Complete Works of Emile Zola (1750 page)

A night and a day elapsed, for the Superior of the Capuchins was only able to return at dusk, some four and twenty hours later. During that night and day, then, Madame Duparque remained alone, absolutely alone, behind the nailed shutters, the carefully closed doors and windows of her dark room, where neither a sound nor a ray of light from the outer world penetrated. She herself had willed it thus, severing all carnal ties with her relations, withdrawing from the world in protest against the hateful society of the times, in which sin had proved triumphant. And, after giving herself wholly to the Church, she had gradually become disgusted with its ministers — those priests who lacked all militant faith, those monks who had no heroic bravery, but who were all worldly men bent on personal enjoyment. Thus she had dismissed them also, and now she remained alone with her Deity — an implacable and stubborn Deity who ruled with absolute, exterminating, and vengeful power. All light and all life had departed from that cold, dismal, fast-closed, and tomblike house, where there only remained a feeble octogenarian woman, sitting up in bed, gazing into the black darkness, and waiting for her jealous God to carry her away, in order that lukewarm souls might have an example of a really pious end. And when Father Théodose presented himself at the house at dusk he found, to his intense surprise, that the door would not open, that it resisted all his efforts. The key turned readily enough in the lock, and it seemed, therefore, that the door must have been bolted. But who could have bolted it? There was nobody inside except the ailing woman, who could not leave her bed. The Capuchin then made fresh attempts, but in vain; and at last, feeling frightened, unwilling to incur any further responsibility, he hastened to the Town Hall to explain the matter to the authorities. A messenger was at once sent to Mademoiselle Mazeline’s for Louise; and, as it happened, Marc and Geneviève were there, having come over from Jonville, as the news of Pélagie’s death had made them feel anxious.

A tragical business followed. The whole family repaired to the Place des Capucins. As the door would not yield, a locksmith was sent for, but he declared he could do nothing, for assuredly the bolts were fastened. It therefore became necessary to send for a mason, who, with his pick, unsealed the door hinges set in the stone work. At each blow the silent house re-echoed like a closed vault. And when the door had been torn down it was with a quiver that Marc and Geneviève, followed by Louise, re-entered that family abode whence they had been banished. An icy dampness reigned there; it was only with difficulty that they managed to light a candle. And upstairs, in the bed, they found Madame Duparque, still in a sitting posture, propped up by pillows, but quite dead, with a large crucifix between her long, thin, shrivelled hands.

In a superhuman effort she had assuredly found the supreme energy to leave her bed, crawl down the stairs, and shoot the bolts in order that no living soul, not even a priest, might disturb her in her last communion with God. And then she had crawled upstairs again, and had died there. When Father Théodose saw her he fell on his knees, shuddering, and stammering a prayer. He was distraught, for he detected in that death not merely the end of a terrible old woman, raised to a fierce grandeur, as it were, by her uncompromising faith, but also the end of all superstitious and mendacious religion. And Marc, in whose arms Geneviève and Louise had sought a refuge, seemed to feel a great gust sweeping by, as though eternal life were springing from that death.

When the family, after leaving the funeral arrangements to Abbé Coquard, made a search in the old lady’s drawers, they found nothing — neither will nor securities of any kind. It could not be said that Father Théodose had purloined any property, for he had not returned to the house. Was it to be assumed, then, that the old lady had previously handed her securities to him or to another? Or had she destroyed them, unwilling that her relatives should benefit by her fortune? The mystery was never solved, not a copper was ever found. Only the little house remained, and it was sold, the proceeds being given to the poor at the request of Geneviève, who said that in taking that course she was certainly doing what her grandmother would have desired.

In the evening, after returning from the funeral, Geneviève cast her arms round her husband’s neck, and made him a frank confession: ‘If you only knew!’ said she. ‘I was beset again when I heard that grandmother was all alone, so bravely and loftily adhering to her stubborn faith.... Yes, I asked myself if my place were not beside her, and if I had done right in leaving her.... But what can you expect, dear? I shall never be quite cured. In the depths of my being I shall always retain a little of my old belief.... Yet, what a frightful death that was! And how right you are in asking that people should live as they ought to; that women should be liberated, set in their right position as the equals and companions of men, and that life should partake of all that is good and true and just!’

