Complete Works of Emile Zola (1710 page)

‘Well, Monsieur Saleur,’ he exclaimed, ‘here’s a carnival and no mistake! Aren’t you ashamed to lend yourself to such ignominy?’

Though Saleur was not at heart with the priests, this remark vexed him. He construed it as an attack upon his own
bourgeois
position as an enriched grazier, living on his income in a pretty house, repainted and decorated at his own expense. So he sought for dignified words of reprimand: ‘You would do better to keep quiet, Monsieur Férou. The shame belongs to those who can’t even succeed sufficiently to lead respectable lives.’

Irritated by this rejoinder, which smacked of the low standard of morality that brought him so much suffering, Férou was about to reply when his anger was diverted by the sight of Jauffre.

‘Ah! colleague,’ said he, ‘so it was you who carry their banner of falsehood and imbecility! That’s a fine action for an educator of the lowly and humble ones of our democracy! You know very well that the priest’s gain is the schoolmaster’s loss.’

Jauffre, like a man who had an income of his own, and who, moreover, was well pleased with what he had done, replied with compassionate yet crushing contempt: ‘Before judging others, my poor comrade, you would do well to provide your daughters with shifts to hide their nakedness!’ At this Férou lost all self-control. With his unkempt hair bristling on his head, and a savage gleam in his wild eyes, he waved his long arms and cried: ‘You gang of bigots! you pack of Jesuits! Carry your bullock’s heart about, worship it, eat it raw, and become, if you can, even more bestial and imbecile than you are already!’

A crowd gathered around the blasphemer, hoots and threats arose, and things would have turned out badly for him if Saleur, like a prudent Mayor, alarmed for the good name of his commune, had not extricated him from the hostile throng and led him away by the arm.

On the morrow the incident was greatly exaggerated; on all sides people talked of execrable sacrilege. Indeed,
Le Petit Beaumontais
related that the schoolmaster of Le Moreux had spat on the national flag of the Sacred Heart at the very moment when worthy Abbé Cognasse was blessing that divine emblem of repentant and rescued France. And in its ensuing number it announced that the revocation of schoolmaster Férou was a certainty. If that were so, the consequences would be serious, for as Férou had not completed his term of ten years’ duty as a teacher he would have to perform some years’ military service. And, again, while he was in barracks, what would become of his wife and daughters, those woeful creatures for whom he was already unable to provide? He gone, would they not utterly starve to death?

When Marc heard of what had happened he went to see Salvan at Beaumont. This time the newspaper’s information was correct, the revocation of Férou was about to be signed, Le Barazer was resolved on it. And as Marc nevertheless begged his old friend to attempt some intervention, the other sadly refused to do so.

‘No, no, it would be useless,’ he said; ‘I should simply encounter inflexible determination. Le Barazer cannot act otherwise; at least, such is his conviction. Opportunist as he is, he finds in that course a means of ridding himself of the other difficulties of the present time.... And you must not complain too much; for if his severity falls on Férou it is in order that he may spare you.’

At this Marc burst into protest, saying how much he was upset and grieved by such a
dénouement
.

‘But you are not responsible, my dear fellow,’ Salvan replied.
‘
He is casting that prey to the clericals because they require one, and because he thus hopes to save a good workman like yourself. It is a very
distinguée
solution, as somebody said to me yesterday.... Ah! how many tears and how much blood must necessarily flow for the slightest progress to be accomplished, how many poor corpses must fill up the ditches in order that the heroes may pass on!’

Salvan’s forecast was fulfilled to the very letter. Two days afterwards Férou was dismissed, and, rather than resign himself to military service, he fled to Belgium, full of exasperation at the thought that justice should be denied him. He hoped to find some petty situation at Brussels, which would enable him to send for his wife and children, and make himself a new home abroad. He even ended by declaring that he felt relieved at having escaped from the university galleys, and that he now breathed freely, like a man who was at last at liberty to think and act as he listed.

