Complete Works of Emile Zola (1662 page)

Suzanne said, laughing:

“Some seem to be betrothed in their cradles, and divorce will be done away with, for each pair will know one another too well to wed blindly. Come, my good Luc, now it is recreation - time, and I want you to hear my pupils sing.”

Sœurette stayed with her babies, for it was time to bathe them, and Josine went to the hall where girls were taught sewing if they preferred to devote their play-hour thereto, for many were delighted to make doll-clothes. Luc went with Suzanne along the corridor upon which opened the five class-rooms.

The classes became so crowded that it had been necessary to subdivide them, to construct larger rooms, and also to enlarge the gymnasia and apprentice-shops and the gardens in which the children had their play-time every two hours. After some uncertainty, the method of instruction and education had been settled, and the system of teaching which made study attractive by letting the pupil to some degree follow his own bent, requiring on his part only his best effort to learn the lessons he had chosen, gave excellent results, and every year sent forth into the city a new generation fitted to promote more truth and righteousness. It was the right way — the only way — to cultivate good for the future, to bring up the men who would be needed on the morrow, free from false dogmas, brought up to accept only realities, instructed in such scientific facts as had been proved and accepted as certainties.

Formerly nothing had seemed better than to place a whole class under the ferule of a strict master, who exerted himself to force his own views and his own will on fifty pupils of different intellectual capacities. It now seemed more natural to awaken in each student a desire to acquire knowledge, then to direct him in his discoveries, and to encourage such individual faculties as each might manifest. The five classes had thus become a sort of field of experiment, in which children in a sort of graduated way roamed over various branches of human knowledge, not that they might be crammed with what they could not digest, but that there might be aroused in each an interest in what was adapted to his intellectual capacity. Thus each might be allowed to absorb what commended itself to his comprehension, so that he might be enabled to decide what specialty he should take up in his future career. Never had the saying “You must learn to know how to learn” seemed more true than in this system. It aimed at clearing young brains; it aimed at giving every young person his choice among an immense number of subjects, and in the end put to practical use all his intelligence and all his energy. And that object was accomplished, thanks to an interest created in study, thanks to the wholesome liberty of choice accorded to each student, and to the constant play-hours, full of activity and delight, which broke into his hours of hard brain-work.

Luc and Suzanne had to wait a moment until the classes were dismissed. From the corridor along which they were slowly walking they could glance into the great schoolrooms, where each pupil had his own little table and chair. They had given up long tables and benches, that every child might have his things to himself. But what a gay sight it was, boys and girls sitting together as chance placed them! And what eager attention they all paid to the master who was standing in the midst of them, or walking from one to the other, talking his lesson, as it were, ready to answer questions or to receive contradictions sometimes. As there were neither rewards nor punishments, all were inspired by a desire to gain credit, by showing how much more than others he had understood. Often the master invited those to talk whose minds he knew were full of the subject, and thus the class kept up a constant interest in the discussions. All means were tried to make the pupils take a living interest in their studies, to draw them away from the dead letter of books and invite them to feel a personal enthusiasm for the ideas that they were being taught. What pleasure there was in beginning to learn and to know, as the five classes saw spread out before them all human knowledge, like a real moving cosmorama of the whole great world, of which each one of us ought to know something, in order to act his part in it and to be happy.

There was a joyous clamor in the schools. It was playtime. It was a pleasant sight to see the tumult when the classes rushed out, boys and girls all brotherly and good friends with each other. They always seemed to keep together; games were played by both sexes without distinction; some preferred talking, others went into the gymnasium or into the apprentices’ workshops. There was much gay and genial laughter. There was only one play that is popular among French children that was discouraged, and that was one called
le petit mari et la petite femme
, for these children were as yet but playfellows and comrades. The time might come when they would begin to love and wish to know each other more intimately. A very handsome boy, nine years old, very sturdy and strong, threw himself into Luc’s arms, crying:

“
Good-morning, grandfather!”

It was Maurice, the son of Thérèse Froment, who had married a Morfain, Raymond, son of Petit-Da, the splendid giant, and Honorine Caffiaux.

