Chapter 3

On the morrow of the court's judgment there came an extraordinary revival of emotion at Maillebois. There was no surprise, for those who now believed in Simon's innocence were very numerous; but the material fact of that decisive legal rehabilitation upset everybody. And the same thought came to men of the most varied views. They approached one another, and they said:

'What! can no possible reparation be offered to that unfortunate man who suffered so dreadfully? Doubtless neither money nor honours of any kind could indemnify him for his horrible martyrdom. But when a whole people has been guilty of such an abominable error, when it has turned a fellow-being into such a pitiable, suffering creature, it would be good that it should acknowledge its fault, and confer some triumph on that man by a great act of frankness, in which truth and justice would find recognition.'

From that moment, indeed, the idea that reparation was necessary gained ground, spreading by degrees through the entire region. One circumstance touched every heart. While the Court of Cassation was examining the documents respecting the illegal communication made at Rozan, old Lehmann, the tailor, who had reached his ninetieth year, lay dying in that wretched house of the Rue du Trou which had been saddened by so many tears and so much mourning. His daughter Rachel had hastened from her Pyrenean retreat in order that she might be beside him at the last hour. But every morning, by some effort of will, the old man seemed to revive; being unwilling to die, said he, so long as justice should not have been done to the honour of his son-in-law and his grandchildren. And, indeed, it was only on the night of the day when the news of the acquittal reached him that he at last expired, radiant with supreme joy.

After the funeral Rachel immediately rejoined Simon and David in their solitude, where they intended to remain for another four or five years, when perhaps they might sell their marble quarry and liquidate their little fortune. And it so happened that the old house of the Rue du Trou was now demolished, a happy inspiration coming to the Municipal Council of Maillebois to purify that sordid district of the town by carrying a broad thoroughfare through it, and laying out a small recreation-ground for the working-class children. Sarah, whose husband S�bastien had now been appointed head-master of one of the Beaumont schools, had sold the tailoring business to a Madame Savin, a relative of those Savins who in former times had pelted her brother Joseph and herself with stones; and thus no trace remained of the spot where the Simon family had wept so bitterly in the distant days, when each letter arriving from the innocent prisoner in the penal settlement yonder had brought them fresh torture. Trees now grew there in the sunshine, flowers shed their perfume beside the lawns, and it seemed as if it were from that health-bringing spot that spread the covert remorse of Maillebois, its desire to repair the frightful iniquity of the past.

Nevertheless, things slumbered for a long time yet. A period of four years went by, during which only individual suggestions were made, no general agreement being arrived at. But generation was following generation; after the children had come the grandchildren, and then the great-grandchildren of those who had persecuted Simon, in such wise that quite a new population ended by dwelling in Maillebois. Yet it was necessary for the great evolution towards other social conditions to be entirely accomplished, in order that the seed which had been sown should yield a harvest of citizens freed from error and falsehood, to whom one might look for a great manifestation of equity.

Meantime life continued, and the valiant workers whose task was completed made way for their children. Marc and Genevi�ve, now nearly seventy years old, retired, and the Jonville schools were entrusted to their son Cl�ment and his wife Charlotte, Hortense Savin's daughter, who, like himself, had adopted the teaching profession. Mignot, on his side, had quitted Le Moreux and retired to Jonville, in order to be near Marc and Genevi�ve, who dwelt in a small house near their old school. Thus the village held quite a little colony of the first participators in the great enterprise, for Salvan and Mademoiselle Mazeline were still alive, enjoying a smiling and kindly old age. Then, at Maillebois, the boys' school was in the hands of Joseph, and the girls' school in those of his wife Louise. He was now forty-four, she two years younger; and they had a big son, Fran�ois, who, in his twenty-second year, had married his cousin Th�r�se, the daughter of S�bastien and Sarah, by whom he had a beautiful baby-girl named Rose, now barely a twelvemonth old. Joseph and Louise were bent on never quitting Maillebois, and they gently chaffed S�bastien and Sarah respecting the honours which awaited them; for there was now a question of appointing S�bastien to the directorship of the Training College where Salvan had worked so well. As for Fran�ois and Th�r�se, who by hereditary vocation had also adopted the scholastic profession, they now dwelt at Dherbecourt, where both had become assistant teachers. And what a swarming of the sowers of truth there was on certain Sundays when the whole family assembled at Jonville round the grandparents, Marc and Genevi�ve! And what fine, bright health was brought from Beaumont by S�bastien and Sarah, from Maillebois by Joseph and Louise, from Dherbecourt by Fran�ois and Th�r�se, who came carrying their little Rose; while at Jonville they were met by Cl�ment and Charlotte, who also had a daughter, Lucienne, now a big girl, nearly seven years of age! And, again, what a table had to be laid for that gathering of the four generations, particularly when their good friends Salvan, Mignot, and Mademoiselle Mazeline were willing to join them to drink to the defeat of Ignorance, the parent of every evil and every form of servitude!

The times of human liberation, which had been so long in coming, which had been awaited so feverishly, were now being brought to pass by sudden evolutions. A terrible blow had been dealt to the Church, for the last Legislature had voted the complete separation of Church and State,[1] and the millions formerly given to the priests, who had employed them to perpetuate among the people both hatred of the Republic and such abasement as was suited to a flock kept merely to be sheared, would now be better employed in doubling the salaries of the elementary schoolmasters. Thus the situation was entirely changed: the schoolmaster ceased to be the poor devil, the ill-paid varlet, whom the peasant regarded with so much contempt when he thought of the well-paid priest, who waxed fat on surplice fees and the presents of the devout. The priest ceased to be a functionary, drawing pay from the State revenue, supported both by the prefect and by the bishop; and thus he lost the respect of the country-folk. They no longer feared him; he was but a kind of chance sacristan, dependent on a few remaining believers, who from time to time paid him for a Mass. Again, the churches ceased to be State institutions, and became theatres run on commercial lines, subsisting on the payments made by the spectators, the last admirers of the ceremonies performed in them. It was certain, too, that before long many would have to close their doors, business already being so bad with some that they were threatened with bankruptcy. And nothing could be more typical than the position of that terrible Abb� Cognasse, whose outbursts of passion had so long upset Le Moreux and Jonville. His numerous lawsuits had remained famous; one could no longer count the number of times he had been fined for pulling boys' ears, kicking women, and flinging stones from his garden wall upon those passers who declined to make the sign of the Cross. Nevertheless, he had retained his office amid all the worries brought upon him by the citations he received, for he was virtually irremovable and exercised a paid State function. When, however, in consequence of the separation of Church and State, he suddenly became merely the representative of an opinion, a belief, when he ceased to receive State pay to impose that belief on others, he lapsed into such nothingness that people no longer bowed to him. In a few months' time he found himself almost alone in his church with his old servant Palmyre, for, however much the latter might pull the bell-rope with her shrivelled arms, only some five or six women still came to Mass. A little later there were but three, and finally only one came. She, fortunately, persevered, and the Abb� was pleased to be able to celebrate the offices in her presence, for he feared lest he should have the same deplorable experience at Jonville as he had encountered at Le Moreux. During a period of three months he had gone every Sunday to the latter village in order to say Mass without even being able to get a child as server, so that he had been obliged to take his little clerk with him from Jonville. And during those three months nobody had come to worship; he had officiated in solitude in the dank, dark, empty church. Naturally, he had ended by no longer returning thither, and at present the closed church was rotting away and falling into ruins. When, indeed, one of the functions of social life disappears, the building and the man associated with it become useless and likewise disappear. And in spite of the violent demeanour which Abb� Cognasse still preserved, his great dread was that he might see his last parishioner forsake him and his church closed, crumbling away amidst an invading growth of brambles.

[1] It will be understood that in the above passage M. Zola anticipates events; but it may be remarked that the separation of Church and State in France within a few years has never appeared more likely than it does now (1902-3).—Trans.

At Maillebois the separation of Church and State had dealt a last blow to the once prosperous School of the Christian Brothers. Victorious over the secular school at the time of the Simon case, it had fallen into increasing disfavour as the truth had gradually become manifest. But with true clerical obstinacy it had been kept in existence even when only four and five pupils could be recruited for it; and the new laws and the dispersion of the community had been needed to close its doors. The Church was now driven from the national educational service. Henceforth to the sixteen hundred thousand children whom year by year the Congregations had poisoned, a system of purely secular instruction was to be applied. And the reform had spread from the primary to the secondary establishments. Even the celebrated College of Valmarie, already weakened by the expulsion of the Jesuits, was stricken unto death by the great work of renovation which was in progress. The principle of integral and gratuitous instruction for all citizens was beginning to prevail. Why should there be two Frances? Why should there be a lower class doomed to ignorance, and an upper class alone endowed with instruction and culture? Was not this nonsense? Was it not a fault, a danger in a democracy, all of whose children should be called upon to increase the nation's sum of intelligence and strength? In the near future all the children of France, united in a bond of brotherliness, would begin their education in the primary schools, and would thence pass into the secondary and the superior schools, according to their aptitudes, their choice, and their tastes. This was an urgent reform, a great work of salvation and glory, the necessity of which was plainly indicated by the great contemporary social movement, that downfall of the exhausted bourgeoisie and the irresistible rise of the masses, in whom quivered the energies of to-morrow. Henceforth it was on them one would have to draw; and among them, as in some huge reservoir of accumulated force, one would find the men of sense, truth, and equity, who, in the name of happiness and peace, would build the city of the future. But, as a first step, the bestowal of gratuitous national education on all the children would finish killing off those pretended free and voluntary schools, those hotbeds of clerical infection, where the only work accomplished was a work of servitude and death. And after the Brothers' school of Maillebois, now empty and long since virtually dead, after the College of Valmarie, whose buildings and grounds were shortly to be sold, the last religious communities would soon disappear, together with all their teaching establishments, their factories of divers kinds, and their princely domains, which represented millions of money filched from human imbecility and expended to maintain the human flock in subjection under the slaughterer's knife.

Nevertheless, near the dismal Brothers' school of Maillebois, where the shutters were closed and where spiders spun their webs in the deserted classrooms, the Capuchin community maintained its chapel dedicated to St. Antony, whose painted and gilded statue still stood there erect in a place of honour. But in vain did Father Th�odose, now very aged, exert himself to invent some more extraordinary financial devices. The zeal of the masses was exhausted, and only a few old devotees occasionally slipped half-franc pieces into the dusty collection-boxes. It was rumoured, indeed, that the saint had lost his power. He could no longer even find lost things. One day, too, an old woman actually climbed upon a chair in the chapel and slapped the cheeks of his statue because, instead of healing her sick goat, he had allowed the animal to die. Briefly, thanks to public good sense, aroused at last by the acquirement of a little knowledge, one of the basest of superstitions was dying.

