Complete Works of Emile Zola (1739 page)

At last Pacart, the Procureur de la République, addressed the Court. Tall and thin, he was addicted to long, nervous gestures, and affected an unadorned, mathematically precise kind of eloquence. In presence of the plainly-worded judgment of the Court of Cassation, his task was not easy. But his tactics were very simple, he took no account of that judgment, he did not once allude to the long inquiry which had ended in a decision to send the affair for trial by another Assize Court. He quietly reverted to the old indictment, based himself on the report of the experts, and accepted the revised account of the copy-slip, holding that the school-stamp as well as the initialling had been forged. He even spoke of that stamp in a positive way, as if he held a proof that it had been forged but could not produce it. As for Brother Gorgias, he regarded him simply as an unfortunate man, perhaps mentally unhinged, assuredly in need, and of a passionate nature — one who, after proving an undisciplined and compromising son of the Church, had quitted it and sold himself to the Jews. And Pacart concluded by asking the jurors to put an end to this affair, which was so disastrous for the peace of the country, by saying once more on which side, the culprit really was, whether among the Anarchists and the Cosmopolites — who sought to destroy all belief in God and country — or among the men upholding faith respect, and tradition, to whom, for ages past, France had owed her grandeur.

Then Delbos spoke during two sittings. Eager and nervous, endowed with passionate eloquence, he also dealt with the affair from the very beginning. But he did so in order to destroy the allegations in the old indictment, with the help of the arguments supplied by the Court of Cassation’s inquiry. Not one of those allegations remained. It was proved that Simon had returned home on foot on the night of the crime; that he had reached Maillebois at twenty minutes to twelve o’clock, an hour after the crime had been committed. Again, there was proof that the copy-slip had been stamped at the Brothers’ school and initialled by Brother Gorgias, whose admissions on the subject were not even necessary, for counter experts, in a memorable report addressed to the Court of Cassation, had destroyed the extraordinary farrago of Masters Badoche and Trabut. Then Delbos turned to the new story of the forged stamp. No proof of this had been supplied. Nevertheless, he insisted on the subject; for he divined that some supreme abomination lurked beneath all that stealthy manoeuvring compounded of mere allegation and reticence. A sick workman, it was said, had told a woman a vague story about a stamp which he had made for the Maillebois schoolmaster. Where was that woman? Who was she? what was her calling? As nobody would or could reply, he, Delbos, had a right to conclude that this story was one of those absurd lies such as
Le Petit Beaumontais
was in the habit of retailing. However, if he was able to picture the whole crime as it must have taken place — Brother Gorgias returning after he had escorted Polydor home, pausing before Zéphirin’s open window, finally entering the room, and at last succumbing to his ungovernable passions — he admitted that there was a gap in his narrative. Where had Gorgias found the copy-slip? For the rascal was right when he jeeringly inquired if schoolmasters usually walked about in the evening with copy-slips in their pockets. Undoubtedly the number of
Le Petit Beaumontais
had been in the pocket of his own cassock, whence he had taken it in order to gag his victim. And the slip must have been there also. But how had that happened? Delbos suspected the truth, and if he had questioned Polydor Souquet so pressingly it was in order to extract it from him. He had failed in that endeavour, the witness having met him with an assumption of hypocritical stupidity. But, after all, what did that obscure point matter? Was not Gorgias’s guilt absolutely manifest? His alleged alibi was based solely on a series of false statements. Everything proved his guilt — his flight, his semi-confessions, the criminal efforts made to save him, and the dispersal of his accomplices — Father Philibin hiding himself in some Italian convent; Brother Fulgence seeking refuge at a distance, and shielding himself with a diplomatic illness; and Father Crabot withdrawing to his cell, where Providence had visited him with a very salutary sprain. Was it not also in order to save Gorgias that President Gragnon had illegally communicated a forgery to the first jurors, as had been proved by the evidence of architect Jacquin? Amidst the accumulation of crimes, that one alone ought to have sufficed to open the eyes of the most prejudiced. And Delbos ended by depicting the frightful sufferings experienced by Simon, the fifteen years of transportation winch he had endured amidst the most cruel physical and moral tortures, while ever stubbornly raising his cry of innocence. The advocate added that, like the Procureur de la République, he also desired to have the affair ended, but ended by an act of justice which would redound to the honour of France; for if the innocent man should be struck down again, the shame of France would be indescribable, and a future full of incalculable evils would lie before her.