“Ah!” said Suzanne, gayly,
“
now I have got my singing bird, with his voice like that of a little angel. Hush, children, won’t you? We are going to sing our pretty song and chorus on this lawn under these great chestnut-trees.”

The whole band in a moment gathered round her. Among the twenty there were two boys and a girl whom Luc tenderly kissed: Ludovic Boisgelin, nearly eleven, was the son of Paul Boisgelin and Antoinette Bonnaire, that first marriage in which love was conqueror, the first annunciation of the fusion of classes that was soon to be so common; Félicien Bonnaire, now fourteen, was the son of Séverin Bonnaire and of Léonie, the daughter of Achille Gourier and Ma Bleue, the pair who had sought each other out among the wild and fragrant rocks of the Monts Bleuses; Germaine Yvonnot, now sixteen, was the granddaughter of Auguste Laboque and Marthe Bourron, the daughter of their son Adolphe and Zoé Bonnaire — she was a handsome child, dark and merry; in her veins flowed the blood of the workman, the peasant, and the retail tradesman, classes so long and bitterly at war with one another; and it amused Luc to disentangle the skein of these various alliances, running continually one into the other. He enjoyed himself in the midst of all these curly heads, and was delighted to find himself among such a swarm of children sprung from these marriages, who were now peopling his city.

“Now you shall hear them sing,” said Suzanne. “They are going to sing a hymn to the rising sun, a child’s salutation to the orb that ripens the harvest.”

On the lawn, among the great chestnut-trees, about fifty children were assembled. And the song rose fresh and joyous. It showed no great musical science. It was a simple alternation of verses, sung by a little girl and little boy, each verse followed by a chorus. But it was so lively and showed so much belief in the blessedness of the great source of light and heat that the shrill, sharp, childish voices had a touching charm. Little Maurice Morfain, who sang the alternate solo with Germaine Yvonnot, had, indeed, as Suzanne said, the voice of an angel — a voice of crystalline clearness like the upper notes of a flute. And then came the warbling of the choir, like the voices of birds chirping among the branches. Nothing could have been more charming.

Luc laughed like a kind, pleased grandfather, and Maurice, proud of his performance, came rushing into his arms.

“It is no more than the truth, my little man, that you sing like a nightingale. And that is a good and charming thing, because all through life, you see, you will be able to sing whenever you are sad, and that will give you courage. You must never cry when you are in trouble — you must always sing.”

“Ah! that is what I always tell them,” cried Suzanne, with her tender bravery. “Everybody ought to sing. I teach them how to sing that they may sing here at school, and then in the shops, and after that wherever they may be their whole life long. A nation that sings is a people of health and joy.”

She grew merry. She put no severity and no vanity into her teaching, but gave her lessons often in the garden, for her only ambition was to open the little hearts of her pupils to the happy influences of fraternal song and to the great beauty of harmony. As she said, her only wish was that the whole happy city, when righteousness and peace had been secured, might sing in the glad sunshine.

“Come, my little ones,” she said, “try it again, and keep time. Don’t hurry; we have plenty of leisure.”

Again the song rose, but towards its end something troubled the singers. Behind the chestnut - trees, in a clump of bushes, a man suddenly appeared. He looked about him furtively, then he turned and hid himself. Luc had, however, recognized Boisgelin, and he was surprised at his singular proceedings, for he saw him stoop and examine the grass as if he were looking for some hole or hiding-place. Then Luc began to understand. The poor man, who was mad, must be anxiously looking for some secret hiding-place in which to deposit the great wealth he conceived himself to possess, and prevent it from being stolen. Very often people met him in the state he was now in, trembling with fear, uncertain in what deep hole he could bury this excess of fortune. The weight of it crushed him. Luc felt a sudden thrill of pity, especially when he saw the little ones frightened at the apparition, like a flock of happy birds driven off by the sudden appearance of a bird of prey.

Suzanne, though she turned pale, only said to her pupils, in à loud voice:

“Keep time — keep time, my darlings! Give out the last words with all your hearts.”

