Complete Works of Emile Zola (1717 page)

‘Delbos alone can guide us,’ said David by way of conclusion. ‘If you are willing, Marc, we will go to see him on Thursday.’

Quite so: call for me on Thursday.’

In ten years Advocate Delbos had risen to a remarkable position at Maillebois. The Simon affair, that compromising case, the brief in which had been prudently declined by all his colleagues and bravely accepted by himself, had decided his future. At that time he had been merely a peasant’s son, imbued with some democratic instincts and gifted with eloquence. But, while studying the affair and gradually becoming the impassioned defender of the truth, he had found himself in presence of all the
bourgeois
forces coalescing in favour of falsehood and the maintenance of every social iniquity. And this had ended by making him a militant Socialist, one who felt convinced that the salvation of the country could come solely from the masses. By degrees the whole revolutionary party of the town had grouped itself around him, and at the last elections he had forced a second ballot on the radical Lemarrois, who had been deputy for twenty years. And if Delbos still suffered in his immediate interests from the circumstance that he had defended a Jew charged with every crime, he was gradually rising to a lofty position by the firmness of his faith and the quiet valour of his actions, going forward to victory with gay and virile confidence.

As soon as Marc had shown him the copy-slip obtained from Madame Alexandre, the advocate raised a loud cry of delight: ‘At last we hold them!’ And turning towards David he added: ‘This gives us a second new fact. The first is the letter — a forgery, no doubt — which was illegally communicated to the jury.... We must try to find it among the papers of the case.... And the second is this copy-slip, bearing the stamp of the Brothers’ school, and a paraph which is evidently that of Brother Gorgias. It will, I think, be easier and more effective to use this second proof.’

‘Then what do you advise me to do?’ asked David. ‘My idea is to write a letter to the Minister of Justice on behalf of my sister-in-law, a letter formally denouncing Brother Gorgias as the perpetrator of the crime, and applying for the revision of my brother’s case.’

Delbos had become thoughtful again. ‘That would undoubtedly be the correct course,’ said he, ‘but it is a delicate matter, and we must not act too hastily.... Let us return for a moment to the illegal communication of that letter, which it will be so difficult for us to prove as long as we cannot induce Architect Jacquin to relieve his conscience. You remember Father Philibin’s evidence — his vague allusion to a paper signed by your brother with a flourish, similar to that on the incriminating copy-slip — a paper about which he would give no precise information — being bound, said he, by confessional secrecy? Well, I am convinced that he was then alluding to the very letter which was placed in Judge Gragnon’s hands at the last moment, for which reason, like you, I suspect it to be forged. But these are only suppositions, theories; and we need proofs. Now, if we drop that matter, and, for the time at all events, content ourselves with this duplicate copy of the writing slip, on which the school stamp appears, and on which the initialling is much plainer, we still find ourselves face to face with some puzzling, obscure points. Without lingering too much over the question how it happened that such a slip was in the Brother’s pocket at the moment of the crime — a point which it is rather difficult to explain — I am very worried by the disappearance of the corner on which the school stamp must have been impressed; and I should like to find that corner before acting, for I can foresee all sorts of objections which will be raised in opposition to us, in order to throw the affair into a muddle.’

Marc looked at him in astonishment. ‘What! find that comer? It would be a wonderful chance if we should do so! We even admitted that it might have been torn away by the victim’s teeth.’

‘Oh! that is not credible,’ Delbos answered. ‘Besides, in that case the fragment would have been found on the floor. Nothing was found, so the corner was intentionally torn off. Besides, we here detect the intervention of Father Philibin, for, as you have told me, your assistant Mignot remembers that at his first glance the copy-slip appeared to him to be intact, and that he felt surprised when, after losing sight of it for a moment, he saw it still in Father Philibin’s hands and mutilated. So there is no doubt on the point; the corner was torn away by Father Philibin. Throughout the campaign it was he, always he who turned up at decisive moments to save the culprit! And this is why I should like to have complete proof — that is to say, the little fragment of paper which he carried away with him.’

At this David in his turn expressed his surprise: ‘You think that he kept it?’

