Complete Works of Emile Zola (1741 page)

‘That is how we stand,’ Salvan concluded. ‘Thanks to the reconviction of Simon, they speak as masters, and wring whatever they please from the universal cowardice and imbecility.... It is already said that Mademoiselle Rouzaire is to be appointed head-mistress of the chief girls’ school in Beaumont. Jauffre, now at Jonville, is also to be appointed here, it seems; for he has threatened to turn against Abbé Cognasse if there should be any further delay in rewarding his services. Finally, Doutrequin, once a Republican, who has rallied to the Church from a deplorable aberration of patriotism, has secured two suburban schools for his sons, who have made Nationalism and anti-Semitism their chief dogmas, so that we are now once more in a period of acute reaction — the last we shall witness, I hope, pending the day when the country will spit out the poison which is killing it.... And if I am dismissed, my friend — you suspect it, do you not? — you will be dismissed also.’

Marc smiled. He now understood why Salvan had sent for him in all haste. ‘So I am condemned?’ he said.

‘Yes, I am afraid so; and I wished to warn you of it immediately.... Oh! the thing is not settled yet; Le Barazer remains silent, biding his time, as it were, and saying nothing of his intentions. But you can have no idea of the assaults he has to withstand, particularly with respect to yourself. Naturally enough, it is your dismissal that is most urgently demanded. I was talking to you just now of that big simpleton Sangleboeuf, that puppet whose strings are pulled by the old Marchioness de Boise, whom he drives to despair, I hear, so clumsily does he execute the movements which she directs. Well, three times already, Sangleboeuf has bounced up to the Prefecture to threaten Le Barazer with an interpellation in the Chamber of Deputies if he does not come to an understanding with Prefect Hennebise to annihilate you. You would be already dead, I think, if it had not been for the arrogance of that ultimatum. But it isn’t possible for Le Barazer to resist much longer, my poor friend. And you mustn’t bear him any malice. Remember all the quiet obstinacy and diplomatic skill with which for many years he supported you. He always found some means of saving you by granting compensations to your adversaries. But now it is all over, I have not even spoken to him about you. All efforts on your behalf would be useless. You must lot him act as he pleases. Doubtless he is only delaying his decision in order to devise something ingenious; for he himself does not like to be defeated, and he will never relinquish his efforts on behalf of his work, that system of secular and compulsory education which alone can give us a new France.’

Marc smiled no longer; indeed, he had become very sad. ‘It will be a great blow,’ he answered. ‘I shall leave the best of myself behind me in that school of Maillebois, among those dear lads whom I regard almost as my own children.... Besides, what shall I do if my career is thus brought to an end? I am not competent to take up any other useful work, and how painful it will be to see the work I have been doing interrupted, left unfinished at the very moment when, more than ever, truth has need of sturdy workers!’

But Salvan in his turn bravely smiled, and, taking hold of Marc’s hands, said to him: ‘Come, don’t lose your courage. We shall surely find something to do; we shan’t remain with our arms crossed.’

Then Marc, feeling comforted, replied: ‘You are right! When a man like you is struck, one can follow him into disgrace without thought of shame. The future, at all events, belongs to us.’

A few more days went by. At Maillebois the victorious Congregations were endeavouring to turn the situation to pecuniary account. Great efforts were made to restore the former prosperity of the Brothers’ school, several families were won over, and it seemed likely that at the new term the school would gain a dozen fresh pupils. Meantime the Capuchins showed extraordinary audacity. Was it not, after all, the glorious St. Antony of Padua who had managed everything, obtained everything from the benevolence of heaven? Indeed, it could not be denied. It was to him that one owed the reconviction of Simon, thanks to the franc and two-franc pieces which so many pious souls had dropped into the saint’s collection-boxes while begging him to bring about the annihilation of the Jew. Thus a fresh miracle had been performed. Never before had the saint’s power been manifested in so lofty a manner, and as a natural result offerings poured in from all sides. Moreover, Father Théodose, encouraged, inspired by this success, conceived a masterly plan to reap another large harvest of money by the saint’s aid. He launched an extraordinary financial affair with mortgage bonds on Paradise, each bond being of five francs value. The district was flooded with circulars and prospectuses explaining the working of those investments in celestial felicity. With each bond there were ten coupons of half a franc, representing good works, prayers, and masses payable as interest on earth, and redeemable in heaven at the office of the miracle-working St. Antony. Premiums were also offered in order to attract subscribers. Twenty bonds gave a right to a coloured statuette of the saint, and a hundred insured an annual mass for the holder’s especial benefit. Finally, said the prospectus, the name of St. Antony’s Bonds was given to this scrip, because it was the saint who would redeem it a hundredfold in the next world. And the announcement ended with these words: ‘Such supernatural guarantees make these bonds absolutely safe. No financial catastrophe can threaten them. Even the destruction of the world, at the end of time, would leave them in force, or rather would at once place the holders in the enjoyment of the full capitalised interest.’