Meantime, at the ancient and venerable parish church of St. Martin's, Abb� Coquard, encountering much the same experience as Abb� Cognasse at Jonville, found himself more and more forsaken, in such wise that it seemed as if he would soon officiate in the solitude and darkness of a necropolis. Unlike Cognasse, however, he evinced no violence. Rigid, gloomy, and silent, he seemed to be leading religion to the grave, preserving the while a sombre stubbornness, refusing to concede anything whatever to the impious men of the age. In his distress he more particularly sought refuge in the worship of the Sacred Heart, decorating his church with all the flags which the neighbouring parishes refused to keep—large red, white, and blue flags, on which huge gory hearts were embroidered in silk and gold. One of his altars, too, was covered with other hearts—of metal, porcelain, goffered leather, and painted mill-board. Of all sizes were these, and one might have thought them just plucked from some bosom, for they seemed to be still warm, to palpitate and shed tears of blood, in such wise that the altar looked like some butcher's gory stall. But that gross re-incarnation no longer touched the masses, which had learnt that a people stricken by disaster raises itself afresh by work and reason, and not by penitence at the feet of monstrous idols. As religions grow old and sink into carnal and base idolatries they seem to rot and fritter away in mouldiness. If the Roman Church, however, was thus at the last gasp, it was, as Abb� Quandieu had said, because it had virtually committed suicide on the day when it had become an upholder of iniquity and falsehood. How was it that it had not foreseen that by siding with liars and forgers it must disappear with them, and share the shame of their infamy on the inevitable day when the innocent and the just would triumph in the full sunlight? Its real master was no longer the Jesus of innocence, of gentleness and charity; it had openly denied Him, driven Him from His temple; and all it retained was that heart of flesh, that barbarous fetish with which it hoped to influence the sick nerves of the poor in spirit. Laden with years and bitterness, Abb� Quandieu had lately passed away repeating: 'They have for the second time condemned and crucified the Lord—the Church will die of it.' And dying it was.

Moreover, it was not passing away alone; the aristocratic and bourgeois classes, on which it had vainly sought to lean, were collapsing also. All the ancient noble and military forces, even the financial powers, were collapsing, stricken with madness and impotence, since the reorganisation of the conditions of work had been leading to an equitable distribution of the national wealth. Some characteristic incidents which occurred at La D�sirade showed what a wretched fate fell on the whilom rich and powerful, whose millions flowed away like water. Hector de Sangleb�uf lost his seat in the Chamber when the electorate, enlightened and moralised by the new schools, at last rid itself of all reactionary and violent representatives. But a greater misfortune was the death of the Marchioness de Boise, that intelligent and broad-minded woman who had so long promoted prosperity and peace at La D�sirade. When she was gone the vain and foolish Sangleb�uf went altogether wrong, becoming a gambler, losing huge sums at play, and descending to ignoble amours; with the result that he was one day brought home beaten unmercifully—so battered, indeed, that three days later he died; no complaint, however, being lodged with the authorities, for fear of all the mud which would soil his memory if the real facts of his death were brought to light.

His wife, the once beautiful and indolent L�a, the pious and ever sleepy Marie of later times, then remained alone amid the splendours of that large estate. When her father, Baron Nathan, the millionaire Jew banker, suddenly died after being confined by paralysis to his sumptuous mansion in the Champs �lys�es, he had long ceased to see her; and he left her as little as possible of his fortune, slices of which had already gone to all sorts of aristocratic charitable enterprises, and even to certain ladies of society who, during the final years of his life, had procured him the illusion of imagining that he had become really one of their set, and was quite cleansed of all his Jewry. However, his supine and indolent daughter, who had never known a passion in her life, not even one for money, paid due honour to his memory, even ordering Masses to be said for his soul, by way of compelling heaven to admit him within its precincts; for, as she often repeated, he had rendered quite enough services to Catholicism to be entitled to a place on the Deity's right hand. And now, having no children, L�a led a lonely life at La D�sirade, which remained empty and deathly, enclosed on every side by walls and railings, which shut out the public as if it were some forbidden paradise. Yet there were rumours to the effect that, on the closing of the College of Valmarie, the Countess had granted an asylum to her old friend Father Crabot, who had now reached a very great age. His removal to La D�sirade was said by some to be a mere change of cell, for in an ascetic spirit he was content to occupy a little garret formerly assigned to a servant, and furnished with merely an iron bedstead, a deal table, and a rush-seated chair. But he none the less reigned over the estate, as if he were its sovereign master; the only visitors being a few priests and other clerics, who came to take counsel of him, and whose gowns might be seen occasionally gliding between the clumps of verdure or past the marble basins and their plashing waters. Though his ninetieth year was past, Crabot, ever a conqueror of women, a bewitcher of pious souls, repeated the triumphant stroke of his earlier days. He had lost Valmarie, that royal gift, which he had owed to the love of the Countess de Qu�deville, but he won La D�sirade from the good grace of that ever-beautiful L�a, whom he so fervently called 'my sister Marie in Jesus Christ.' As manager and almoner he set his hands on her fortune, financing all sorts of religious enterprises, and subscribing lavishly to the funds which the reactionary parties established for the purpose of carrying on their desperate campaign against the Republic and its institutions. And thus, when the Countess was found dead on her couch one evening, looking as if in her indolence she had just fallen asleep, she was ruined; her millions had all passed into the cash-boxes of the Black Band, and there only remained the estate of La D�sirade, which was willed to Father Crabot on the one condition that he should there establish some such Christian enterprise as he might choose to select.

But these were merely the last convulsions of an expiring world. All Maillebois was now passing into the hands of those Socialists whom the pious dames of other times had pictured as bandits, cut-throats, and footpads. That whilom clerical centre had now gone so completely over to the cause of reason that not a single reactionary member remained in its Municipal Council. Both Philis, once the priests' mayor, and Darras, the so-called traitors' mayor, were dead, and the latter, who was remembered as a man of weak, timorous, hesitating mind, had been replaced by a mayor of great good sense and industrious energy; this being Jules Savin, the younger brother of the twins, those mediocrities, Achille and Philippe. Jules, after marrying a peasant girl named Rosalie Bonin, had worked most courageously, in fifteen years establishing an admirable model farm, which had revolutionised the agricultural methods of the region and greatly increased its wealth. He was now barely more than forty years old, and rather stubborn by nature, for he only yielded to substantial arguments which tended to the general good. And it was under his presidency that the Municipal Council at last found itself called upon to examine a scheme for offering some public reparation to Simon—that idea which had slumbered for a few years, and which now awoke once more.

The subject had frequently been mentioned to Marc, who, indeed, could never come to Maillebois without encountering somebody who spoke to him about it. In this respect he was particularly moved one day when he happened to meet Adrien Doloir, a son of his former pupil Auguste by his wife Ang�le. Adrien, after studying successfully under Joulic, had become an architect of great merit, and though barely eight and twenty years of age, had been lately elected to the Municipal Council; of which, indeed, he was the youngest member, one whose schemes were said to be somewhat bold, though none the less practical.

'Ah! my dear Monsieur Froment, how pleased I am to meet you!' he exclaimed as he accosted Marc. 'It so happens that I wished to go over to Jonville to speak to you.'

Like all the young men of the new generation, who loved and venerated Marc as a patriarch, as one of the great workers of the heroic times, Adrien addressed him most deferentially, standing uncovered, with his hat in his hand. Personally, he had only been a pupil of Marc for a very brief period, when he was very young indeed; but his brother and his uncles had all grown up in the old master's class.

'What do you desire of me, my dear lad?' inquired Marc, who felt both brightened and moved whenever he met any of his former boys or their children.

'Well, it is like this. Can you tell me if it is true that the Simon family will soon return to Maillebois? It is said that Simon and his brother David have decided to quit the Pyrenees and settle here again.... Is it true? You must be well acquainted with their views.'

'Such is certainly their intention,' Marc responded with his pleasant smile. 'But I do not think one can expect them till next year; for, though they have found a purchaser for their marble quarry, they are to carry it on for another twelvemonth. Besides, a variety of matters will have to be settled, and they themselves cannot yet tell exactly how and when they will install themselves here.'

'But if we have only a year before us,' exclaimed Adrien with sudden excitement, 'we shall barely have the necessary time for the realisation of a plan I have formed.... I wish to submit it to you before doing anything decisive. What day would be convenient for me to call on you at Jonville?'

Marc, who intended to spend the day at Maillebois with his daughter Louise, pointed out that it would be preferable to profit by this opportunity, and Adrien assenting, it was eventually arranged that he should call at the latter's house in the afternoon. This house was a pleasant dwelling, built by Adrien himself on one of the fields of the farm which had belonged to the old Bongards, in the outskirts of Maillebois. They had long been dead, and the property had remained in the hands of Fernand, the father of Claire, to whom Adrien was married. Thus many memories arose in Marc's mind when, with a still firm and brave step, he walked past the old farm-buildings on his way to the architect's little house. Had he not repaired to that same spot forty years previously—on the very day, indeed, of Simon's arrest—with the object of collecting information in his friend's favour? In imagination Marc again accosted Bongard, the stoutly built and narrow-minded peasant, and his bony and suspicious wife, and found them both stubbornly determined to say nothing, for fear lest they might compromise themselves. He well remembered that he had been unable to extract anything from them, incapable as they were of any act of justice, since they knew nothing and would learn nothing, being, so to say, only so much brute matter steeped in a thick layer of ignorance.

With a sigh, Marc passed on and rang at the gate of Adrien's house. The young architect was awaiting him under an old apple tree, whose strong branches, laden with fruit, sheltered a few garden chairs and a table. 'Ah, master!' Adrien exclaimed, 'what an honour you do me by coming to sit here for a little while! But I have another favour to ask of you. You must kiss my little Georgette, for it will bring her good luck!'

Beside Adrien was Claire, his wife, a smiling blonde, scarcely in her twenty-fourth year, with a limpid face and eyes all intelligence and kindness. It was she who presented the little girl, a pretty child, fair like her mother, and already very knowing for her five years.

'You must remember, my treasure, that Monsieur Froment has kissed you, for it will make you glorious all your life!'

'Oh, I know, mamma! I often hear you talk of him,' said Georgette. 'It is as if a little of the sun came down to see me.'

At this the others began to laugh; but all at once Claire's father and mother, Fernand Bongard and his wife Lucille, made their appearance, having heard that the old schoolmaster intended to call, and wishing to show him some politeness. Although Fernand, with his hard nut, had been anything but a satisfactory pupil in bygone years, Marc was pleased to see him once more. The farmer, now near his fiftieth year, still looked very dull and heavy, as if he were scarcely awake, and his manner remained an uneasy one.

'Well, Fernand,' Marc said to him, 'you ought to be pleased; this has been a good year for the grain crops.'

'Yes, Monsieur Froment, there's some truth in that. But the year's never a really good one. When things go well in one respect they go badly in another. And, besides, I never had any luck, you know.'

His wife, whose mind was sharper than his, thereupon ventured to intervene. 'He says that, Monsieur Froment, because he always used to be the last of his class, and because he imagines that a spell was cast on him by some gipsy when he was quite a little child. A spell, indeed! As if there were any sense in such an idea! It would be different if he believed in the devil, for there is a devil sure enough. Mademoiselle Rouzaire, whose best pupil I was, showed him to me one day, a short time before my first Communion.'

Then, as Claire made merry over this statement, and even little Georgette laughed very irreverently at the idea of there being any such thing as a devil, Lucille continued: 'Oh! I know that you believe in nothing. None of the young folks of nowadays have any religious principles left. Mademoiselle Mazeline made strong-minded women of you all. Nevertheless, one evening, as I well remember, Mademoiselle Rouzaire showed us a shadow passing over the wall, and told us it was the devil. And it was, indeed!'

