Complete Works of Emile Zola (1713 page)

Alarmed at finding him so excited, Marc tried to calm him by promising to do all he could for his wife and daughters. In two years’ time he would be released, and then some position might be found for him, and he would be able to begin his life afresh. But Férou remained gloomy, and growled angry words: ‘No, no, I’m done for. I shall never get through those two years quietly. They know it well, and it’s to get the chance of killing me like a mad dog that they are sending me yonder.’

Then he inquired who had replaced him at Le Moreux, and on hearing that it was a man named Chagnat, an ex-assistant teacher at Brévannes, a large parish of the region, he began to laugh bitterly. Chagnat, a dusky little man with a low brow and retreating mouth and chin, was the personification of the perfect beadle — not a hypocrite like Jauffre, who made use of religion as a means to advancement, but a shallow-brained bigot, such a dolt indeed as to believe in any nonsensical trash that fell from the priest’s lips. His wife, a huge carroty creature, was yet more stupid than himself. And Férou’s bitter gaiety increased when he learnt that Mayor Saleur had completely abdicated in favour of that idiot Chagnat, whom Abbé Cognasse employed as a kind of sacristan-delegate to rule the parish on his behalf.

‘When I told you long ago,’ said Férou, ‘that all that dirty gang, the priests, the good Brothers, and the good now it has come to pass; they are your masters, and you’ll see into what a fine mess they will lead you. It disgusts one to be a man: a stray dog is less to be pitied. And as for myself I’ve had quite enough of it all. I’ll bring things to an end if they plague me.’

Nevertheless Férou was sent off to join his regiment, and another three months went by, the wretchedness of his unhappy wife steadily increasing. She, once so fair and pleasant with her bright and fresh round face, now looked twice as old as she really was, aged betimes by hard toil and want. She still found very little work, and spent an entire winter month fireless, almost without bread. To make matters worse, her eldest daughter fell ill with typhoid fever, and lay perishing in the icy garret into which the wind swept through every chink in the door and window. Marc, who in a discreet way had already given alms to the poor woman, at last begged his wife to entrust her with some work.

Although Geneviève spoke of Férou even as those whom she met at her grandmother’s house spoke of him, saying that he had blasphemously insulted the Sacred Heart and was a sacrilegist, she felt stirred by the story of his wife’s bitter want. ‘Yes,’ she said to her husband, ‘Louise needs a new frock; I have the stuff, and I will take it to that woman.’

‘Thank you for her. I will go with you,’ Marc replied.

On the following day they repaired together to Madame Férou’s sordid lodging, whence her landlord threatened to expel her as she was in arrears with her rent. Her eldest daughter was now near her death; and when the Froments arrived she herself and her two younger girls were sobbing in heartrending fashion amid the fearful disorder of the place. For a moment Marc and Geneviève remained standing there, amazed and unable to understand the situation.

You haven’t heard it, you haven’t heard it, have you?’ Madame Férou at last exclaimed. ‘Well, it’s done now; they are going to kill him. Ah! he guessed it; he said that those brigands would end by having his skin.’

She went on speaking in a disjointed fashion amid her sobs, and Marc was thus able to extract from her the distressful story. Férou, as was inevitable, had turned out a very bad soldier, and unfavourably noted by his superiors, treated with the utmost harshness as a revolutionary, he had carried a quarrel with his corporal so far as to rush on the latter and kick and pommel him. For this he had been court-martialed, and they were now about to send him to a military
bagnio
in Aljgena, where he would be drafted into one of those disciplinary companies, among which the abominable tortures of the old ages are still practised.

‘He will never come back, they will murder him!’ his wife continued in a fury. ‘He wrote to bid me good-bye; he knows that he will soon be killed.... And what shall I do? What will become of my poor children? Ah! the brigands, the brigands!’

Marc listened, sorely grieved, unable to think of a word of consolation, whereas Geneviève began to show signs of impatience. ‘But, my dear Madame Férou,’ she exclaimed, ‘why should they kill your husband? The officers of our army are not in the habit of killing their men. You increase your own distress by your unjust thoughts.’