‘Certainly I think so. At all events he may have kept it. Philibin is a taciturn man, extremely dexterous, however coarse and heavy he may look. He must have preserved that fragment as a weapon for his own defence, as a means of keeping a hold over his accomplices. I nowadays suspect that, influenced by some motive which remains obscure, he was the great artisan of the iniquity. Perhaps he was merely guided by a spirit of fidelity towards his chief, Father Crabot; perhaps there has been some skeleton between them since that suspicious affair of the donation of Valmarie; perhaps too Philibin was actuated simply by militant faith and a desire to promote the triumph of the Church. At all events he’s a terrible fellow, a man of determination and action, by the side of whom that noisy, empty Brother Fulgence is merely a vain fool.’

Marc had begun to ponder. ‘Father Philibin, Father Philibin.... Yes, I was altogether mistaken about him. Even after the trial I still thought him a worthy man, a man of upright nature, even if warped by his surroundings.... Yes, yes, he was the great culprit, the artisan of forgery and falsehood.’

But David again turned to Delbos: ‘Suppose,’ said he, ‘that Philibin should have kept the corner which he tore from the slip, you surely don’t expect that he will give it to you, if you ask him for it — do you?’

‘Oh! no,’ the advocate answered with a laugh. ‘But before attempting anything decisive I should like to reflect, and ascertain if there is no means of securing the irrefutable proof. Moreover, a demand for the revision of a case is a very serious matter, and nothing ought to be left to chance.... Let me complete our case if I can; give me a few days — two or three weeks if necessary — and then we will act.’

On the morrow Marc understood by his wife’s manner that her grandmother had spoken out and that the Congregations, from Father Crabot to the humblest of the Ignorantines, were duly warned. The affair suddenly burst into life again, there came increasing agitation and alarm. Informed as they were of the discovery of the duplicate copy-slip, conscious that the innocent man’s family were now on the road to the truth, hourly expecting to see Brother Gorgias denounced, the guilty ones, Brother Fulgence, Father Philibin, and Father Crabot, returned to the fray, striving to hide their former crime by committing fresh ones. They divined that the masterpiece of iniquity which they had reared so laboriously, and defended so fiercely, was now in great peril, and, yielding to that fatality whereby one lie inevitably leads to endless others, they were ready for the worst deeds in order to save their work from destruction. Besides, it was no mere question of protecting themselves, the salvation of the Church would depend on the battle. If the infamous structure of falsehood should collapse, would not the Congregations be buried beneath it? The Brothers’ school would be ruined, closed, while the secular school triumphed; the Capuchins’ business would be seriously damaged, customers would desert them, their shrine of St. Antony of Padua would be reduced to paltry profits; the college of Valmarie likewise would be threatened, the Jesuits would be forced to quit the region which they now educated under various disguises; and all religious influence would decline, the breach in the flanks of the Church would be enlarged, and free thought would clear the highway to the future. How desperate therefore was the resistance, how fiercely did the whole clerical army arise in order that it might not be compelled to cede aught of the wretched region of error and dolour, which, for ages, it had steeped in night!

Before Brother Gorgias was even denounced, his superiors felt it necessary to defend him, to cover him at all costs, to forestall the threatened attack, by concocting a story which might prove his innocence. At the first moment, however, there was terrible confusion; the Brother was seen hurrying wildly, on his long thin legs, along the streets of Maillebois and the roads of the neighbourhood. With his eagle beak set between his projecting cheek-bones, his deep black eyes, with their thick brows, and his grimacing mouth, he resembled a fierce, scoffing bird of prey. In the course of one day he was seen on the road to Valmarie, then quitting the residence of Philis, the Mayor of Maillebois, then alighting from a train which had brought him from Beaumont. Moreover, both in the town and the surrounding country many cassocks and frocks were encountered hurrying hither and thither, thus testifying to a perfect panic. It was only on the morrow that the meaning of the agitation was made evident by an article in
Le Petit Beaumontais
, announcing in violent language that the whole Simon affair was to be revived by the friends of the ignoble Jew, who were about to agitate the region by denouncing a worthy member of one of the religious Orders, the holiest of men.

Brother Gorgias was not yet named, but from that moment a fresh article appeared every day, and by degrees the version of the affair which the Brothers superiors had concocted was set out in opposition to the version which, it was foreseen, would be given by David, though the latter had revealed it to nobody. However, the desire of the clericals was to wreck It beforehand. Everything was flatly denied. It was impossible that Brother Gorgias could have paused before Zéphirin’s window on the night of the crime, for witnesses had moved that he had already returned to the school at half-past ten o’clock. Besides, the initialling on the copy-slip was not his, for the experts had fully recognised Simon’s handwriting. And everything could be easily explained. Simon, having procured a writing slip, had imitated the Brother’s paraph, which he had found in one of Zéphirin’s copybooks. Then, as he knew that the slips were stamped at the Brothers’ school, he had torn off one corner with diabolical cunning, in order to create a belief in some precaution taken by the murderer; his infernal object being to cast the responsibility of his own crime on some servant of God, and thereby gratify the hatred of the Church which possessed him — Jew that he was, fated to everlasting damnation. And this extravagant story, repeated every day, soon became the
credo
of the readers whom the newspaper debased and poisoned with its falsehoods.