Adrien, somewhat embarrassed by his mother-in-law's chatter, now interrupted her, and addressed Marc on the subject of his visit. They had all seated themselves, Claire taking Georgette on her lap, while her father and mother kept a little apart from the others, the former smoking his pipe and the latter knitting a stocking.

'Well, master, this is the question,' said Adrien. 'Many young people of the district feel that great dishonour will rest on the name of Maillebois as long as the town has not repaired, as well as it can, the frightful iniquity which it allowed, and in which, indeed, it became an accomplice, when Simon was condemned. His legal acquittal does not suffice; for us—the children and grandchildren of the persecutors—it is a duty to confess and efface the transgression of our forerunners. Yesterday evening, at my father's house, on seeing my grandfather and my uncles there, I again asked them: "How was it that you ever allowed such stupid and monstrous iniquity, when the exercise of a little reason ought to have sufficed to prevent it?" And, as usual, they made vague gestures and answered that they did not know, that they could not know.'

Silence fell, and all eyes turned towards Fernand, who belonged to the incriminated generations. But he likewise rid himself of the question by taking his pipe from his mouth and gesticulating in an embarrassed way, while he remarked: 'Well, to be sure, we didn't know—how could we have known? My father and mother could scarcely sign their names, and they were not so imprudent as to meddle in their neighbours' affairs, for they might have got punished for it. And though I had learnt rather more than they had, I wasn't learned by any means; and so I distrusted the whole business, for a man does not care to risk his skin and his money when he feels he is ignorant.... To you young men nowadays it seems very easy to be brave and wise, because you've been well taught. But I should have liked to have seen you as we were—with no means of telling right from wrong, with our minds at sea amid a lot of affairs in which nobody could distinguish anything certain.'

'That's true,' said Lucille. 'I never thought myself a fool, but all the same I could not understand much of that business, and I tried not to think of it, for my mother was always repeating that poor folk ought not to meddle with the affairs of the rich, unless they wanted to get poorer still.'

Marc had listened with silent gravity. All the past came back: he heard old Bongard and his wife refuse to answer him, like the illiterate peasants they were, whose one desire was to continue toiling and moiling in quietude; and he also remembered Fernand's demeanour on the morrow of the trial at Rozan, when he had still shrugged his shoulders, still persisted in his desire to know nothing. How many years and what prolonged teaching of human reason and civic courage had been needed before a new generation had at last opened its eyes to truth, dared to recognise and admit it! And as Marc looked at Fernand he began to nod, as if to say that he thought the farmer's excuses good ones; for he was already inclined to forgive those persecutors whose ignorance had been the chief cause of their crime. And he ended by smiling at Georgette, in whom, on the other hand, the future seemed to be flowering, as she sat there with her beautiful eyes wide open and her keen ears on the alert, waiting, one might have thought, for some fine story.

'And so, master,' Adrien resumed, 'my plan is a very simple one. As you are aware, some great improvements have been effected at Maillebois lately, with the view of rendering the old quarter of the town more salubrious. An avenue has replaced those sewers, the Rue Plaisir and the Rue Fauche, while on the site of the filthy Rue du Trou is a recreation-ground, which the children of the neighbourhood fill with their play and their laughter. Well, among the building land in front of that square is the very spot on which stood old Lehmann's wretched house, that house of mourning, which our forerunners used to stone. It is my idea, then, to propose to the Municipal Council the erection of a new house on that site—not a palace, but a modest, bright, cheerful dwelling, which might be offered to Simon, so that he might end his days in it encompassed by the respect and affection of everybody. The gift would have no great pecuniary value—it would simply represent delicate and brotherly homage.'

Tears had risen to the eyes of Marc, who was greatly touched by the kind thought thus bestowed on his old friend, the persecuted, innocent man.

'Do you approve of my idea?' inquired Adrien, who on his side was stirred by the sight of Marc's emotion.

The old schoolmaster rose and embraced him: 'Yes, my lad, I approve of it, and I owe you one of the greatest joys of my life.'

'Thank you, master. But that is not everything. Wait a moment. I wish to show you a plan of the house, which I have already prepared, for I should like to direct the work gratuitously, and I feel certain that I should find contractors and men prepared to undertake the building at very low rates.'

He withdrew for a moment, and on returning with the plan he spread it out upon the garden-table, under the old apple tree. And everybody approached and leant over to examine it. The house, such as it had been depicted, was, indeed, a very simple but also a very pleasant one, two storeys high, with a white frontage, and a garden enclosed by some iron railings. Above the entrance a marble slab was figured.

'Is there to be an inscription, then?' Marc inquired.

'Certainly; the house is intended for one. This is what I shall suggest to the Council: "Presented by the Town of Maillebois to Schoolmaster Simon, in the name of Truth and Justice, and in reparation for the torture inflicted on him." And the whole will be signed: "The Grandchildren of his Persecutors."'

With gestures of protest and anxiety Fernand and Lucille glanced at their daughter Claire. Surely that was going too far! She must not let her husband compromise himself to such a point! But Claire, who was leaning lovingly against Adrien's shoulder, smiled, and responded to the consternation of her parents by saying: 'I helped to prepare the inscription, Monsieur Froment; I should like that to be known.'

'Oh! I will make it known, you may depend on it,' Marc answered gaily. 'But the inscription must be accepted, and, first of all, there is the question of the house.'

'Quite so,' replied Adrien. 'I wished to show you my plan with the view of securing your approval and help. The question of the expense will hardly affect the Council. I am more apprehensive of certain scruples, some last attempts at resistance, inspired by the old spirit. Though the members of the Council are nowadays all convinced of Simon's innocence, some of them are timid men, who will only yield to the force of public opinion. And our Mayor, Jules Savin, has said to me, truly enough, that it is essential the scheme should be voted unanimously on the day it is brought forward.'

Then, as a fresh idea occurred to him, Adrien added: 'Do you know, master, as you have been good enough to come so far, you ought to cap your kindness by accompanying me to Jules Savin's at once. He was a pupil of yours, and I feel certain that our cause would make great progress if you would only have a short chat with him.'

'I will do so willingly,' Marc answered. 'Let us start; I will go wherever you like.'

Fernand and Lucille protested no longer. She had returned to her knitting, while he, pulling at his pipe, relapsed into the indifference of a dullard unable to understand the new times. Claire, however, suddenly had to defend the plan from the enterprising hands of little Georgette, who wished to appropriate 'the pretty picture.' Then, as Marc and Adrien made ready to go, there came more embraces, handshakes, and laughter.

The farm of Les Amettes, where Jules Savin resided, was on the other side of Maillebois, and in order to reach it Marc and the young architect had to pass the new recreation-ground. For a moment, therefore, they paused before the plot of land on which the architect proposed to build the projected house.

'You see,' said he, 'all the requirements for a house will be found united here——'

But he broke off on seeing a stout and smiling man approach him. 'Why, here's uncle Charles!' he exclaimed. 'I say, uncle, when we build the house for Simon the martyr, which I have told you about, you will undertake to provide all the locksmith's work at cost price, will you not?'

'Well, I don't mind, my boy, if it pleases you,' said Charles Doloir. 'And I'll do it also for your sake, Monsieur Froment, for it pains me at times to think of how I used to worry you.'

Charles, after marrying Marthe Dupuis, his employer's daughter, had for a long time been managing the business. He had a son named Marcel, who was about the same age as Adrien, and who, having married a carpenter's daughter, Laure Dumont, had become a contractor for house carpentry.

'I am going to your father's,' Charles resumed, addressing his nephew; 'I have an appointment with Marcel about some work. Come with me, for if you build this house you will have some work to give them as well.... And you will come also, Monsieur Froment? It will please you, perhaps, to meet some more of your old pupils.'

'Yes, indeed it will,' Marc answered gaily. 'Besides, we shall be able to settle the specifications.'

'The specifications! Oh! we have not got to that point yet,' Adrien retorted. 'Moreover, my father isn't an enthusiast.... But no matter; I'll go to see him.'

Auguste Doloir, thanks to the friendly protection of Darras; the former mayor, had become a building contractor in a small way. After his father's death he had taken his mother to live with him, and since the demolition of the Rue Plaisir he had been residing in the new avenue, where he occupied a ground floor flanked by a large yard, in which he stored some of his materials. The lodging was very clean, very healthy, and full of sunlight.

When Marc found himself in the bright dining-room, face to face with Madame Doloir the elder, some more memories of the past returned to him. The old woman, now sixty-nine years old, had retained the demeanour of a good and prudent housewife, one who was instinctively conservative, and allowed neither her husband nor her children to compromise themselves by dabbling in politics. Marc also recalled her husband, Doloir the mason, that big, fair, ignorant fellow, good-natured in his way, but spoilt by barrack-life, haunted as he was by idiotic notions of the army being disorganised by those who knew no country, and of France being sold to the foreigners by the Jews. One day, unfortunately, he had been brought home dead on a stretcher, after falling from a scaffolding; and it seemed as if he had been drinking previously, though Madame Doloir would not acknowledge it, for she was one of those who never admit the existence of family failings.

On perceiving Marc she at once said to him: 'Ah! monsieur, we are no longer young; we are very old acquaintances indeed. Auguste and Charles were not more than eight and six years old when I first saw you.'

'Quite so, madame; I well remember it. I called on you, on behalf of my colleague Simon, to ask you to let your boys tell the truth if they should be questioned.'

At this, though the case was now such a very old one, Madame Doloir became grave and suspicious. 'That affair was no concern of ours,' she answered, 'and I acted rightly in refusing to let it enter our home, for it did great harm to many people.'

Charles, however, perceiving his brother Auguste in the yard with Marcel, ready for the appointment, now called him into the room: 'Come here a moment; I've brought somebody to see you. Besides, your son Adrien is here, and wants to give us an order.'

Auguste, who was as tall and sturdy as his father had been, pressed Marc's hand vigorously. 'Ah, Monsieur Froment,' said he, 'we often talk about you—Charles and I—when we remember our school-days! I was a very bad pupil, and I've regretted it at times. Yet I hope I haven't disgraced you too much; and, in any case, my son Adrien is becoming a man after your own heart.' Then he added, laughing: 'I know what Adrien's order is! Yes, indeed, the house which he wants to build for your friend Simon!... All the same, a house is perhaps a good deal to give to an ex-convict.'

In spite of the bantering bonhomie of Auguste's tone, Marc felt grieved by that last remark. 'Do you still think Simon guilty?' he inquired. 'At one time you became convinced of his innocence. But you began to doubt it again after that monstrous trial at Rozan.'

'Well, of course, Monsieur Froment, one feels impressed when a man is found guilty by two juries in succession.... But no! I no longer say that he was the culprit. And besides, at bottom it is all one to us. We are even quite willing that a present should be made to him, if by that means the affair can be brought to an end once and for all, so that we shall never have it dinned into our ears again. Isn't that so, brother?'

'That's correct,' responded Charles. 'If those big fellows were listened to, we ourselves should be the only real criminals, on the ground that we tolerated the injustice. It vexes me. There must be an end to it all!'