‘They are brigands, I tell you!’ the unhappy woman repeated with growing violence. ‘What! my poor Férou starved for eight years, discharging the most ungrateful duties, and he is taken for another two years and treated like a brute beast, simply because he spoke like a sensible man! And now what was bound to happen has happened; he is sent to the galleys, where they’ll end by murdering him after dragging him from agony to agony! No, no, I won’t have it! I’ll go and tell them that they are all a band of brigands — brigands!’

Marc endeavoured to calm her. He, all kindliness and equity, was shocked by such excessive social iniquity. But what could those on whom it recoiled, the wife and children, do, crushed as they were beneath the millstone of tragic fate? ‘Be reasonable,’ said he. ‘We will try to do something; we will not forsake you.’

But Geneviève had become icy cold. That wretched home where the mother was wringing her hands, where the poor puny girls were sobbing and lamenting, no longer inspired her with any pity. She no longer even saw the eldest daughter, wrapped in the shreds of a blanket and looking so ghastly as she gazed at the scene with dilated, expressionless eyes, unable even to weep, such was her weakness. Erect and rigid, still carrying the little parcel formed of the stuff for Louise’s new frock, the young woman slowly said:

‘You must place yourself in the hands of God. Cease to offend Him, for He might punish you still more.’

A laugh of terrible scorn came from Madame Férou: ‘Oh!

God is too busy with the rich to pay attention to the poor
!’
she cried. ‘It was in His name that we were reduced to this misery, it is in His name that they are going to murder my poor husband!’

At this Geneviève was carried away by anger: ‘You blaspheme! You deserve no help!’ said she. ‘If you had only shown a little religious feeling, I know persons who would have helped you already.’

‘But I ask you for nothing, madame,’ the poor woman answered. ‘Yes, I know that help has been refused me because I do not go to confession. Even Abbé Quandieu, who is so charitable, does not dare to include me among his poor.... But I am not a hypocrite, I simply endeavour to earn my bread by work.’

‘Well, then, apply for work to the wretched madmen who regard the priests and the officers as brigands!’

And thereupon Geneviève hurried away in a passion, carrying with her the stuff for her daughter’s frock. Marc was obliged to follow her, though he quivered with indignation. And halfway down the stairs he could restrain himself no longer. ‘You have just done a bad action!’ he exclaimed. ‘How?’

‘How? A God of kindness would be charitable to all. Your God of wrath and punishment is but a monstrous phantasy.... It is not necessary that one should humble oneself to deserve assistance, it is sufficient that one should suffer.’

‘No, no! Those who sin deserve their sufferings! Let them suffer if they persist in impiety. My duty is to do nothing for them.’

That same evening, when they were alone, the quarrel began afresh, and Marc, on his side, for the first time became violent, unable as he was to forgive Geneviève’s lack of charity. Hitherto he had fancied that her mind alone was threatened, but was it not evident now that her heart also would be spoilt? And that night irreparable words were spoken, husband and wife realised what an abyss had been dug between them by invisible hands. Then both relapsed into silence in the black room full of grief and pain, and on the morrow they did not exchange a word.

Moreover, a source of constant disputes, one which was bound to make rupture inevitable, had now sprung up. Louise would be soon ten years old, and the question of sending her to Abbé Quandieu’s Catechism classes, in order that she might be prepared for her first Communion, presented itself. Marc, after begging Mademoiselle Rouzaire to exempt his daughter from all religious exercises, had noticed that the schoolmistress took no account of his request, but crammed the child with orisons and canticles as she did with her other pupils. But he was obliged to close his eyes to it, for he realised that the schoolmistress was only too anxious to have a chance of appealing to Geneviève on the subject in order to create trouble in his home. When the Catechism question arose, however, he desired to act firmly, and watched for an opportunity to have a decisive explanation with Geneviève. That opportunity presented itself naturally enough on the day when Louise, returning from her lessons, said to her mother in her father’s presence: ‘Mamma, Mademoiselle Rouzaire told me to ask you to see Abbé Quandieu, so that he may put my name down for his Catechism class.’

“All right, my dear, I will go to see him to-morrow.’ Marc, who was reading, quickly raised his head: ‘Excuse me, my dear, but you will not go to Abbé Quandieu.’

‘Why not?’

‘It is simple enough. I do not wish Louise to follow the Catechism lessons because I do not wish her to make her first Communion.’