It should be mentioned, however, that at the first moment there was a little uncertainty and hesitation, for other explanations had been circulated, and Brother Gorgias himself appeared to have made some curious statements. Formerly hidden away in the background, now suddenly thrust into full light, this Brother Gorgias was an extraordinary character. The Countess de Quédeville, the former owner of Valmarie, had endeavoured to transform his father, Jean Plumet, a poacher, into a kind of gamekeeper. He, the son, had never known his mother, a hussy who rambled about the woods, for she had disappeared soon after his birth. Then his father had been shot one night by an old fellow poacher, and the boy, at that time twelve years old, had remained at Valmarie, protected by the Countess, and becoming the playfellow of her grandson Gaston, with the exact circumstances of whose death, while walking out with Father Philibin, he was doubtless well acquainted, as well as with all that had ensued when the last of the Quédevilles died and bequeathed the estate to Father Crabot. The two Jesuits had never ceased to take an interest in him, and it was thanks to them that he had become an Ignorantine, in spite, it was said, of serious circumstances which tended to prevent it. For these reasons certain evil-minded folk suspected the existence of some corpse between the two Jesuit fathers and their compromising inferior.

At the same time Brother Gorgias was cited as an admirable member of his cloth, one truly imbued with the Holy Spirit. He possessed faith, that sombre, savage faith which pictures man as a weakling, a prey to perpetual sin, ruled by an absolute master, a Deity of wrath and punishment. That Deity alone reigned; it was for the Church to visit His wrath upon the masses, whose duty it became to bow their heads in servile submission until the day of resurrection dawned amid the delights of the heavenly kingdom. He, Brother Gorgias, often sinned himself, but he invariably confessed his transgression with a vehement show of repentance, striking his breast with both fists, and humbling himself in the mud. Then he rose again, absolved, at rest, displaying the provoking serenity of a pure conscience. He had paid his debt, and he would owe nothing more until the weakness of his flesh should cast him into sin again. As a lad he had roamed the woods, growing up amid poaching and thieving, and hiding himself away with the little hussies of the district. Later, after joining the Ignorantines, he had displayed the keenest appetites, showing himself a big eater, a hard drinker, with inclinations towards lubricity and violence. But, as he said in that strangely-compounded, humble, scoffing, threatening way of his to Fathers Philibin and Crabot, whenever they reproached him for some too serious prank: did not everybody sin? did not everybody need forgiveness? Half amusing, half alarming them, he won their pardon, so sincere and stupendous did his remorse appear — remorse which sometimes impelled him to fast for a week at a stretch, and to wear hair-cloths, studded with small sharp nails, next to his skin. It was indeed on this account that he had been always well noted by his superiors, who recognised that he possessed the genuine religious spirit — the spirit which, when his monkish vices ran riot, atoned for them with the avenging flagellation of penitence.

Now, on the revival of the Simon case, Brother Gorgias made the mistake of saying too much in the course of his first confidential chats with the writers of
Le Petit
Beaumontais
. No doubt his superiors had not yet expressly imposed their own version on him, and he was too intelligent to be blind to its exceeding absurdity. As another copy of the writing slip, one bearing his paraph, had been discovered, it must have seemed to him ridiculous to deny that this paraph was his writing. All the experts in the world would never prevent full light from being thrown on that point. Thus he gave some inkling of a version of his own, one which was more reasonable than that of his superiors, and in which a part of the truth appeared. For instance, he allowed it to be supposed that he had indeed halted for a moment outside Zéphirin’s open window on the night of the crime, that he had engaged in a friendly chat with the little hunchback, and that he had scolded him on seeing on his table a copy-slip which he had taken from the school without permission. Next, however, had come falsehood. He, Gorgias, had gone off, the child had closed his window, then Simon must have come and have committed the horrid crime, Satan suddenly inspiring him to make use of the copy-slip, after which he had opened the window afresh, in order to let it appear that the murderer had fled that way.