A month later the two long-deferred weddings at last took place. Louise was married to Joseph, Sarah to Sébastien; and in those espousals Marc perceived a beginning of victory. The good crop, sown with so much difficulty in the midst of persecution and outrage, was germinating and growing already.

CHAPTER II

Years went by, and Marc continued his work, sturdy yet at sixty years of age, and as passionately attached to truth and justice as he had been at the outset of the great struggle. And one day, when he happened to go to Beaumont to call on Delbos, the latter suddenly said to him: ‘By the way, my dear fellow, I have had a strange encounter.... The other evening, at dusk, while I was returning home I noticed a man of about your age, looking wretched and ravaged, walking ahead of me along the Avenue des Jaffres.... And, all at once, in the blaze of light coming from the confectioner’s shop at the corner of the Rue Gambetta, it seemed to me that I recognised our Gorgias.’

‘Eh, our Gorgias?’

‘Why, yes, Brother Gorgias, not wearing an Ignorantine’s cassock, but a greasy frock-coat, and slipping alongside the walls, with the suspicious gait of an emaciated old wolf.,.. He must have come back secretly, and must be living in some dark nook or other, still trying to frighten and exploit his old accomplices.’

Marc, whom the announcement had greatly surprised, remained full of doubt. ‘You must have been mistaken,’ said he; ‘Gorgias attaches too much value to his skin to return to Beaumont, and run the risk of being sent to the galleys, whenever the discovery of a new fact may enable us to apply for the quashing of the Rozan judgment.’

‘It is you who are mistaken, my friend,’ Delbos answered. ‘Our man has nothing more to fear. According to our law of limitation there can be no public action in a criminal matter after the expiration of ten years, and so, even nowadays, little Zéphirin’s murderer can walk about the streets in the daylight without any fear of arrest.... However, I may have been deceived by a mere resemblance; and in any case the return of Gorgias can have no interest for us, for you agree with me, do you not, that we can derive nothing useful from him?’

‘No, nothing whatever. He lied so much at the time of the Affair that if he should say anything now he would certainly lie again.... The long-sought truth can never come to us from him.’

In this wise, at long intervals, Marc called upon Delbos in order to chat with him about that everlasting Simon case, which, after the lapse of so many years, still remained like a cancer gnawing at the heart of the country. People might deny its existence, believe it to be dead, cease to speak of it, but nevertheless it stealthily continued its ravages, like some secret venom poisoning life. Twice a year David quitted his lonely retreat in the Pyrenees and came to Beaumont in order to confer with Delbos and Marc; for, in spite of the pardon granted to his brother, he had not for an hour relinquished his hope of eventual acquittal and rehabilitation. They, David, Delbos, and Marc, were convinced that the monstrous verdict would be some day set aside, and that the affair would end by the victory of the innocent. But. even as in previous years, after the judgment of the Court of Cassation, they found themselves struggling amidst an intricate network of falsehoods. After hesitating for a time as to which scent they might best follow, they had decided to investigate a second crime committed by ex-Président Gragnon, a crime which they had already suspected at Rozan, and of which they were now convinced.