The success was enormous. In a few weeks’ time thousands of bonds had been sold. Those devotees who were too poor to buy a whole one, clubbed together, and then divided the coupons. Credulous and suffering souls eagerly risked their money in this new lottery, whose great prize was to be the realisation of a fondly dreamt of eternity of happy life. It was certainly rumoured that Monseigneur Bergerot intended to prohibit this impudent speculation which scandalised the more reasonable Catholics; but in the unpleasant position in which the prelate had been placed by the defeat of the Simonists, whom he was accused of having stealthily supported, he was doubtless afraid to do so. Though it greatly distressed him to abandon the Church to the rising tide of superstition, he had found that he could place little reliance on his clergy, and thus he had never had the courage to resist the all-powerful Congregations. Aged as he now was, he had become weaker still, only retaining enough strength to kneel and beg God’s forgiveness for thus suffering the merchants to invade the Temple. But Abbé Quandieu, the priest of St. Martin’s, could not bear that desecration any longer. All his Christian resignation forsook him when the so-called Bonds of St. Antony made their appearance. Such trafficking was too outrageous, and he gave expression in the pulpit to his revolt as a minister of Christ, his grief at beholding the base downfall of that great Christianity which had renewed the world, and which so many illustrious minds had raised to the purest summits of ideality. Then he paid a last visit to his Bishop and friend, Monseigneur Bergerot, and finding him unable to continue the struggle, feeling too that he himself was vanquished and paralysed, he resigned his cure and withdrew to a little house in the outskirts of Maillebois, intending to dwell there on a scanty income, outside that Church, whose policy of hatred and basely superstitious worship he could no longer serve.

The Capuchins deemed the opportunity favourable for a fresh triumph in celebration of what Father Théodose styled the flight of their former adversary. By careful manoeuvring the Bishop had been induced to appoint a young curate of the
arriviste
school, a creature of Father Crabot’s, to the pariah of Maillebois, and the idea was to bear a superb statue of St. Antony, all red and gold, in solemn procession from the Capuchin chapel to St. Martin’s, where it would be set up in great pomp. This would be the crowning consecration of the victory which had been achieved, the conquest of the parish by the Congregation, the monks becoming its sovereign masters, able to disseminate on every side the idolatrous worship, by which they hoped to bleed and abase the community, and turn it into the ignorant flock of the days of servitude. The procession, which took place one warm day in September, with the co-operation of all the clergy of the district, proved magnificent, and was attended by a great concourse of people who repaired to Maillebois from all points of the department. Only the Place des Capucins and a short lane really separated the chapel from the church, but a roundabout line of route was selected; they crossed the Place de la République and marched along the whole high street, in this wise promenading St. Antony from one to the other end of the town. Mayor Philis, surrounded by the clericalist majority of the Municipal Council, followed the painted statue, which was borne on a platform draped with red velvet. Although it was holiday time the whole of the Brothers’ school had been mobilised, boys had been recruited, dressed, and provided with candles. Behind them came the Daughters of Mary and numerous pious brotherhoods, sisterhoods, and other associations, an interminable string of devotees, to say nothing of all the nuns brought expressly from the Beaumont convents. Only Monseigneur Bergerot was wanting. As it happened, he had sent a letter of regret, having fallen ill two days previously.

Never before had Maillebois been possessed by such religious fever. People knelt on the foot pavements, men shed tears, three girls fell to the ground in hysterical fits, and had to be carried to a chemist’s shop. In the evening the benediction at St. Martin’s amid the pealing of the bells was quite dazzling. And not a doubt remained; surely the town was now redeemed and forgiven; by that grandiose ceremony Providence signified its willingness to wipe out for ever the vile memory of Simon the Jew.

It so happened that Salvan came to Maillebois that day in order to see Madame Berthereau, respecting whom he had received some extremely disquieting news. And he had just quitted the little house on the Place des Capucins when he caught sight of Marc, who, on his way home after a visit to the Lehmanns, had found his progress barred by the interminable procession. They shook hands in silence; then for some time were compelled to remain waiting. When the last of the monks had gone by, behind the idol all ablaze with gilding and red paint, they just exchanged a glance and took a few steps in silence.