The two cousins, Adrien and Marcel, who took an equally passionate interest in the affair, laughed triumphantly. 'So it is settled!' exclaimed Marcel, as he tapped his father on the shoulder. 'You will take charge of the locksmith's work, uncle Auguste of the masonry, and I of the timber work. In that way your share in the crime, as you put it, will be repaired. And we will never mention the matter to you again, we swear it!'

Adrien was laughing and nodding his approval when old Madame Doloir, who had remained standing there, stiff and silent, intervened in her obstinate way. 'Auguste and Charles,' said she, 'have nothing to repair. It will never be known whether Schoolmaster Simon was guilty or not. We little folk ought never to poke our noses into affairs which only concern the Government. And I pity you boys—yes, both of you, Adrien and Marcel—if you imagine that you are strong enough to change things. You fancy that you now know everything, whereas you know nothing at all.... For instance, my poor dead husband, your grandfather, knew that a general meeting of all the Jew millionaires was held in Paris, in a subterranean gallery near the fortifications, every Saturday, when it was decided what sums should be paid to the traitors who betrayed France to Germany. And he knew the story to be a true one, for it had been told him by his own captain, who vouched for it on his honour.'

Marc gazed at the old woman in wonderment, for it was as if he had been carried forty years back. He recognised in her tale one of those extraordinary stories which Doloir the mason had picked up while he was soldiering. For their part, Auguste and Charles had listened to the anecdote in quite a serious way, without any sign of embarrassment, for it was amid similar imbecilities that they had spent their childhood. But neither Adrien nor Marcel could refrain from smiling, however great might be their affectionate deference for their grandmother.

'The Jew syndicate in a cellar! Ah, what an idea, grandmother!' said Adrien softly. 'There are no more Jews, for there will soon be no more Catholics... The disappearance of the Churches means the end of all religious warfare.'

Then, as his mother now came into the room, he went to kiss her. Ang�le Bongard, who had married Auguste Doloir when a shrewd young peasant girl, had largely contributed to her husband's success, though she had no very exceptional gifts. She now at once asked for news of her brother Fernand, her sister-in-law Lucille, and their daughter Claire, Who had married her son. Then the whole family became interested in the latest addition to its number, this being a baby-boy named C�lestin, to whom Marcel's wife had given birth a fortnight previously.

'You see, Monsieur Froment,' remarked old Madame Doloir, 'I have become a great-grandmother for the second time; after Georgette has come this little fellow, C�lestin. My younger son, L�on, also has a big boy, Edmond, now twelve years old; but he is only my grandson, so with him I don't seem to be quite so old.'

The old woman was becoming amiable—anxious, it seemed, to efface the recollection of her former stiffness, for she continued: 'And, by the way, Monsieur Froment, we never seem to agree; but there is one thing for which I really have to thank you, and that is for having almost compelled me to make L�on a schoolmaster. I didn't care for that profession, for it seemed to me hardly a tempting one; but you took all sorts of pains; you gave lessons to L�on, and now, though he's not yet forty, he already has a good position.'

She had become, indeed, very proud of her youngest son, L�on, who had lately succeeded S�bastien Milhomme in the headmastership of a school at Beaumont, S�bastien having been appointed director of the Training College. The schoolmistress whom L�on had married, Juliette Hochard, had also been transferred to Beaumont, there taking the former post of Mademoiselle Rouzaire; and their eldest son, Edmond, now a pupil at the Lyc�e, was studying brilliantly.

Well pleased at seeing his grandmother so amiable with Marc, Adrien kissed her, and then said jestingly: 'That's very nice of you, grandmother; you are now on Monsieur Froment's side. And, do you know, on the day when Simon returns we will choose you to offer him a bouquet at the railway station.'

But she again became grave and suspicious. 'Ah, no; not that; certainly not! I don't want to get myself into trouble. You young men are mad with your new ideas!'

After a merry leave-taking, Adrien and Marc at last retired in order to make their way to Jules Savin's. The model farm of Les Amettes spread over some two hundred and fifty acres in the outskirts of Maillebois, just beyond the new district. Jules, after his mother's death, had given a home to his father, the former petty clerk, who was now seventy-one years old; and he had been obliged to do the same for his elder brother, Achille, one of the twins, who, after being for many years a clerk like his father, had been suddenly stricken with paralysis. Philippe, the other twin, and at one time the partner of Jules, was now dead.

It so happened that Marc had become a connection of this family by reason of the marriage of his son Cl�ment with Charlotte, the daughter of Hortense Savin, who had died some years previously. But the marriage had taken place somewhat against Marc's desires, and thus, while allowing Cl�ment all latitude to follow the dictates of his heart, he had preferred personally to hold aloof. He was too broad-minded to make Charlotte responsible for the flighty conduct of her mother, who, after being led astray in her sixteenth year and marrying her seducer, had ended by eloping with another lover, meeting at last with a wretched death in some other part of France. And thus, while imputing nothing to her daughter, Marc harboured certain prejudices against the Savin family generally, and, whatever alacrity he had professed, it had been necessary for him to do violence to his feelings when Adrien had begged him to go to Les Amettes.

As it happened Jules was not at home, but his return was expected every moment. In the meantime the visitors found themselves in the presence of Savin senior, who was watching over his son Achille in a little sitting-room, where the paralysed man now spent his life in an armchair placed near the window. Directly Savin senior caught sight of Marc he raised a cry of surprise: 'Ah! Monsieur Froment,' said he, 'I thought you were angry with me. Well, it is kind of you to call.'

He was still as thin and as puny as ever, still racked, too, by a dreadful cough, yet he had contrived to survive his fresh, pretty, and plump wife, whom, indeed, he had killed by dint of daily vexations inspired by his bitter jealousy.

'Angry?' Marc quietly responded. 'Why should I be angry with you, Monsieur Savin?'

'Oh! because our ideas have never been the same,' said the ex-clerk. 'Your son may have married my granddaughter, but that does not suffice to reconcile our opinions.... For instance, you and your friends are now driving away all the priests and monks, which I regard as very unfortunate, for it will only lead to an increase of immorality. Heaven knows that I don't like those gentry, for I am an old Republican, a Socialist—yes, a Socialist, Monsieur Froment! But then, women and children need the threats of religion to check them from evil courses, as I have never grown tired of saying.'

An involuntary smile escaped Marc as he listened. Religion a police service!' said he; 'I know your theory. But how can religion exercise any power when people no longer believe, and there is no longer any reason to fear the priests?'

'No longer a reason to fear them!' cried Savin. 'Good Heavens! you are much mistaken. I myself have always been one of their victims. If I had sided with them, do you think that I should have vegetated all my life in a little office, and now be a charge on my son Jules, after losing my wife, who was killed by all sorts of privations? And my son Achille, whom you see here, so grievously afflicted—he again is a victim of the priests. I ought to have sent him to a seminary, and he would now be a prefect or a judge, instead of having contracted all sorts of aches and pains in a horrible office, which he left unable to use either his legs or his arms, so that now he cannot even take a basin of soup unassisted.... The priests are dirty scamps; is it not so, Achille? But all the same, it is better to have them on one's side than against one.'

The cripple, who had greeted his old master with a friendly nod, now remarked slowly, his speech being already impeded by paralysis: 'The priests long controlled the weather, no doubt; nevertheless, one is beginning to do without them very well.' Then, with something like a sneer, he added: 'And so it has become easy enough to settle their account, and play the judge.'

As he spoke he looked at Adrien, for whom that uncomplimentary allusion was doubtless intended. Achille's unfortunate position, the death of his wife, and a quarrel which had arisen between him and his daughter L�ontine, who was married to a Beaumont ironmonger, had embittered his nature. And deeming his allusion insufficient, wishing to be more precise, he continued: 'You will remember, Monsieur Froment, that I told you I was still convinced of Simon's innocence at the time when he was recondemned at Rozan. But what could I do? Could I have made a revolution by myself? No, of course not; so it was best to remain silent.... Nevertheless, I now see a number of young gentlemen calling us cowards, and trying to give us a lesson by raising triumphal arches to the martyr. It is brave work indeed!'

On being challenged in this fashion Adrien immediately understood that Jules Savin must have spoken of the great plan. And instead of losing his temper he strove to be very amiable and conciliatory: 'Oh! everybody is brave on becoming just,' he replied. 'I know very well, monsieur, that you were always among the reasonable folk, and I confess that some members of my own family showed even greater blindness and obstinacy than others. But to-day the general desire ought to be to unite, so that all may mingle in the same flame of solidarity and justice.'

Savin senior, who had been listening with an air of stupefaction, now suddenly understood why Marc and Adrien were there, awaiting the return of his son Jules. At the outset he had attributed their visit to politeness only. 'Ah! of course, you have come about that stupid scheme for offering reparation,' said he. 'Well, like those relatives you speak of, I have nothing to do with that business! No, indeed! My son Jules will act as he pleases, of course; but that will not prevent me from keeping my own opinion.... The Jews, monsieur, the Jews, always the Jews!'

Adrien looked at him, in his turn full of stupefaction. The Jews, indeed! Why did he speak of the Jews! Anti-Semitism was dead—to such a degree, indeed, that the new generation failed to understand what was meant when people accused the Jews of every crime. As Adrien had said to his grandmother, Madame Doloir, there were no Jews left, since only citizens, freed from the tyranny of dogmas, remained. It was essentially the Roman Church which had exploited anti-Semitism, in the hope of thereby winning back the incredulous masses; and anti-Semitism had disappeared when that Church sank into the darkness of expiring religions.

Marc had followed the scene with great interest, comparing the past with the present, recalling the incidents and the words of forty years ago, the better to discern the moral of those of to-day. However, Jules Savin at last came in, accompanied by his son Robert, a tall youth of sixteen, whom he was already initiating into the farmwork. And directly he learnt the purpose of his visitors he appeared to be much touched, and addressing Marc with great deference, exclaimed:

'Monsieur Froment, you cannot doubt my desire to be agreeable to you. We all regard you nowadays as a just and venerable master. Besides, as my friend Adrien must have told you, I am in no sense opposed to his plan. On the contrary, I will employ all the authority I possess to second it, for I am entirely of his opinion. Maillebois will only regain its honour when it has offered reparation for its fault.... Only, I repeat it, there must be absolute unanimity in the Municipal Council. I am working in that sense, and I beg you to do the same.'

Then, as his father began to sneer, Jules said to him, smiling: 'Come, don't pretend to be so hard-headed; you admitted Simon's innocence to me the other day.'

'His innocence? Oh! I don't dispute that. I also am innocent, but nobody builds me a house.'

'You have mine,' Jules retorted somewhat roughly.

At bottom it was precisely that circumstance which hurt Savin's feelings. The hospitality he received at his son's house, the fate that had befallen him of ending his days peacefully, in the home of one who had succeeded by dint of great personal efforts, gave the lie to his everlasting recriminations, the regret he was always expressing at not having sided with the priests in spite of the hatred with which he regarded them. Thus, losing his temper, he cried: 'Well, if you choose you can build a cathedral for your Simon! It won't matter to me, for I shall stay at home.'

