Complete Works of Emile Zola (1691 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘To tell the truth,’ Delbos resumed, ‘Father Crabot strikes me as being a mediocrity, whose entire strength proceeds from the stupidity of those among whom he works. I am more distrustful of Father Philibin, whom you think a worthy man. I am impressed by his affected roughness and frankness. Suspicion clings to his doings and to Crabot’s in the time of the Countess de Quédeville, such as the drowning of that child Gaston, and all the more or less lawful manoeuvring to acquire the estate and the fortune. It happens that the only witness of Gaston’s death, Georges Plumet, the gardener’s son, is precisely Brother Gorgias, for whom Philibin assumed great affection and of whom he made an Ignorantine, when, of course, he changed his name. And now we find those three men together again, and the solution of the present mystery is to be found, perhaps, in that circumstance; for, if Brother Gorgias be guilty, the efforts of the others to save him might be explained by strong personal motives, the existence of some skeleton in their cupboard, and the dread lest he should speak out if he were abandoned. Unfortunately, as you said just now, we can only form suppositions, whereas we need substantial, authentic facts. However, let us keep on searching. Defence, I repeat it, will only be possible if I am armed sufficiently to be an accuser and an avenger.’ That conversation with Delbos inspirited David and Marc. And, even as had been foreseen, they tasted for a moment the pleasure of witnessing a quarrel in the clerical camp. At the outset of the affair Abbé Quandieu, the parish priest of Maillebois, had not concealed his belief in the innocence of Simon. He did not go so far as to accuse one of the Brothers; but he allowed it to be seen that he disapproved of the frantic campaign which the Brothers and the Capuchins were carrying on with the object of gaining the whole district for themselves; for, apart from his own loss of parishioners, it distressed him, for religion’s sake, to see the basest superstitions triumphing. When he found public opinion suddenly poisoned with respect to Simon’s case, he became neutral, never speaking of the affair, but dreading, in his sincere piety, lest his dear gentle Lord of charity and love should be slain and replaced by a God of falsehood and iniquity. His only consolation was that his views coincided with those of Monseigneur Bergerot, the Bishop, who was fond of him and whom he often visited. Like the priest himself, the Bishop was accused of Gallicanism which simply meant that he did not invariably bow to Rome, and that the idolatrous worship of images and the impudent trafficking of those who contracted to perform spurious miracles were repugnant to his pure faith. For instance, he observed with saddened eyes the invading tendencies of the Maillebois Capuchins, who so openly traded on the shrine of St. Antony of Padua which they had set up in their chapel, thus competing disloyally with the church of St. Martin, where Abbé Quandieu officiated. The Bishop’s anxiety increased when behind the Capuchins he divined the presence of the Jesuits, all the disciplined troops of his enemy Father Crabot, who was always employing his influence to thwart him, and who dreamt of becoming master of the diocese.

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

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

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

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