Meantime his wife installed herself with her three little girls in two small, sordid rooms at Maillebois, where, with all bravery, she at once began to ply her needle as a seamstress, though she found herself unable to earn enough for daily bread. Marc visited her and helped her as far as he could, feeling quite heartbroken at the sight of her pitiable wretchedness. And a remorseful feeling clung to him, for the affair of the crucifix appeared to be forgotten amid the keen emotion roused by the sacrilege of Jonville and the revocation which had followed it.
Le Petit Beaumontais
triumphed noisily, and the Count de Sanglebœuf promenaded the town with victorious airs as if his friends, the Brothers, the Capuchins, and the Jesuits, had now become the absolute masters of the department. And then life followed its course, pending the time when the struggle would begin again, on another field.

One Sunday Marc was surprised to see his wife come home carrying a Mass-book. ‘What! have you been to church?’ he asked her.

Yes,’ she answered,’ I have just taken the Communion.’

He looked at her, turning pale the while, penetrated by a sudden chill, a quiver, which he strove to hide. ‘You do that now, and you did not tell me of it?’ said he.

On her side she feigned astonishment, though, according to her wont, she remained very calm and gentle: ‘Tell you of it — why?’ she asked. ‘It is a matter of conscience. I leave you free to act according to your views, so I suppose I may act according to mine.’

No doubt; all the same, for the sake of a good understanding between us, I should have liked to have known.’

Well, you know now. I do not hide it, as you may see. But we shall, none the less, remain good friends, I hope.’

She added nothing more, and he lacked the strength to tell her of all that he felt seething within him, to provoke the explanation which he knew to be imperative. But the day remained heavy with silence. This time some connecting link had certainly snapped and sundered them.

CHAPTER III

SOME months elapsed, and day by day Marc found him’ self confronted by the redoubtable question: Why had he married a woman whose belief was contrary to his own? Did not he and Geneviève belong to two hostile spheres, divided by an abyss, and would not their disagreement bring them the most frightful torture? Some scientists were suggesting that when people desired to marry they should undergo proper examination, and provide themselves with certificates setting forth that they were free from all physical flaws. The young man for his part felt convinced that all such certificates ought also to state that the holder’s heart and mind were free from every form of inherited or acquired imbecility. Two beings, ignorant one of the other, coming from different worlds, as it were, with contradictory and hostile notions, could only torture and destroy each other. And yet how great an excuse was, at the outset, furnished by the imperious blindness of love, and how difficult it was to solve the question in some particular cases, which were often those instinct with most charm and tenderness!

Marc did not yet accuse Geneviève — he merely dreaded lest she should become a deadly weapon in the hands of those priests and monks against whom he was waging war. As the Church had failed to strike him down by intriguing with his superiors, it must now be thinking of dealing him a blow in the heart by destroying his domestic happiness. That was essentially the device of the Jesuits, the everlasting manœuvre of the father-confessor, who helps on the work of Catholic domination in stealthy fashion, like a worldly psychologist well acquainted with the passions and the means they offer for triumphing over the human beast, who, fondled and satiated, may then be strangled. To glide into a home, to set oneself between husband and wife, to capture the latter and thereby destroy the man whom the
Church
wishes to get rid of, no easier and more widely adopted stratagem than this is known to the black whisperers of the confessional.

The Church, having taken possession of woman, has used her as its most powerful weapon of propaganda and enthralment. At the first moment an obstacle certainly arose. Was not woman all shame and perdition, a creature of sin, and terror, before whom the very saints trembled? Vile nature had set its trap in her, she was the source of life, she was life itself, the contempt of which was taught by the Church. And so for a moment the latter denied a soul to woman, the creature from whom men of purity fled to the desert, in danger of succumbing if the evening breeze wafted to them merely the odour of her hair. Beauty and passion being cast out of the religious system, she became the mere embodiment of all that was condemned, all that was regarded as diabolical, denounced as the craft of Satan, all against which prayer, mortification, and strict and perpetual chastity were enjoined. And in the desire to crush sexuality in woman, the ideal woman was shown sexless, and a virgin was enthroned as queen of heaven.

But the Church ended by understanding the irresistible sexual power of woman over man, and in spite of its repugnance, in spite of its terror, decided to employ it as a means to conquer and enchain man. That great flock of women, weakened by an abasing system of education, terrorised by the fear of hell, degraded to the status of serfs by the hatred and harshness of priests, might serve as an army. And as man was ceasing to believe and turning aside from the altars, an effort to bring him back to them might be attempted with the help of woman’s Satanic but ever victorious charm. She need only withhold herself from man, and he would follow her to the very foot of the shrines. In this, no doubt, there was much immoral inconsistency; but had not the Church lost much of its primitive sternness, and had not the Jesuits appeared upon the scene to fight the great fight on the new field of casuistry and accommodation with the world? From that time, then, the Church handled woman more gently and skilfully than before. It still refused to take her to wife, for it feared and loathed her as the embodiment of sin, but it employed her to ensure its triumph.