There was no reply from the prosecution, the case was closed, and the jury at once withdrew to its retiring-room. It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, and for more than an hour the spectators remained waiting, silent and anxious, in no wise resembling the audience at Beaumont, which had been so tumultuous and violent. The hall was very hot, and the atmosphere seemed as heavy as lead. There was little conversation, though occasionally the Simonists and the anti-Simonists glanced askance at one another. One might have fancied oneself in some funeral chamber where the life or death of a nation, the whole dolorous question of its future, was being decided. At last the jury reappeared, the judges came in, and amidst lugubrious silence the foreman arose. He was a little grey, lean man, a goldsmith, enjoying the custom of the local clergy. His shrill voice was distinctly heard. On the question of guilt the verdict was ‘Yes,’ by a majority; while ‘extenuating circumstances’ were unanimously granted. At Beaumont the jury had been unanimous with respect to guilt, and only a small majority had favoured the admission of extenuating circumstances. And now, after expediting the formalities, President Guybaraud hastily pronounced a sentence of ten years’ solitary confinement. That done he withdrew, and Pacart, the Procureur de la République, followed him, after bowing to the jury as if to thank them.

Marc, meantime, had glanced at Simon, on whose face he only detected a kind of faint smile, a painful contraction of the lips. Delbos, beside himself, was clenching his fists. David, whose emotion was too intense, had not returned into Court, but was awaiting the decision outside. The thunderbolt had fallen, and Marc felt a deadly chill in every vein. It was a frigid horror: the supreme iniquity, in which just minds had refused to believe, the crime of crimes, which had seemed impossible a few hours earlier, which reason had rejected, had suddenly become a monstrous reality. And there were no ferocious cries of joy, there was no onslaught like that of cannibals rushing to a feast of blood, as at Beaumont. Though the hall was full of rabid anti-Simonists, the frightful silence continued, such was the horror which froze one and all to their very bones. Only a long shudder, a stifled groan, sped through the throng. And they went out without a word, without a push, in a dark stream like some funeral assembly choking with emotion, stricken with fear. And outside Marc found David sobbing.

So the Church was victorious — the Brothers’ school would revive to life, while the secular school would again become the ante-room of hell, the satanic den where children were corrupted both in mind and in body. The desperate and gigantic effort made by the Congregations and by almost all the clergy had again retarded their defeat, which was certain in the future. For years, however, one would again see the young generations stupefied by error, corrupted by lies. The forward march of mankind would be hampered afresh until the day when free thought — invincible and still pursuing its course in spite of everything — should at last deliver the people by science, which alone could render it capable of truth and equity.

On the following evening, when Marc returned to Maillebois, exhausted by fatigue and quite heart-broken, he found a letter of three lines awaiting him: ‘I have read the whole of the inquiry, I have followed the trial. The most monstrous of crimes has been committed. Simon is innocent. —
Geneviève.’

CHAPTER IV

ON the morrow, a Thursday, Marc, who had scarcely slept that night, had just risen when he received an early visit from his daughter Louise. She, having heard of his return, had escaped for a moment from her grandmother’s house. And, throwing her arms wildly about her father’s neck, she exclaimed: ‘Oh! father, father, what a deal of sorrow you must have had, and how pleased I am to be able to kiss you!’

A big girl nowadays, Louise was fully acquainted with the Simon affair, and shared all the faith, all the passion for justice displayed by that dearly-loved father, the master whose lofty mind was her guide. Thus her cry was instinct with the revolt and despair into which she had been cast by the monstrous proceedings at Rozan.

But, on thus seeing her before him and feeling her embrace, Marc thought of Geneviève’s letter, to which his sleeplessness that night had been largely due. ‘And your mother,’ he asked, ‘do you know that she has written to me, and that she is now on our side?’