Gragnon, in fact, at the time of the Rozan proceedings, had repeated his illegal communication trick. On this second occasion, however, he had availed himself, not of one of Simon’s letters with a forged postscript and paraph, but of a confession alleged to have been written by a workman who was said to have made a false stamp for the Maillebois schoolmaster — this confession having been handed, it was alleged, to one of the nuns of the Beaumont hospital by the workman in question when he was near his death. Assuredly Gragnon had walked about the streets of Rozan with that confession in his pocket, speaking of it as a thunderbolt which he would hurl at the Simonists if they should drive him to extremities, causing it to be shown to certain members of the jury, those who were pious and weak-minded, but at the same time affecting a keen desire to save the holy nun to whom the confession had been given from being publicly involved in such a scandal. And this explained everything. The abominable behaviour of the jury in reconvicting the innocent prisoner became excusable. Those men of average intelligence and honesty had been deceived like the jurors of Beaumont, and had yielded to motives which had remained secret. Marc and David well remembered that they had heard some juryman ask certain questions which had then seemed to them ridiculous. But they now understood that this juryman had referred to the terrible document which Gragnon had stealthily hawked about, and of which it was not prudent to speak plainly. Delbos therefore busied himself with that new fact, that second criminal communication, which, if proved, would entail the immediate annulment of the proceedings at Rozan. But, unfortunately, nothing could be more difficult to prove, and for years Delbos and his friends had striven vainly. Only one hope remained to them: a juror, a retired medical man, named Beauchamp, had acquired a certainty that the workman’s alleged confession was simply a gross forgery. In a measure things repeated themselves, as is not unfrequently the case in real life, Beauchamp being assailed by remorse like his predecessor, architect Jacquin.

He himself, it is true, was not a clericalist, but he had an extremely devout wife and did not wish to plunge her into desolation by relieving his conscience. Thus it was necessary to wait.

However, as the years went by, circumstances became more favourable. Thanks to the spread of secular education the social evolution was being hastened and giving great results. All France was being renewed, a new nation was coming from its thousands of parish schools, whose influence was to be found beneath each fresh reform that was effected, each fresh step that was taken towards solidarity and peace. Things which had seemed impossible in former times were easily accomplished now that the nation was delivered from error and falsehood, endowed with knowledge and force of will.

Thus, at the general elections which took place in May that year, Delbos at last defeated Lemarrois, who had been mayor of Beaumont for so long a period. At one time it had seemed as if the latter would never lose his seat, personifying as he did the great mass of average public opinion. But the
bourgeoisie
had repudiated its revolutionary past, and allied itself with the Church in order that it might not have to abandon any of its usurped power. It clung to the privileges it had acquired, and, rather than share its royalty or its wealth with the masses, it preferred to make use of all the old reactionary forces in order to thrust the now awakened and enlightened people into servitude once more. Lemarrois was a typical example of the
bourgeois
Republican, who, wishing to defend his class, sank into a kind of involuntary reaction, and was therefore condemned and swept away in the inevitable
débâcle
of that
bourgeoisie
which a hundred years of trafficking and enjoyment had corrupted. It was inevitable that the people should ascend to power as soon as it became conscious of its strength, of the inexhaustible reserve of energy, intelligence, and will slumbering within it; and it was sufficient that it should be emancipated, roused from the heavy sleep of ignorance by the schools, in order that it might take its due place and rejuvenate the nation. The
bourgeoisie
was now at the point of death, and the people would necessarily become the great liberating, justice-dealing France of to-morrow. And there was, so to say, an annunciation of all those things in the victory achieved at Beaumont by Delbos, the man who had been Simon’s counsel, who had been derided and insulted so long, at first securing only a few Socialist votes, which by degrees had become an overwhelming majority.

Another proof of the people’s accession to power was to be found in the complete change which had come over Marcilly. He had formerly figured in a Radical ministry; then, after the reconviction of Simon, he had entered a Moderate administration; and now he affected extreme Socialist principles; and by harnessing himself to Delbos’s triumphal car had managed to get re-elected. It is true that the popular victory was not complete throughout the department, for Count Hector de Sanglebœuf had also been re-elected, this time as an uncompromising reactionary; for the usual phenomenon of troublous times had appeared, only plain, frank, extreme opinions finding support. The party vanquished for ever was the old Liberal
bourgeoisie
, which had become Conservative from egotism and fright, and which, lacking all strength and logic, was ripe for its fall. And the ascending class, the great mass of those who only the day before had been called the disinherited, would naturally take the place of the
bourgeoisie
after sweeping away the few stubborn defenders that remained to the Church.