning. Where could I have gone, what could I have done? It will certainly pain me to leave the boys here, for I am very fond of them. But my consolation will be to find others yonder, to whom I shall also become attached. And as for the humbleness of the school, what does that matter if I am able to continue my life-work and still sow the seed which alone can yield the harvest of truth and equity? Ah! yes, I shall go back to Jonville right willingly, and with fresh hope.'

Then he strode gaily about the bright, sunshiny classroom as if again taking on himself that teaching mission, the relinquishment of which would have been so hard to bear. And at last, with juvenile ardour and delight, he flung his arms about Salvan and embraced him. At that same moment Mignot, who, also expecting dismissal, had been seeking a situation for some days past, came in, worried at having encountered another refusal on the part of the manager of a neighbouring factory. But when he learnt that he was appointed to Le Moreux, he likewise gave expression to his joy. 'Le Moreux! Le Moreux! a real land of savages!' said he. 'No matter, one will try to civilise them a little. And we sha'n't be separated, the distance is less than three miles. That, you know, is what pleases me most of all!'

But Marc had now calmed down, and, indeed, sorrow was reviving in him, dimming his eyes once more. Silence fell, and the others could feel a quiver pass—the quiver of hope deferred, of a heart-pang which was ever keen. How hard would be the battle that Marc still had before him, how many more tears must he shed before he regained his lost happiness! At that thought he, and the others also, preserved silence; and Salvan, unable to give his friends any further comfort, sank into a sorrowful reverie as he stood gazing through the large sunlit window which faced the square outside.

But all at once he exclaimed: 'Why, are you expecting somebody?'

'Expecting somebody?' rejoined Marc, at a loss to understand.

'Yes, here comes a little hand-cart with some trunks on it.'

At that same moment the door opened, and they turned round. It was Genevi�ve who came in, holding little Cl�ment by the hand, and having Louise also beside her. The surprise and the emotion were so great that at first nobody spoke. Marc was trembling. But Genevi�ve, in a halting voice, began at last: 'My dear Marc, I have brought you back your son. Yes, I give him back to you—he belongs to you—he belongs to us both. Let us try to make a man of him.'

The boy had stretched out his little arms, and the father caught him up wildly, and pressed him to his heart, while the mother, the wife, continued: 'And I have come back to you with him, my good Marc. You told me that I should bring him back, and come back myself.... It was truth that first conquered me; then all that you had set in me germinated, no doubt, and I have no pride left.... And here I am, for I still love you.... I vainly sought other happiness, but only your love exists. Apart from us and our children there is only unreason and wretchedness.... Take me back, my good Marc! I give myself to you as you give yourself to me.'

Thus speaking, she had slowly drawn near to her husband, and she was about to cast her arms around his neck when Louise's gay voice was heard: 'And I, and I, father! I must share in it too, you know. You must not forget me.'

'Yes, indeed, she must share in it, the dear girl!' said Genevi�ve. 'She strove so much to bring about this happiness, she showed such gentleness and skill.'

Then she caught Louise also in her embrace, and kissed both her and Marc, who was already holding Cl�ment to his heart. All four were at last reunited, held in the same bond of flesh and love, having but one heart, one breath between them. And what a quiver of deep humanity, of fruitful and healthy joy now filled that large classroom, which looked so bare and empty, pending the return of the boys for the new term! Big tears welled into the eyes of Salvan and Mignot, whom emotion quite upset.

At last Marc was able to speak, and his whole heart rose to his lips: 'Ah! my dear wife, as you return to me you must at last be cured. I knew it would be so. You turned to more and more rigid religious practices as to stronger and stronger stupefacients for the purpose of sending your nature to sleep; but, in spite of everything, nature was bound to eliminate the poison when at last you again felt that you were a wife and a mother.... Yes, yes, you are right: love has delivered you; you are won from that religion of error and death, from which human society has suffered for eighteen centuries past.'

But Genevi�ve quivered again, becoming anxious and disturbed. 'Ah! no, no, my good Marc, do not say that! Who can tell if I am really cured? Never, perhaps, shall I be cured completely.... Our Louise will be entirely free, but the mark set on me is ineffaceable, I shall always be afraid of relapsing into those mystical dreams.... And if I have come back, it is to seek a refuge in your embrace, and to enable you to complete the work that has begun. Keep me, perfect me, try to prevent anything from ever separating us again!'

They caught each other in a tighter clasp: it was as if they were but one. Even as Genevi�ve had said, was not that the great work which needed to be accomplished—the work of taking woman from the Church, and setting her in her true place as companion and mother, by the side of man? For only the freed woman can free man: her slavery is ours.

But all at once Louise, who a moment previously had disappeared, opened the door again, bringing with her Mademoiselle Mazeline, who entered breathless and smiling. 'Mamma,' said the girl, 'mademoiselle must have a share in our happiness. If you only knew how she has loved me, and how kind and useful she was here!'

Genevi�ve stepped forward and embraced the schoolmistress affectionately. 'I knew it,' she said. 'Thank you, my friend, for all you did for us during our long worries.'

The good woman laughed, with tears in her eyes. 'Oh! don't thank me, my dear. It is I who am grateful to you for all the happiness you give me to-day.'

Salvan and Mignot were also laughing now. More handshakes were exchanged. And as Salvan, amid the babel of voices which burst forth, informed the schoolmistress of the appointments signed the previous day, Genevi�ve raised a cry of joy.

'What! we are going back to Jonville? Is it really true?... Ah! Jonville, that charming, lonely village where we loved each other so well, where we first lived together so happily! What a good omen it is that we are going back there, to begin our life afresh in affection and quietude! Maillebois made me feel nervous, but Jonville is hope and certainty.'

Renewed courage and infinite confidence in the future were now upbuoying Marc, filling him with superb enthusiasm. 'Love has returned to us,' said he; 'henceforth we are all-powerful. And even though falsehood, iniquity, and crime triumphed to-day, eternal victory will to-morrow be ours.'