Its policy was to keep her to itself, by stupefying her as formerly, by holding her in a state of perpetual mental in
fancy. That much ensured
, it turned her into a weapon
of war, confident that it
would vanquish incredulous man by setting pious woman before him. And in woman the Church always had a witness at the family hearth, and was able to exert its influence even in the most intimate moments of conjugal life, whenever it desired to plunge resisting men into the worst despair. Thus, at bottom, woman still remained the human animal, and the priests merely made use of her in order to ensure the triumph of their creed.

Marc easily reconstituted the early phases of Geneviève’s life: in childhood, the pleasant convent of the Sisters of the Visitation, with all sorts of devout attractions; the evening prayer on one’s knees beside the little white bed; the providential protection promised to those who were obedient; the lovely stories of Christians saved from lions, of guardian angels watching over children, and carrying the pure souls of the well-beloved to heaven, such indeed as Monsieur le Curé related in the dazzling chapel. Afterwards came years of skilful preparation for the first Communion, with the extraordinary mysteries of the Catechism enshrouded in fearsome obscurity, for ever disturbing the reason, and kindling all the perverse fever of mystical curiosity. Then in the first troublous hour of maidenhood the young girl, enraptured with her white gown, her first bridal gown, was affianced to Jesus, united to the divine lover, whose gentle sway she accepted for ever; and man might come afterwards, he would find himself forestalled by an influence which would dispute his possession of her with all the haunting force of remembrance. Again and again throughout her life woman would see the candles sparkling, feel the incense filling her with languor, hark back to the wakening of her senses amid the mysterious whispering of the confessional and the languishing rapture of the Holy Table. She would spend her youth encompassed by the worst prejudices, nourished with the errors and falsehoods of ages, and, above all things, kept in close captivity in order that nothing of the real world might reach her. Thus the girl of sixteen or seventeen, on quitting the good Sisters of the Visitation, was a miracle of perversion and stultification, one whose natural vision had been dimmed, one who knew nothing of herself nor of others, and who in the part she would play in love and wifehood would bring, apart from her beauty, nought save religious poison, the evil ferment of every disorder and every suffering.

Marc pictured Geneviève, somewhat later in the devout
little house
on the Place des Capucins he had first seen her in the charge of her grandmother and mother, the chief care of whose vigilant affection had been to complete the convent work by setting on one side everything that might have made the girl a creature of truth and reason. It was enough that she should follow the Church’s observances like an obedient worshipper; she was told that she need take no interest in other things; she was prepared for life by being kept quite blind to it. Some effort on Marc’s part was already necessary to enable him to recall her such as she had been at the time of their first interviews — delightfully fair, with a refined and gentle face, so desirable too with the flush of her youth, the penetrating perfume of her blond beauty, that he only vaguely remembered whether she had then shown much intelligence and sense. A gust of passion had transported them both; he had felt that she shared his flame; for, however chilling might have been her education, she had inherited from her father a real craving for love.

In matters of intellect she was doubtless no fool; he must have deemed her similar to other young girls, of whom one knows nothing; and certainly he had resolved to look into all that after their marriage. But when he now recalled their first years at Jonville he perceived how slight had been his efforts to know her better and make her more wholly his own. They had spent those years in mutual rapture, in such passionate intoxication that they had remained unconscious even of their moral differences. She showed real intelligence in many things, and he had not cared to worry her about the singular gaps which he had occasionally discovered in her understanding. As she ceased to follow the observances of the Church he imagined that he had won her over to his views, though he had not even taken the trouble to instruct her in them. He now suspected that there must have been some little cowardice on his part, some dislike of the bother of re-educating her entirely, and also some fear of encountering obstacles, and spoiling the adorable quietude of their love. Indeed, as their life was all happiness, why should he have sought a cause of strife, particularly as he had felt convinced that their great love would suffice to ensure their good understanding whatever might arise?