Then Achille, who, tortured by the pains in his legs, had just raised a pitiful moan, exclaimed: 'Alas! I shall stay at home as well. But if I were not nailed to this armchair I would willingly go with you, my dear Jules, for I belong to the generation which did not, perhaps, do all its duty, but which was not ignorant of it, and is ready to do it now.'

After those words Marc and Adrien withdrew, delighted, feeling certain of success. And when Marc found himself alone again, returning to his daughter Louise by way of the broad thoroughfares of the new district, he summed up all he had just seen and heard; the far-off memories, which at the same time returned to him, enabling him to gauge the distance which had been travelled during the last forty years. The whole story of his life, his efforts and his triumph, was spread out, and he felt that he had been right in former days, when he had said that if France did not protest and rise to do justice in the Simon case, it was because she was steeped in too much ignorance, because she was debased and poisoned by religious imbecility and malice, because she was kept in childish superstitions and notions by a Press given over to lucre, scandal, and blackmailing. And, in the same way, a clear intuition had come to him of the only possible remedy—instruction, education, which would liberate one and all, endow them with solidarity and the intelligent bravery of life, by killing falsehood, destroying error, sweeping away the senseless dogmas of the Church, with its hell, its heaven, and its doctrines of social death. That was what Marc had desired, and that, indeed, was the work which was being accomplished—the liberation of the people by the primary schools, the rescue of all citizens from the state of iniquity in which they had been plunged, in order that they might at last become capable of truth and justice.

But it was particularly a feeling of appeasement which now came over Marc. Only forgiveness, tolerance, and kindliness surged from his heart. In former times he had greatly suffered, and he had often felt passionately angry with men on seeing with what stupid cruelty they behaved, and how obstinately they persisted in evil. At present, however, he could not forget the words spoken by Fernand Bongard and Achille Savin. They had tolerated injustice, no doubt; but as they now said, this was because they had not known, and because they had not felt strong enough to contend with that injustice. The slumber of their intelligence could not be imputed to the disinherited scions of ignorance as a crime. And Marc willingly forgave one and all; he no longer harboured any rancour even against the obstinate ones, who refused to open their minds to facts; he would simply have liked the festival planned for Simon's return to become a festival of general reconciliation, one in which the whole of Maillebois would embrace and mingle in brotherly concord, resolving to work henceforth for the happiness of all.

On reaching Louise's quarters at the school, where Genevi�ve had awaited him, and where they were to dine in company with Cl�ment, Charlotte, and Lucienne, Marc was pleased to find that S�bastien and Sarah were also there, having just arrived from Beaumont to share the meal. Indeed, it was a general family gathering, and several leaves had to be added to the table. There were Marc and Genevi�ve; then Cl�ment and Charlotte, with their daughter Lucienne, who was already seven years old; then Joseph Simon and Louise; then S�bastien Milhomme and Sarah; then Fran�ois Simon, Joseph's son, and Th�r�se Milhomme, Sarah's daughter, two cousins who had married, and who were already the parents of a little two-year-old named Rose. Altogether they made a dozen, full of health and appetite.

Acclamations arose when Marc recounted his afternoon, describing Adrien's plan and expressing his belief in its success. Joseph alone felt doubtful, for he was not convinced, he said, of the Mayor's favourable disposition. But Charlotte immediately intervened. 'You are mistaken,' she exclaimed; 'my uncle Jules is altogether on our side.... We can rely on him. He is the only one of the family who ever showed me any kindness.'

Charlotte, it should be said, had become dependent on her grandfather, Savin senior, at the time when her mother had eloped, for it had become necessary to place her father in an asylum on account of the alcoholism to which he had given way. The girl had then experienced much suffering, being often cuffed and sparsely fed. Savin, who seemed oblivious of the deplorable result of the pious hypocrisy in which his daughter Hortense had been reared by Mademoiselle Rouzaire, accused his grandchild of being an atheist, a rebel, full of deplorable ways, which were due to the teaching of Mademoiselle Mazeline. As a matter of fact, however, Charlotte was delightful, free from all false prudery, and gifted with healthy uprightness, sense, and tenderness. And Cl�ment having married her in spite of all obstacles, they had since lived together in the happiest and the closest of unions.

'Charlotte is right,' said Marc, who also desired to defend Jules Savin; 'the Mayor is on our side. But the best of all is that, among the contractors for the house which it is proposed to present to Simon, there will be the two Doloirs, Auguste the mason and Charles the locksmith; besides which, by their ties of relationship, even Fernand Bongard and Achille Savin will be indirectly concerned in it.... Ah! S�bastien, my friend, who would have thought that would come to pass in the days when you and those fine fellows attended my school?'

At this sally S�bastien Milhomme began to laugh; though his mood was scarcely a cheerful one, for a recent family loss, a very tragical affair, had affected him painfully. During the previous spring his aunt, Madame Edouard, had died, leaving the stationery business to her sister-in-law, Madame Alexandre. Her son Victor having disappeared, she had of recent years seemed to waste away, no longer attending to the business, in which she had once taken such a passionate interest, and feeling, indeed, quite at sea amidst those new times, which she altogether failed to understand. Madame Alexandre on remaining alone had continued carrying on the business, for she did not wish to inconvenience her son S�bastien, though the latter's position was becoming extremely good. One evening, however, Victor suddenly reappeared, emerging hungry and sordid from the depths in which he had been leading a crapulous life. He had heard of his mother's death, and he instantly demanded that the business should be put up for sale and the old partnership liquidated, in order that he might carry off his share of the proceeds. Such, then, was the end of the little shop in the Rue Courte, where many generations of schoolboys had purchased their copybooks and their pens. For a short time Victor showed himself here and there in Maillebois, leading a merry life, almost invariably in the company of his old chum, Polydor Souquet, who had fallen to the gutter. One evening Marc, having to cross a street of ill-repute, caught sight of them with another man, whose black figure strikingly resembled that of Brother Gorgias. And finally, barely a week before the family dinner given by Louise, the police had found a man lying dead, with his skull split, outside a haunt of debauchery. The dead man was Victor. There had evidently been some dim, ignoble tragedy, which the interested parties endeavoured to hush up.

'Yes, yes,' said S�bastien in reply to Marc, 'I remember my schoolfellows. With a few unfortunate exceptions they have not turned out so badly. But in life one is at times exposed to certain poisons, which prove pitiless.'

The others did not insist. They preferred to inquire after his mother, whom he had now taken to live with him at the Beaumont Training College, and who still enjoyed good health in spite of her great age. S�bastien's new position gave him a great deal of occupation, particularly as he desired to perfect the work of his venerated master, Salvan. 'Ah!' he exclaimed, 'that public reparation offered to Simon, that glorification of a schoolmaster, will be a great joy for all of us. I want my pupils to participate in it, and for that purpose I shall endeavour to obtain a day's holiday for them.'

Marc, who had rejoiced at S�bastien's appointment as if it were a personal triumph, at once signified his approval. 'Quite so,' said he, 'and we will bring the old ones as well—Salvan, Mademoiselle Mazeline, and Mignot. Besides, speaking of school-teachers, there is already a fine battalion here present.'

The others began to laugh. With the exception of the two children they were, indeed, all teachers. Cl�ment and Charlotte still carried on the Jonville schools, Joseph and Louise had decided that they would never quit Maillebois, S�bastien and Sarah relied on remaining at the Beaumont Training College until the former reached the age limit; while as for the younger couple, Fran�ois and Th�r�se, they had not long been appointed to the Dherbecourt schools, where their parents had previously made their d�buts. Fran�ois, in whom one traced a likeness to his parents, Joseph and Louise, also resembled his grandfather Marc, for he had much the same lofty brow and bright eyes, though the latter in his case glowed with what seemed to be a flame of insatiable desire. In Th�r�se, on the other hand, one found the great beauty of her mother Sarah softened, quieted, as it were, by the intellectual refinement which she had inherited from her father, S�bastien. And Rose, the young couple's little girl, the last born of the family, and as such worshipped by one and all, seemed to personify the budding future.

The dinner proved delightfully gay. How joyful for Joseph and Sarah, the children of the innocent martyr, tortured for so many years, was the thought of the festival of reparation which was now being planned! Their own children and their grandchild—all that had come from their blood mingled with that of Marc, the martyr's most heroic defender—would participate in that glorification. Four generations, indeed, would be present to celebrate the truth, and the cort�ge would be formed of all the good workers who, having suffered for its sake, were entitled to share its triumph.

Laughter, and again laughter, arose. They all drank to the return of Simon, and even when ten o'clock struck the happy family continued to give expression to its delight, quite forgetful of the trains by which some of its members were to return to Beaumont and others to Jonville.

From that day forward things moved with unexpected rapidity. Adrien's scheme on being laid before the Municipal Council was voted unanimously, as Jules Savin, the Mayor, had desired. Nobody even thought of opposing the suggested inscription. None of the applications and pleadings, which the promoters of the scheme had imagined necessary, were required, for the idea to which they gave expression already existed, in embryo, in the minds of all. There was remorse for the past, uneasiness at the thought of the unhealed iniquity, and a craving to repair it for the sake of the town's honour. Everybody now felt that it was impossible to be happy outside the pale of civic solidarity, for durable happiness can only come to a people when it is just. And so in a few weeks' time the subscription lists were filled. As the amount required was a comparatively small one, being no more than thirty thousand francs, the site of the house was given by the municipality,—people contented themselves with subscribing two, three, or at the utmost five francs, in order that a larger number of subscribers might participate. The workmen of the faubourg and the peasants of the environs contributed their half-francs and their francs; and at the end of March the building was put in hand, for it was desired that everything should be in readiness, the last woodwork in position, and the last paint dry, by mid-September, the date which Simon had ended by fixing for his return.

[2] $6000.

In September, then, the simple but cheerful house stood completed in its pleasant garden, which was faced by a railing on the side of the square. Its affectionately-awaited owner might come to take possession of it when he pleased, for nothing was lacking. True, a drapery hung before the marble slab bearing an inscription over the doorway; but this inscription, so far as Simon was concerned, was to be the great surprise, and would only be uncovered at the last moment. Adrien repaired to the Pyrenees to plan the final arrangements with Simon and David, and it was then decided that the former's wife, who was in a very weak state of health, should in the first instance install herself in the house, with the help of her children, Joseph and Sarah. Then, on the appointed day, Simon would arrive with his brother David. There would be an official reception at the railway station, and afterwards he would be conducted in triumph to his new home, the gift of his fellow-townsmen, where his wife and children would await him.

At last, on the Twentieth of September, a Sunday, the solemnity was enacted amid radiant sunshine and a warm and pure atmosphere. The streets of Maillebois were decorated with flags, the last flowers of the season were scattered along the procession's line of route. And early in the morning—although the train would only arrive at three o'clock in the afternoon—the population assembled out of doors, gathering together in a happy, singing, laughing multitude, whose numbers were swollen by all the visitors who flocked in from neighbouring parishes. At noon one could no longer circulate outside the house on the large new square, whose recreation-ground was invaded by the working-class families of the neighbourhood. There were people, too, at all the windows, and the very roadways were blocked by waves of spectators eager to see and to cry their passion for justice. Nothing could have been grander or more inspiring.