‘Yes, yes, father, I know it. She spoke of it to me.... Ah! if I were to tell you of all the quarrels there were when grandmother saw mamma beginning to read everything, procuring documents which had never been in the house before, and going out every morning to buy the full report of the new trial. Grandmother wanted to burn everything, so mamma shut herself up in her own room and spent all her time there.... And I also read everything; mamma allowed me to do so. Oh! papa, what a dreadful affair — that poor man, that poor innocent, overwhelmed by so many cruel people! If I could, I should love you all the more for having loved and defended him!”

She again threw her arms about her father’s neck and kissed him with heartfelt fervour. And he, in spite of his sufferings, began to smile as if some delicious balm had somewhat calmed the smarting of his wounds. And while he smiled he pictured his wife and his daughter reading together, learning the truth, and at last returning to him. ‘Her letter, her dear letter,’ he said in an undertone, ‘what consolation and hope it gave me! Will not joy return after so many misfortunes?

Then he anxiously questioned Louise:’ So your mother spoke to you of me? Does she understand, does she regret our torments? I always felt that she would come back to me when she knew the truth.’

But the girl prettily raised a finger to her lips. She, in her turn, was smiling. ‘Oh! papa,’ she said, ‘don’t try to make me say what I can’t say yet. I should be telling a falsehood if I spoke positively. Our affairs are in a good way, that is all.... Remain patient a little longer, remain confident in your daughter, who tries to be as reasonable and affectionate as you are.’

Then she gave him some bad news about Madame Berthereau. For several years the latter had been suffering from a heart complaint, which recent events seemed to have suddenly aggravated. Madame Duparque’s fits of anger, the outbursts with which she made the dark, dismal little house shake at all hours of the day, proved very prejudicial to the sick woman, for they brought on shuddering and stifling fits, which she could hardly overcome. At present, in order to escape those nervous frights, she no longer went down into the little sitting-room, but remained on a couch in her bedchamber, gazing from morn till night at the deserted Place des Capucins, with those poor, melancholy eyes of hers, in which one read such keen regret for the joys she had lost so long ago.

‘Oh! we don’t amuse ourselves at all now,’ Louise continued. ‘Mamma remains in her room, grandmamma Berthereau in hers, and grandmamma Duparque goes up and down, bangs the doors, and quarrels with Pélagie when she finds nobody to scold.... But I don’t complain, for I shut myself up as well, and work. Mamma has agreed to it, you know; I shall go up for admission to the training school in six months’ time, and I hope to get in.’

Just at that moment, Sébastien Milhomme, who was free that day, arrived from Beaumont, all anxiety to embrace his former master, of whose return he had heard. And almost immediately afterwards came Joseph and Sarah, who, on behalf of their mother and the Lehmanns, whom the reconviction of Simon had overwhelmed, wished to thank Marc for his heroic if vain efforts. The brother and sister related what a thunderbolt had fallen on the wretched shop in the Rue du Trou on the previous evening, when David had telegraphed the frightful tidings. Madame Simon had preferred to await them there with her parents and her children, such great hostility had she encountered in that clerical town of Rozan, where, moreover, her modest means did not allow her to live. And the mournful house was again in tears, acquainted only with the iniquitous verdict and ignorant of what might now happen, all decision as to the future being postponed until the return of David, who, for the time, had remained near his brother.

The eyes of Joseph and Sarah were still red and swollen, for they had spent a tearful, feverish night, without a moment’s quiet rest; and as, while speaking of their father, they again began to sob, Sébastien, carried away by his feelings, kissed his good friend Sarah, while Louise, taking hold of. Joseph’s hands, and likewise shedding tears, naïvely sought to console him somewhat by speaking of her great affection for him. She was seventeen and he twenty. Sébastien was a year or two older, and Sarah was eighteen. Marc felt moved as he saw those young folk there before him, quivering with youth, intelligence, and kindliness. And a thought, which had occurred to him and brought him a delightful hope already in the days when he had seen them playing as children, now returned. Might they not, indeed, be predestined consorts, such as would produce the happy harvest of the future, by bringing broader hearts and more liberal minds to the great work of to-morrow?