Boisgelin, haggard and suspicious, disappeared like a black phantom among the flowering shrubs. And when the j children, recovering themselves, had saluted the king of day with a last strain of thankfulness, Luc and Suzanne congratulated them on their performance, and dismissed them to their games. Then, when they found themselves together, both walked towards the workshops of the apprentices on the other side of the garden.

“Did you see him?” whispered she, after a silence.
“
Ah! poor man, what anxiety he gives me!”

And when Luc regretted that he had not tried to join Boisgelin and to take him home, she cried again:

“He would not have gone with you. You would have had to use force, and that would have made a scandal. I must repeat that my great fear is that he may be found some day with all his bones broken at the bottom of some chasm.”

They again became silent, and finally reached the workshops where many pupils from the schools had been spending part of their play-time. Some had been engaged in sewing or embroidering, while others, in a plot of ground near the shops which had been given up to them, were digging, planting, and sowing.

They found Josine in a large hall full of sewing-machines, knitting-machines, and looms for weaving. These stood near together, and were watched over by boys and girls, for even after leaving school, schoolmates of both sexes kept together and shared life in common, engaging in the same work, and partaking the same pleasures. They had the same duties and the same rights, just as they had had in their school days. There was singing as they worked, each trying to do better than the rest in a spirit of joyous emulation.

“You hear how they are singing,” said Suzanne, recovering her gayety. “They are forever singing — my singing birds.”

Josine was showing a tall girl of sixteen, Clémentine Bourron, how to manage a sewing-machine, and make it do embroidery. And another little girl, not so old, for she was only nine, Aline Boisgelin, was waiting to be shown how to fell a seam by hand. Clémentine, who was the daughter of Sébastian Bourron and Agathe Fauchard, had poor Fauchard, the man who used to draw crucibles out of the furnaces, for her maternal grandfather, and for her paternal grandfather the puddler Bourron. Aline, the youngest sister of Ludovic, was the child of Paul Boisgelin and of Antoinette Bonnaire. She gave a little laugh of pleasure when she saw Suzanne, her grandmother, by whom she was adored.

“Oh! you know, grandmother, that I am not very good at felling seams, but I am beginning to do them nicely. Don’t I, dear Josine?”

J

Suzanne kissed her, and then watched Josine turning down one end of the seam to show how it ought to be done. Even Luc got interested in these little matters, well knowing that nothing is without importance, that a happy life is made up of the happy employment of all hours, and by having all the capabilities of each human being utilized, for each must have his energies, physical and intellectual, so employed that they shall always be in their normal condition. And Sœurette having rejoined them just as he was about to part from Josine and Suzanne, he found himself for a moment in the flower-garden with these three women — the three loving and devoted souls who so greatly aided him to realize his dream of righteousness and kindliness.

They conversed for a few moments under the shade of the trees, settling the work that was to be done by each, and talking over plans. If their little flock was growing up so satisfactorily without many drawbacks, giving them each such a harvest of good results, they agreed that it was due to the system of their instructors, who did not recognize the presence of bad instincts in human beings, but only natural energies. Passions and instincts they held to be admirable and useful forces, if only directed to make other individuals of the community more happy.

It was Luc’s theory that those we call bad men could have had their natural qualities trained to what is good and useful. Thus a man whose instincts are miserly can be trained to be prudent and economical. A man with a violent temper, an envious man, or a proud man can be turned into a hero who will make great sacrifices for the sake of glory.

In the school-rooms, in the apprentices’ workshops, and from the very first moment of existence, they turned the natural instincts of each to serve some good purpose, instead of repressing them. Thus naturally idle children were treated as if they had been sick; their teachers tried to rouse in them emulation and to strengthen their will power by making them take pains to study subjects chosen by themselves — things that they could understand and love. The strength of the turbulent was utilized in hard work; the miserly showed a love of method; the proud and the jealous, who were generally endowed with much intelligence, liked to be able to triumph over others by accomplishing the most difficult tasks. Thus what the world had been taught to call “man’s lower instincts” became fuel on the glowing hearth whence life derived its inextinguishable flame. All living forces were put to their proper uses, and all creation was regulated by the law of order, which flowed over human existence and conducted humanity towards the happy city.