Marc and Genevi�ve had arrived from Jonville, with Cl�ment, Charlotte, and little Lucienne, early in the day. It was arranged that they should await Simon in the garden of the house, grouped around Madame Simon, her children, Joseph and Sarah, her grandchildren, Fran�ois and Th�r�se, and her great-granddaughter, little Rose. Louise, of course, was there, beside her husband Joseph, and S�bastien beside his wife Sarah. These constituted the three generations which had sprung from the blood of the innocent man mingled with that of his champions. Then, also, places had been reserved for the first defenders, the survivors of the heroic days,—Salvan, Mademoiselle Mazeline, and Mignot,—as well as for the fervent artisans of the work of reparation, the now conquered and enthusiastic members of the Bongard, Doloir, and Savin families. It was rumoured that Delbos, the ex-advocate, the hero of the two trials, who for four years recently had held the office of Minister of the Interior, had gone to join Simon and David, in order to reach the town in their company. Only the Mayor and a deputation of the Municipal Council were to meet the brothers at the railway station and conduct them to the house, decked with banners and garlands, where the ceremony of presentation would take place. And there, in accordance with this programme, Marc remained waiting with the rest of the family, in spite of all his joyous eagerness to embrace the triumpher.

Two o'clock struck; there was still an hour to be spent patiently. Meanwhile the crowd steadily increased. Marc, having left the garden to mingle with the groups and hear what was being said, found that the one subject of conversation was that extraordinary story emerging from the past, that condemnation of an innocent man, which had become both abominable and inexplicable in the eyes of the new generations. From the younger folk a long cry of indignant amazement arose; while the old people, those who had witnessed the iniquity, tried to defend themselves with vague gestures and shamefaced explanations. Now that the truth had become manifest in the full sunlight, endowed with all the force of invincible certainty, the children and the grandchildren could not understand how their parents and grandparents had carried blindness and egotism so far as to fail to fathom so simple an affair. And doubtless many of the older folk shared the astonishment of the younger ones, and were at a loss to account for the credulity into which they had fallen. That, indeed, was their best answer to the reproaches they heard; it was necessary to have lived in those times to understand the power of falsehood over ignorance. One old man penitently confessed his error; another related how he had hissed Simon on the day of his arrest, and how he had now been waiting two hours in order to acclaim him, anxious as he was not to die with his bad action upon his conscience. And a youth, his grandson, thereupon threw himself on the old man's neck and kissed him, laughing, with tears in his eyes. Marc was delightfully touched by the scene, and continued to walk about, looking and listening.

But all at once he stopped short. He had just recognised Polydor Souquet, clad in rags, with a ravaged countenance, as if still under the effects of a night of intoxication. And Marc was thunderstruck when by the side of Polydor he perceived Brother Gorgias, clad as usual in black, without a sign of linen, his greasy old frock-coat clinging fast to his dark hide. He, Gorgias, was not drunk. Silent and fierce of aspect, erect in all his tragic leanness, he darted fiery glances at the crowd. And Marc could hear that Polydor, with a drunkard's stupid obstinacy, was deriding him respecting the affair, of which everybody was talking around them. Slabbering and stammering, the scamp went on:

'I say, old man, the copy-slip—you remember, eh? The copy-slip! It was I who sneaked it. I had it in my pocket, and I was stupid enough to give it you back while you were seeing me home.... Ah, yes! that wretched copy-slip.'

A sudden flash of light illumined Marc's mind. He now knew the whole truth. The one gap in the affair, which had still worried him occasionally, was now filled. Polydor had given the slip to Gorgias, and that explained how it had chanced to be in his pocket, and how it had become mingled with a copy of Le Petit Beaumontais when, terrified by his victim's cries, he had hastily sought a handkerchief, a stopper of any kind, to use as a gag.

'But you know, old man,' stammered Polydor, 'we liked each other very much, and we didn't tell our business to other folk. And yet, if I had chattered, what a rumpus there would have been! Ah! what a face my Aunt P�lagie would have pulled!'

Half-fuddled, in an ignoble state, the rascal went on jeering, unconscious, it seemed, of the presence of the people around him. And Gorgias, who from time to time gave him a contemptuous glance, must suddenly have understood that Marc had heard the drunkard's involuntary confession, for in a low voice he growled: 'Be quiet, you wine-bag! Be quiet, you rotten cur! You stink of your sin and mine; you have damned me again by your ignominy! Be quiet, you filthy thing; it is I who will speak! Yes, I will confess my fault, in order that God may pardon me!'

Then, addressing himself to Marc, who was still lost in silent amazement, he went on: 'You heard him, Monsieur Froment, didn't you? Well, it's necessary that all should hear. I have been consumed long enough by a desire to confess myself to men, even as I have confessed to God, in order that my salvation may be the more glorious. And, besides, all these people exasperate me! They know absolutely nothing; they keep on repeating my name with execration, as if I were the only culprit! But wait a moment; they will see it is not so, for I will tell them everything!'

Then, though he was over seventy years old, he contrived to spring upon the low wall supporting the garden railing of the house where Simon, the innocent man, was soon to be received in triumph. And clinging with one hand to that railing, he turned and faced his mighty audience. During the hour he had spent roaming through the groups, he had heard his name fall from every tongue as a name of infamy. And he had gradually been fired by a sombre fever, the bravery of a fine bandit, who denies none of his actions, but is ready to cast them in the teeth of men, full of a mad pride that he should have dared to commit them. What caused him most suffering, however, was that he alone should be named, that all the weight of the general execration should be cast upon his shoulders, for the others, his accomplices, seemed to be quite forgotten. Only the previous day, his resources again being exhausted, he had attempted to force himself upon Father Crabot, who was shut up at the estate of La D�sirade, and he had been flung out with the alms of a twenty-franc piece, the very last that would be given him, so he had been told. And now, amid all the insulting words that were levelled at him, nobody shouted the name of Father Crabot. Why, as he was ready to expiate his transgression, why should not Father Crabot expiate his also? No doubt he, Gorgias, would extract no more twenty-franc pieces from that coward if he were to reveal everything; but his hatred was now dearer to him than money, and it would be blissful to cast his enemy into the flames of hell, while he himself ascended to the delights of paradise by virtue of the penance of a public confession, the idea of which had long haunted him.

Thus an unexpected, an extraordinary scene began. With a violent, sweeping gesture, Gorgias sought to gather the crowd together and attract its attention. And in a shrill but still powerful voice he called: 'Listen to me! listen to me! I will tell you everything!'

But at first he was not heard, and he had to raise the same cry twice, thrice, a dozen times, with increasing, unwearying energy. By degrees he was noticed and people became attentive; and when some of the old folk had recognised him, when his name had flown from mouth to mouth amid a quiver of horror, a death-like silence at last fell from one to the other end of the great square.

'Listen to me! listen to me! I will tell you everything!'

Raised above the heads of all the others, with the broad sunlight streaming on him, he clung with one hand to the iron railing, while with the other he went on making vehement gesticulations as if he were sabring the air. His threadbare frock-coat hung closely to his withered, knotty frame, and with his dusky face, from which jutted the big beak of a bird of prey, he looked quite terrible, like some phantom of the past, whose eyes glowed with the flames of all the abominable passions of long ago.

'You speak of truth and justice,' he cried. 'But you know nothing, and you are not just!... You all fall upon me, you treat me as if I were the only culprit, whereas others sinned more even than I did. I may have been a criminal, but others accepted my crime, hid it, and continued it.... Wait a little while; you will see by-and-by that I don't lack the courage to confess my sin. But why am I the only one ready to confess? Why isn't my master, my chief, the all-powerful Father Crabot, here also, ready to humiliate himself and tell everything? Let him come! Go and fetch him from his hiding-place, and let him confess his sins before you and do penitence beside me. Otherwise I shall speak out; I shall proclaim his crime with mine, for though I be the most humble, the most miserable of sinners, God is in me, and it is God who demands expiation of him as of me.'

Then, in the bitterest language, he declared that all his superiors, Father Crabot at the head of them, were but degenerate Catholics, poltroons, and enjoyers of life. The Church was dying by reason of their cowardice, their compromises with the weaknesses and the vanities of the world. It was, indeed, his favourite theory that all true religious spirit had departed from those monks, those priests, and those bishops, who ought to have ensured the reign of Jesus by fire and sword. Earth and mankind belonged to God alone, and God had given them to His Church, the sovereign delegate of His power. The Church therefore possessed everything, and held absolute dominion over everybody and everything. To her belonged the disposal of wealth; none could be wealthy save by her permission. To her belonged even the disposal of life, for every living man was her subject, whom she allowed to live or suppressed according to the interests of Heaven. Such was the doctrine from which the true saints had never departed. He, a mere humble Ignorantine, had always practised and exalted that doctrine, and his superiors, though they had wronged him in other respects, had always recognised in him the rare merit of possessing the true, absolute religious spirit; whereas they themselves—the Crabots, the Philibins, and the Fulgences—had ruined religion by their compromises, their trickery with the Freethinkers, the Jews, the Protestants, and the Freemasons. Like opportunists, anxious to please, they had gradually abandoned dogmas and concealed the asperity of doctrines, whereas they ought to have fought openly against impiety, and have slaughtered and burnt all heretics. He himself dreamt of seeing a huge sacrificial pyre set up in the midst of Paris, on which he would have cast the whole guilty nation, in order that the flames and the stench from all those millions of bodies might have ascended to the glowing skies to rejoice and appease the Deity.

And he next exclaimed: 'As soon as a sinner confesses and does penance, he is no longer guilty, he again recovers the grace of his Sovereign Master. What man is there who never sins? All who are made of flesh are liable to err. Even like the layman, he who is in holy orders and whom the beast, which is in all men, precipitates into crime has but one obligation cast upon him—that of confession; and if he receives absolution, if he expiates his sin with firm repentance, he redeems himself, he becomes again as white as snow, worthy to enter into Heaven, among the roses and lilies of Mary.... I confessed my sin to Father Th�odose, who absolved me, and I owed nothing more to anybody, since God, who ordains and knows all things, had pardoned me by the sacrament of one of His ministers. And in the same way, from that day forward, each time that I lied, each time that my superiors compelled me to lie, I went back to the confessional, and I washed my soul clean of all the impurities with which human fragility had soiled it. Alas! I have often and I have greatly sinned, for God, in order no doubt to try me, has allowed the devil to assail me with all the fires of hell. But I have battered my chest with my fists, I have made my knees bleed by dragging them over the flagstones of chapels—I have paid, and I repeat that I owe nothing whatever. A flight of archangels would bear me straight to Paradise if I should die by-and-by, ere lapsing again into the original mire, whence in common with all men I have sprung. And in particular I owe nothing to men; I have never owed them anything; my crime lies between God and me, His servant. But He has forgiven me, and so, if I speak here to-day, it is because I choose to do so, because I desire to couple with the Divine mercy the martyrdom of a last humiliation, in order that I may enter Paradise in triumph—a celestial joy which, whatever my abjection, I shall assuredly taste, thanks to my penitence; whereas you will never taste it—race of unbelievers and blasphemers that you are, destined, one and all, to the flames of hell!'