Geneviève did not immediately lose her temper, but laughed as if with ironical compassion: ‘You are out of your senses, my friend,’ said she. ‘Not make her first Communion indeed! Why in that case how would you find a husband for her? What a casteless, shameless position you would give her throughout her life! Besides, you allowed her to be baptised, you allowed her to learn her Bible history and prayers, so it is illogical on your part to forbid the Catechism and the Communion.’

Marc also kept his temper for the moment, and answered quietly: ‘You are right, I was weak, and for that very reason I am resolved to be weak no longer. I showed all tolerance for your belief as long as the child remained quite young, and hung about your skirts. A daughter, it is said, ought to belong more particularly to her mother, and I am willing that it should be so until the time comes when the question of the girl’s moral life, her whole future, presents itself. Surely the father then has a right to intervene?’

Geneviève waved her hand impatiently and her voice
began to
tremble as she answered: ‘I wish Louise to follow the Catechism lessons; you don’t wish her to do so. If we have equal rights over the child we may go on disputing for ever without reaching a solution. What I desire seems to you idiotic, and what you desire appears to me abominable.’

‘Oh! what I desire, what I desire! My desire simply is that my daughter shall not be prevented from exercising her own free will later on.... The question now is to profit by her childishness in order to deform her mind and heart, poison her with lies, and render her for ever incapable of becoming human and sensible. And that is what I desire to prevent. But I do not wish to impose my will on her, I simply wish to ensure her the free exercise of her will at a later date.’

‘But how do you provide for that? What is to be done with this big girl?’

‘It is only necessary to let her grow up and to open her eyes to every truth. When she is twenty she will decide who is right — you or I; and if she should then think it sensible and logical she will revert to the Catechism and make her first Communion.’

At this Geneviève exploded: ‘You are really mad! You say such absurd things before the child that I feel ashamed of you!’

Marc also lost patience. ‘Absurd, my poor wife? It is your notions that are absurd! And I won’t have my child’s mind perverted with such absurdities.’

‘Be quiet! be quiet!’ she cried. ‘You don’t know what you wrench from me when you speak like that! Yes, you tear away all my love for you, all our happiness, which I should still like to save!... But how are we to agree if words no longer have the same meaning for us, if what you declare to be absurd is for me the divine and the eternal?... And is not your fine logic at fault? How can Louise choose between your ideas and mine if you now prevent me from having her instructed as I desire?... I do not prevent you from telling her whatever you wish, but I must be free to take her to the Catechism class.’

Marc was already weakening: ‘I know the theory,’ said he. ‘The child enlightened by both the father and the mother, with the right of choosing between their views later on. But is that right left intact when a full course of religious training, aggravating the child’s long Catholic heredity, deprives her of all power of thinking and acting freely? The father, who is so imperfectly armed, can do little when he talks truth and sense to a girl whose senses and whose heart are disturbed by others. And when she has grown up amid the pomps of the Church, its terrifying mysteries and its mystical absurdities, it is too late for her to revert to a little sense — her mind has been warped for ever.’

‘If you have your right as a father,’ Geneviève retorted violently, ‘I have my right as a mother. You are not going to take my daughter from me when she is only ten years old and still has so much need of me. It would be monstrous! I am an honest woman, and I mean to make Louise an honest woman too.... She shall go to the Catechism class, and, if necessary, I myself will take her!’

Marc, who had risen from his chair, made a furious gesture of protest, but he had strength enough to restrain the violent, the supreme words which would have precipitated immediate rupture. What could he say, what could he do? As usual, he recoiled from the fearful prospect of seeing his home destroyed, his happiness changed into hourly torture. He still loved that woman who showed herself so narrowminded and particularly so stubborn; there still lingered on his lips the taste of hers; and he could not forget, he could not obliterate, the happy days of their early married life, the powerful bond then formed between them, that child who was the flesh of their flesh, and now the cause of their quarrels. Like many others before him he felt he was driven into a corner, whence he could not extricate himself unless he took to brutal courses — tore the child from her mother’s arms, and plunged the house into desolation and commotion every day. And there was too much gentleness, too much kindness, in his nature; he lacked the cold energy that was requisite for a struggle in which his own heart and the hearts of those he loved must bleed. On that field then he was foredoomed to defeat.