‘I was going to call on you,’ said Salvan at last.

Marc fancied that he had brought him news of his dismissal. ‘Is it signed then?’ he inquired. ‘Am I to pack my trunks?’

‘No, no, my friend; Le Barazer has given no signs of life as yet. He is preparing something.... But our dismissal is certain, you must take a little patience.’ Then, ceasing to jest, he added with an expression of grief: ‘The fact is, I heard that Madame Berthereau was at the last stage and I desired to see her.... I have just left her, and her end is certainly very near.’

‘Louise came to warn me of it yesterday evening,’ Marc replied. ‘I should have liked to call at once, as you have done. But Madame Duparque has signified that she will immediately quit the house if I should dare to set foot in it on any pretext. And though Madame Berthereau, as I know, would like to see me, she is afraid to give expression to her desire, for fear of some scandal beside her deathbed.... Ah! my friend, one can never overcome the hatred of a bigot.’

They walked on, again preserving silence. At last Salvan resumed: ‘Yes, Madame Duparque keeps good guard, and for a moment I thought that she would not let me go upstairs. At all events she did not quit me; she kept a watch on everything I said, either to the patient or your wife.... She is certainly afraid that something may result from the blow which is about to fall on the house. Yes, Madame Berthereau, her daughter, is about to escape from her by death, and she fears, perhaps, that Geneviève, her granddaughter, may likewise free herself.’

Marc halted, and, giving his friend a keen glance, inquired: ‘Did you notice any sign of that?’

‘Well, yes. I did not wish to mention it to you, for it would distress me to give you any false hopes. But it was in connection with that procession, that display of barefaced idolatry which we witnessed just now. It appears that your wife absolutely refused to attend it. And that is why I found Madame Duparque at home. She, of course, was very desirous of exhibiting her piety in the front rank of all the devotees, but she feared that if she should absent herself for a single moment, you or some other soul-snatcher might get into the house and rob her of her daughter and granddaughter. So she remained at home, and you can imagine with what cold fury she received me, trying to transpierce me with those eyes of hers, which are like rapiers.’

Marc was becoming excited: ‘Oh!  so Geneviève refused to attend that procession! She understood its hurtfulness, its baseness and folly, then; and she is returning in some degree to the healthy common sense she used to show?’

‘No doubt,’ Salvan answered. ‘I believe that she felt particularly hurt by those ridiculous mortgage bonds on Paradise.... Ah! what a master stroke, my friend! Never before was human imbecility exploited to such a degree by religious impudence.’

While conversing, the friends had slowly directed their steps towards the railway station, where Salvan intended to take the train in order to return to Beaumont. He did so, and Marc, on quitting him, felt once again full of hope.

As Salvan had indeed suggested, Geneviève — in that little house of the Place des Capucins, which had become yet more mournful and frigid now that death hovered over it so threateningly — was assailed by another crisis which was gradually transforming her. At first she had been thunderstruck by the revelation of the truth, the certainty of Simon’s innocence, which the perusal of all the documents had brought her — that terrible light whose blaze had revealed to her the infamy of the holy men whom she had hitherto accepted as the directors of her conscience and her heart. All came from that, doubt penetrated into her mind, faith took flight, she could not do otherwise than reflect, examine and judge everything. A feeling of disquietude had already come upon her at the time when she quitted Father Théodose; and the latter’s Bonds of St. Antony, that base attempt to exploit the credulity of the public, had suddenly shown her his venality and disgusted her with him. Moreover, not only did the monk’s character decline in her estimation to the lowest level, but the worship he represented — that religion which had cast her into transports of mystical desire, likewise lost its semblance of holiness.  What! must she accept that unworthy trafficking, that idolatrous superstition, if she desired to remain a practising Catholic, steadfast in her faith? She had long bowed to beliefs and mysteries, even when her natural good sense had covertly protested against them; but there were limits to everything. She could not countenance that flotation of shares in heaven; she refused to walk behind that St. Antony, bedaubed with red and gold and carried about like a guy or an advertisement, to increase the multitude of subscribers. And the revolt of her reason gathered additional strength when she thought of the retirement of Abbé Quandieu, the gentle and paternal confessor, to whom she had returned when the suspicious ardour of Father Théodose had alarmed her. If such a man as the Abbé felt unable to abide in the Church, such as it had been made by the clerical policy of hatred and domination, was it not certain that all upright souls would henceforth find it difficult to remain in it?