Amid his sombre fury, that transport of savage faith which had raised him there, alone and impudent, face to face with the multitude, Gorgias again began to jeer. And there came to him that habitual twitching of the lips, which disclosed some of his teeth in a grimace suggestive of both scorn and cruelty. Polydor, who for a moment had seemed quite scared, and had gazed at him with dilated eyes, blurred by his drunkenness, had now fallen beside the railing, overcome by sleepiness and already snoring. The crowd, in horrified expectancy of the promised confession, had hitherto preserved death-like silence. But it was now growing weary of that long oration, in which it found all the unconquerable pride and insolence of the Churchman who deems himself all-powerful and inviolate. What did the scamp mean by that speech? Why did he not content himself with stating the facts? What was the use of such a long preamble when a dozen words would have sufficed? Thus a growl arose, and a rush would have swept Gorgias away if Marc, now very attentive and fully master of himself, had not stepped forward and with a gesture calmed the growing impatience and anger. Moreover, Gorgias remained imperturbable. Despite all interruptions, he went on repeating in the same shrill voice that he alone was brave, that he alone was really upon God's side, and that the other sinners, the cowards, would after all have to pay for their transgressions, since God had set him there to make public confession on their behalf as well as his own, this being a supreme expiation, whence the Church, compromised by her unworthy leaders, would emerge rejuvenated and for ever victorious.

Then all at once, as if he were a prey to the wildest remorse, he beat his chest violently with both fists, and cried in distressful, tearful accents: 'I have sinned, O God! O God, do Thou forgive me! Release me from the claws of the devil, O God, that I may yet bless Thy holy name!... Yes, God wills it! Listen to me, listen to me; I will tell you everything!'

Then he laid himself bare, as it were, before the assembled throng. He spoke plainly of his gross appetites; he set forth that he had been a big eater, a deep drinker, and that vice had dogged him from his childhood. In spite of all his intelligence he had then refused to study; he had preferred to play the truant, to roam the fields, and hide in the woods with little hussies. His father, Jean Plumet, after being a poacher, had been turned into a gamekeeper by the Countess de Qu�deville. His mother, a hussy, had disappeared after giving him birth. He could still picture his father as he had appeared to him lying on a stretcher in the courtyard at Valmarie, whither he had been brought dead, after two bullets had been lodged in his chest by one of his former companions, a poacher. And subsequently he, Gorgias, had been brought up with the Countess's grandson, Gaston, an unmanageable lad, who also refused to study, preferring to hide himself away with little hussies, climb poplar trees for magpies' nests, and wade the rivers in search of crawfish. At that time he, Gorgias, had become acquainted with Father Philibin, Gaston's tutor, and Father Crabot, who was then in all his manly prime, adored by the old Countess, and already the real master of Valmarie. Then, with sudden abruptness, plainly and brutally, Gorgias related how Gaston, the grandson and heir, had come by his death—a death which he had witnessed from a distance, and of which he had kept the terrible secret for so many years. The boy had been deliberately pushed into the river and drowned there, the misfortune being attributed to an accident, in such wise that a few months later the old Countess finally bestowed her property upon Father Crabot.

Striking his breast with increasing fury, beside himself with contrition, Gorgias continued amid his sobs: 'I have sinned, I have sinned, O God! And my superiors have sinned still more frightfully than I, for it was they, O God! who ever set me an evil example!... But since I am here to expiate their sins as well as mine by confessing everything, O God, perchance Thou wilt pardon them in Thine infinite mercy, even as Thou wilt assuredly pardon me also!'

But a quiver of indignant revolt now sped through the crowd. Fists were raised and voices demanded vengeance; while Gorgias, resuming his narrative, related that from that time forward Fathers Crabot and Philibin had never abandoned him, linked to him as they were by a bond of blood, relying on him as he relied on them. This was the old pact which Marc had long suspected—Gorgias being admitted to the Church and becoming an Ignorantine, an enfant terrible of the Deity, one who both alarmed and enraptured his superiors by the wonderful religious spirit which glowed in his guilty flesh. Again the wretched man sobbed aloud, and all at once he passed to the horrid crime of which Simon had been accused.

'The little angel was there, O God!... It is the truth. I had just taken the other boy home, and I was passing across the dark square, when I saw the little angel in his room, which was lighted up.... Thou God knowest that I approached him without evil intention, simply out of curiosity, and in a fatherly spirit, in order to scold him for leaving his window open. And Thou knowest also that for a while I talked to him as a friend, asking him to show me the pictures on his table, sweet and pious pictures, which were still perfumed by the incense of the first Communion. But why, O God, why didst Thou then allow the devil to tempt me? Why didst Thou abandon me to the tempter, who impelled me to spring over the window-bar under the pretence of taking a closer look at the pictures, though, alas! the flames of hell were already burning within me? Ah! why didst Thou suffer it, O God? Ah! verily, my God, Thy ways are mysterious and terrible!'

The throng had now again relapsed into deathly silence amid the frightful anguish which wrung every breast as the ignoble confession at last took its course. Not a breath was heard; horror spread over all those motionless folk, terrified by the thought of what was coming. And Marc, who was very white, quite scared at seeing the truth rise before him at last, after so many lies, gazed fixedly at the wretched culprit, who was gesticulating frantically amid the sobs which choked him.

'The little child—he was so pretty. Thou hadst given him, O God! the fair and curly head of a little angel. Like the cherubs of pious paintings, he seemed, indeed, to have but that angelic head with two wings.... Kill him, O God! Did I have any such horrible thought? Speak! Thou canst read my heart! I was so fond of him, I would not have plucked a hair from his head.... But it is true the fire of hell had come upon me; Satan transported me, blinded me, and the boy became alarmed; he began to call out, to call out, to call out.... O God, those calls, those calls! I hear them always, always, and they madden me!'

It seemed, indeed, as if Gorgias were now a prey to some supreme paroxysm; his eyes glowed like coals of fire in his convulsed countenance, a little foam appeared upon his twisted lips, while his lean, bent frame quivered from head to foot with spasmodic shocks. And at last a great access of rage transported him. Like one of the damned whom the devil turns with his fork over the infernal brazier, he howled: 'No, no, that's not the plain truth; that again is arranged and embellished.... I must tell all, I will tell all; it is at that price only that I shall taste the eternal delights of Paradise!'

What followed was full of horror. He related everything in plain, crude, abominable language, and when he again came to his victim's cries he recounted his cowardly terror, his eager desire to conceal his crime, for his buzzing ears already seemed to re-echo the gallop of the gendarmes pursuing him. In wild despair he had sought for something; he had searched his pocket, and finding some papers in it, he had stuffed them without foresight or method into his victim's mouth, all eagerness as he was to hear those terrible cries no more. But they had begun again, and he told how he had then murdered, strangled, the boy, pressing his strong, bony, hairy fingers, like iron bands, around the child's delicate neck, and marking it with deep, dark furrows.

'O God!' he cried, 'I am a hog, I am a murderous brute, my limbs are stained with mire and blood!... And I fled like a wretched coward, without an idea in my head, quite brutified and senseless, leaving the window open, and thereby showing my stupidity and the innocence in which I should have remained but for the devil's unforeseen and victorious assault upon me.... And now that I have confessed everything to men, O God, I beg Thee, in reward for my penitence, open to me the doors of Heaven!'

But the horror-fraught patience of the crowd was now exhausted. After the stupor which had kept it chilled and mute there came an outburst of extraordinary violence. A loud roar of imprecations rolled from one to the other end of the square, a huge wave gathered and bounded towards the railings, towards the impudent wretch, the monstrous penitent, who in his religious dementia had thus dared to proclaim his crime in the full sunlight. Shouts arose: 'To death with the scoundrel! To death with the murderer! To death with the polluter and killer of children!' And Marc then understood the terrible danger; he pictured the crowd lynching that wretched man in its craving for immediate justice; he beheld that festival of kindness and solidarity, that triumph of truth and equity, soiled, blackened by the summary execution of the culprit, whose limbs would be torn from him and cast to the four winds of heaven. So in all haste he strove to remove Gorgias from the railings. But he had to contend with his resistance, for the obstinate, frantic scoundrel desired to say something more. At last, helped by the vigorous arms of some of the bystanders, Marc managed to carry him into the garden, the gate of which was at once shut. The rescue was effected none too soon, for the huge wave of the indignant crowd rolled up and burst against the railings, which fortunately checked its further progress, as they were new and strong. Thus Gorgias was for the moment out of reach, sheltered by the very house which had been built for the innocent man, for whose tortures he, was responsible. And such was his obstinacy, that when those who had seized him released their hold, thinking him conquered, he picked himself up, and, rushing back to the railings, hung to them from inside. And there, protected by the iron bars, against which the furious, surging throng was sweeping, he began once more:

'Thou didst witness, O God! my first expiation, when my superiors, as foolish as they were cruel, abandoned me on the road to exile! Thou knowest to what unacknowledgeable callings they reduced me, what fresh and hateful transgressions they caused me to commit! Thou knowest their base avarice—how they refused me even a crust of bread, how they refuse it still, after being my counsellors and accomplices all my life long.... For thou wert always present, O God! Thou didst hear them bind themselves to me. Thou knowest that after my crime I did but obey them, and that if I aggravated it by other crimes it was only by and for them. Doubtless the desire was to save Thy Holy Church from scandal—and I, indeed, would have given my blood, my life. But they thought only of saving their own skins, and it is that which has enraged me and stirred me to tell everything.... And now, O God! that I have been Thy justiciary, that I have spoken the words of violence ordained by Thee, and have cried aloud their unknown and unpunished sins, it is for Thee to decide if Thou wilt pardon them or strike them down in Thy wrath, even before these swinish people, who pretend to forget Thy name, and for the roasting of whose sacrilegious limbs there will never be room enough in hell!'

Threatening hoots interrupted him at every word; stones, passing from hand to hand, began to fly around his head. The railings would not have resisted much longer; in fact, a last great onrush was about to throw them down when Marc and his assistants again managed to seize Gorgias and carry him to the end of the garden, behind the house. On that side there was a little gate conducting to a deserted lane, and the miscreant was soon led forth, and then driven away.

If, however, the growling, threatening crowd suddenly became calm, it was because cries of joy and glorification arose above the shouts of anger, drawing nearer every moment in sonorous waves along the sunlit avenue. Simon, having been received at the railway station by a deputation of the Municipal Council, was arriving in a large landau, he and David occupying the back seat, while in front of them were Advocate Delbos and Jules Savin, the Mayor. As the carriage slowly advanced between the serried crowd there came an extraordinary ovation. Spurred to it by the abominable scene which had left everybody quivering, they acclaimed Simon with the wildest enthusiasm, for his innocence and his heroism seemed to have been rendered yet more glorious by the public confession now made by the real culprit, the savage and bestial Gorgias. Women wept and raised their children to let them see the hero. Men rushed to unharness the horses; and indeed they did unharness them, in such wise that the landau was dragged to the house by a hundred brave arms. And all along the flower-strewn line of route other flowers were flung from the windows, where handkerchiefs as well as banners waved. A very beautiful girl mounted the carriage step, and remained there like a living statue of youth, contributing the splendour of her beauty to the martyr's triumph. Kisses were wafted, words of affection and glorification fell into the carriage with the bouquets which rained from every side. Never had people been stirred by such intense emotion—emotion wrung from their very vitals by the thought of such a great iniquity—emotion which, seeking to bestow some supreme compensation on the victim, found it in the gift without reserve of the hearts and love of all. Glory to the innocent man who had well-nigh perished by the people's fault, and on whom the people would never be able to bestow sufficient happiness! Glory to the martyr who had suffered so greatly for unrecognised and strangled truth, and whose victory was that of human reason freeing itself from the bonds of error and falsehood! And glory to the schoolmaster struck down in his functions, a victim of his efforts to promote enlightenment, and now exalted the more as he had suffered untold pain and grief for each and every particle of truth that he had imparted to the ignorant and the humble!

Marc, who stood on the threshold of the house, dizzy with happiness, watching that triumph approach amid an explosion of fraternity and affection, bethought himself of the far-off day of Simon's arrest, the hateful day when a vehicle had carried him away from Maillebois at the moment of little Z�phirin's funeral. A furious crowd had rushed to seize him, roll him in the mud, and tear him to pieces. A horrible clamour had arisen: 'To death, to death with the assassin and sacrilegist! To death, to death with the Jew!' And the crowd had pursued the rolling wheels, unwilling to relinquish its prey, while Simon, pale and frozen, responded with his ceaseless cry: 'I am innocent! I am innocent! I am innocent!' And now that after long years that innocence was manifest, how striking was the transformation! The crowd was rejuvenated, transfigured; the children and the grandchildren of the blind insulters of former days had grown up in knowledge of truth, and become enthusiastic applauders, striving by dint of sincerity and affection to redeem the crime of their forerunners!

But the landau drew up before the garden gate, and the emotion increased when Simon was seen to alight with the help of his brother David, who had remained more nimble and vigorous. Emaciated, reduced to a shadow, Simon had white hair and a gentle countenance, softened by extreme age. He smiled his thanks to David, and again there were frantic acclamations at the sight of those two brothers, bound together by long years of heroism. The cheers continued when, after the Mayor, Jules Savin, Delbos also alighted—the great Delbos, as the crowd called him, the hero of Beaumont and Rozan, who had not feared to speak the truth aloud in the terrible days when it was perilous to do so, and who ever since had worked for the advent of a just society. Then, as Marc went forward to meet Simon and David, whom Delbos had just joined, the four men found themselves together for a moment on the very threshold of the house. And at that sight there came an increase of enthusiasm. Cries were raised and arms were waved deliriously as the three heroic defenders and the innocent man, whom they had rescued from the worst of tortures, were seen thus standing side by side.

Then Simon impulsively cast himself on the neck of Marc, who returned his embrace. Both sobbed, and were only able to stammer a few words—almost the same as they had stammered long ago, on the abominable day when they had been parted.

'Thank you, thank you, comrade. Like David, you have been to me a brother—a second brother; you saved my own and my children's honour.'

'Oh! I merely helped David, comrade; the victory was won by truth alone.... And there are your children—of their own accord they have grown up in strength and reason.'

The whole family, indeed, was assembled amid the garden greenery; four generations awaited the venerable old man, who triumphed after so many years of suffering. Rachel, his wife, stood beside Genevi�ve, the wife of his dear, good friend. Then came those whose blood had mingled—Joseph and Louise, Sarah and S�bastien, accompanied by their children, Fran�ois and Th�r�se, who were followed by little Rose, the last born of the line. Cl�ment and Charlotte were also present with Lucienne. And tears started from all eyes, and endless kisses were exchanged.

But a very fresh, sweet song arose. The children of the boys' and girls' schools, the pupils of Joseph and Louise, were singing a welcome to the former schoolmaster of Maillebois. Nothing could have been more simple and more touching than that childish strophe, instinct with tenderness and suggestive of the happy future. Then a lad stepped forward and offered Simon a bouquet in the name of the boys' school.

'Thank you, my little friend. How fine you look.... Who are you?'

'I am Edmond Doloir; my father is L�on Doloir, a schoolmaster; he is yonder, beside Monsieur Salvan.'

Then came the turn of a little girl, who, in like fashion, carried a bouquet offered by the girls' school.

'Oh! what a pretty little darling! Thank you, thank you.... And what is your name?'

'I am Georgette Doloir; I am the daughter of Adrien Doloir and Claire Bongard. You can see them there with my grandpapa and grandmamma, and my uncles and aunts.'

But there was yet another bouquet, and this was presented by Lucienne Froment on behalf of Rose Simon, the last-born of the family, whom she carried in her arms. And Lucienne recited: 'I am Lucienne Froment, the daughter of Cl�ment Froment and Charlotte Savin.... And this is Rose Simon, the little daughter of your grandson Fran�ois, and your own great-granddaughter, as she is also the great-granddaughter of your friend Marc Froment through her grandmother, Louise.'

With trembling hands Simon took the dear and bonnie babe in his arms. 'Ah! you dear little treasure, flesh of my flesh, you are like the ark of alliance.... Ah, how good and vigorous has life proved! how bravely it has worked in giving us so many strong, healthy, and handsome offspring! And how everything broadens at each fresh generation; what an increase of truth and justice and peace does life bring as it pursues its eternal task!'

They were now all pressing around him, introducing themselves, embracing him, and shaking his hands. There were the Savins, Jules and his son Robert, the former the Mayor who had so actively helped on the work of reparation, and who had received him at the railway station on behalf of the whole town. There were the Doloirs also—Auguste, who had built the house, Adrien, who had planned it, Charles, who had undertaken the locksmith's work, and Marcel, who had attended to the carpentry. There were likewise the Bongards—Fernand and his wife Lucille, and Claire their daughter. And all were mingled, connected by marriages, forming, as it were, but one great family, in such wise that Simon could hardly tell who was who. But his old pupils gave their names, and he traced on their aged faces some likeness to the boyish features of long ago, while embrace followed embrace amid ever-increasing emotion. And all at once, finding himself in presence of Salvan, now very old indeed, but still showing a smiling countenance, Simon fell into his arms, saying, 'Ah! my master, I owe everything to you; it is your work which now triumphs, thanks to the valiant artisans of truth whom you formed and sent out into the world!'

Then came the turn of Mademoiselle Mazeline, whom he kissed gaily on both cheeks, and next that of Mignot, who shed tears when Simon had embraced him.

'Have you forgiven me, Monsieur Simon?' he asked.

'Forgiven you, my old friend Mignot! You have shown a valiant and noble heart! Ah! how delightful it is to meet again like this!'

The ceremony, so simple, yet so grand, was at last drawing to a close. The house offered to the innocent man, that bright-looking house standing on the site of the old den of the Rue du Trou, smiled right gaily in the sunlight with its decorative garlands of flowers and foliage. And all at once the drapery which still hung before the inscription above the door was pulled aside, and the marble slab appeared with its inscription in vivid letters of gold: 'Presented by the town of Maillebois to Schoolmaster Simon in the name of Truth and Justice, and as Reparation for the Torture inflicted on him.' Then came the signature, which seemed to show forth in a yet brighter blaze: 'The Grandchildren of his Persecutors.' And at that sight, from all the great square, and from the neighbouring avenue, from every window and from every roof, there arose a last mighty acclamation, which rolled on like thunder—an acclamation in which all at last united, none henceforth daring to deny that truth and justice had triumphed.

On the morrow Le Petit Beaumontais published an enthusiastic account of the ceremony. That once filthy print had been quite transformed by the new spirit, which had raised its readers both morally and intellectually. Its offices, so long infected by poison, had been swept and purged. The Press will, indeed, become a most admirable instrument of education when it is no longer, as now, in the hands of political and financial bandits, bent on debasing and plundering their readers. And thus Le Petit Beaumontais, cleansed and rejuvenated, was beginning to render great services, contributing day by day to increase of enlightenment, reason, and brotherliness.

A few days later a terrible storm, one of those September storms which consume everything, destroyed the Capuchin chapel at Maillebois. That chapel was the last religious edifice of the district remaining open, and several bigots still attended it. At Jonville, Abb� Cognasse had lately been found dead in his sacristy, carried off by an apoplectic stroke, which had followed one of his violent fits of anger; and his church, long empty, was now definitively closed. At Maillebois, Abb� Coquard no longer even opened the doors of St. Martin's, but officiated alone at the altar, unable as he was to find a server for the Mass. Thus the little chapel of the Capuchins, which, with its big gilded and painted statue of St. Antony of Padua, standing amid candles and artificial flowers, retained to the end its reputation as a miracle-shop, sufficed for the few folk who still followed the observances of the Church.

That day, as it happened, they were celebrating there some festival connected with the saint,[3] a ceremony which had attracted about a hundred of the faithful. Yielding to the solicitations of Father Th�odose, Father Crabot, who nowadays remained shut up at La D�sirade, where he intended to install some pious enterprise, had decided to honour the solemnity with his presence. Thus both were there, one officiating, the other seated in a velvet arm-chair before the statue of the great saint, who was implored to show his miraculous power and obtain from God the grace of some dreadful cataclysm, such as would at once sweep away the infamous and sacrilegious society of the new times. And it was then that the storm burst forth. A great inky, terrifying cloud spread over Maillebois; there came flashes of lightning, which seemed to show the furnaces of hell blazing in the empyrean, and thunderclaps which suggested salvoes of some giant artillery bombarding the earth. Father Th�odose had ordered the bells to be rung, and a loud and prolonged pealing arose from the chapel, as if to indicate to the Deity that this was His house and should be protected by Him. But in lieu thereof extermination came. A frightful clap resounded, the lightning struck the bells, descended by the rope, and burst forth in the nave with a detonation as if the very heavens were crumbling. Father Th�odose, fired as he stood at the altar, flamed there like a torch. The sacerdotal vestments, the sacred vases, the very tabernacle, were melted, reduced to ashes. And the great St. Antony, shivered to pieces, fell upon the stricken Father Crabot, of whom only a bent and blackened skeleton remained beneath all the dust. And as if those two ministers of the Church were not sufficient sacrifice, five of the devotees present were also killed, while the others fled, howling with terror, eager to escape being crushed by the vaulted roof, which cracked, then crumbled in a pile of remnants, leaving nought of the cult intact.

[3] The real festival of St. Antony of Padua falls on June 13th.—Trans.

The stupefaction was universal throughout Maillebois. How could the Deity of the Holy Roman and Apostolic Church have made such a mistake? The same question had often been asked in former times—each time, indeed, that a church had been struck and its steeple had fallen on the priest and the kneeling worshippers. Had God desired, then, the end of the religion which had taken His name? Or, more reasonably, was it that no Divine hand whatever guided the lightning, and that it was but a natural force, which would prove a source of happiness whenever mankind should have domesticated it? In any case, after the calamity, Brother Gorgias suddenly reappeared and was seen hurrying along the streets of Maillebois, crying aloud that God had made no mistake. It was to him, he said, that God had hearkened, resolving to strike down his imbecile and cowardly superiors, and thus give a lesson to the whole Church, which could only flourish anew by the power of fire and steel. And a month later Gorgias himself was found, his skull split, his body soiled with filth, outside the same suspicious house before which, some time previously, a passer had already found the body of Victor Milhomme.