Complete Works of Emile Zola (1766 page)

While he spoke, Thérèse, who was still standing there, had turned her head aside. And when he had finished she said, ‘There is no occasion for me to know those things.... I merely understand that you have come back to answer the charges brought against you.’

‘Oh!’ Marc gently observed, ‘those charges have now ceased to exist.’

‘I have come back to see Rose,’ François on his side declared, ‘and I repeat that I would have been here the very next day if I had not remained ignorant of everything.’

‘Very good,’ Thérèse rejoined; ‘I do not prevent you from seeing your daughter; she is there — you may go in.’ There ensued a very singular scene which Marc watched with impassioned interest. Rose was seated in an arm-chair, reading, her injured arm hanging in a sling. As the door opened she looked up and raised a quivering cry, instinct, it seemed, both with fear and with joy.

‘Oh! papa!’

Then she rose, and all at once seemed stupefied. ‘But it wasn’t you, papa — was it — the other evening?’ she cried. ‘The man was shorter and his beard was different!’

And she continued to scrutinise her father as if she found him otherwise than she had pictured him since his flight — since she had watched her forsaken mother weeping. Had she pictured him as a wicked man, then, squat of build and with an ogre’s face? She now recognised the father with the pleasant smile, whom she adored; and if he had come back it was surely in order that no more tears might be shed in their dear home. But all at once she began to tremble at the thought of the dreadful consequences of her error.

‘And to think I accused you, papa — that I kept on saying that the man was you! No, no, it wasn’t you, I told a story; I will explain it to the gendarmes if they come to take you!’

She sank back in the arm-chair, weeping bitterly, and her father had to take her on his lap, kiss her, and vow to her that their sorrows were all over. He himself stammered with emotion as he spoke. Had be behaved so vilely, then, that he had appeared a very monster in the eyes of his daughter, and that she had thought him capable of ill-using her so dreadfully?

Thérèse meantime, while listening, had striven to remain impassive, saying never a word. François glanced at her anxiously, as if to ascertain whether she would again tolerate his presence in that home which he had ravaged. And Marc, noticing the severity of her demeanour, her unwillingness to forgive, preferred to take his grandson away with him and provide him with a lodging pending the advent of a calmer hour.

That very evening the officers of the law presented themselves at Faustin’s dwelling, but they did not find the rascal there. The place was closed, the man had fled, and the search for him failed: he was never taken. People ended by believing that he had escaped to America. His sister Colette had perhaps accompanied him thither, for although she was sought she was never seen again, either at Maillebois or at Beaumont. And the whole affair remained very obscure; one was reduced to conjectures. Had the brother and sister been accomplices? Had Colette co-operated in some plot when she had induced François to carry her off, or had Faustin merely wished to avail himself in some mysterious manner of the situation which the elopement had created? But the chief point of all was whether there had been some superior behind him, some man of intelligence and will, who had planned and prepared everything in view of a supreme assault on the new order of things, by renewing, as it were, the old Simon affair. All those suppositions were allowable, given the facts; and in the end nobody doubted that there had really been some mysterious agreement and ambush.

Thus, how great was Marc’s relief when the authorities, being convinced of Faustin’s guilt and flight, set the affair aside. At the first moment that renewal of the old abominations, that last supreme attempt to besmirch the secular schools, had greatly disquieted Marc. But he was astonished at the rapidity with which the truth had been made manifest by public good sense. The appearances against François had been far greater than those against Simon in the old days. His own daughter had accused him; and, even if she had retracted her words, it would simply have been said that she had yielded to family pressure. In former times no witnesses, neither a Bongard, nor a Doloir, nor a Savin, would have dared to come forward and say what they had heard or seen, for fear of compromising themselves. In former times Marsouillier would not have relieved his conscience; firstly, because he would have felt no need of doing so, and secondly because a powerful faction would have immediately risen to support and glorify his original falsehood. The Congregations had then been ready at hand, poisoning everything, making a dogma, a cult, of error. Rome in her battle against free thought had made a savage use of political parties, maddening them, hurling them one upon the other, in the hope of some civil war which, by cutting the nation in halves, might render her mistress of the majority, the poor and ignorant. And now that Rome was vanquished, that the Congregations were disappearing, that not a Jesuit would Boon be left to obscure men’s thoughts and pervert their actions, human reason was working freely. The explanation of all the good sense and logic which Marc had lately observed was not to be sought elsewhere. The simple fact was that the people, being now educated and freed from the errors of centuries, were becoming capable of truth and justice.

But amid the delight of victory some anxiety lingered in Marc’s heart, anxiety at the rupture which had occurred between François and Thérèse, that question of the happiness of man and woman, which happiness can only spring from their perfect agreement. Marc did not entertain any wild hope of being able to kill the passions and prevent our poor humanity from bleeding beneath the spur of desire. There would always be broken hearts, tortured and jealous flesh. Only, might one not hope that woman, being freed and raised to equality with man, would render the sexual struggle less bitter, impart to it some calm dignity? Already during the recent scandal women had shown themselves the friends of truth, employing all their energy to discover it. They were emancipated from the Church; they were no longer possessed by base superstition and the fear of hell; they no longer feigned a false humility before the priests; they were no longer the servants who prostrated themselves before men, the sex which seems to acknowledge its abjection and which revenges itself for its enforced humility by corrupting and disorganising everything. They had ceased to act as snares of voluptuousness, seeking to entrap men in order to promote the triumph of religion. They had become normal wives and mothers since they had been wrested from that morbid falsehood of the divine spouse, which had unhinged so many poor minds. And now was it not their duty to complete the great work by exercising the rights they had regained with great wisdom and kindness?

At last it occurred to Marc to assemble the whole family at the school, in that large class-room where he himself had taught, and where Joseph and François had taught after him. And there was a certain solemnity about that meeting, held one afternoon at the close of September, amid the sunshine which cast gentle beams on the master’s desk, the boys’ forms, the blackboards, and the pictures hanging from the walls. Sébastien and Sarah came from Beaumont; Clément and Charlotte arrived with their daughter Lucienne from Jonville. And Joseph, warned some days previously, had returned from a holiday tour feeling very much affected by all that had occurred in his absence. Finally, Marc himself and Geneviève, accompanied by Louise and Joseph, repaired to the rendezvous, taking François with them — Thérèse and Rose awaiting their arrival in the class-room. Altogether twelve members of the family attended the gathering, and at first deep silence prevailed.

‘My dear Thérèse,’ said Marc at last, ‘we have no wish to do violence to your feelings, we have only come here for a family chat.... You have no doubt suffered in your heart, but you have never known such a great rending as when husband and wife have seemed to come from two different worlds, and have suddenly found themselves parted by such an abyss as to suggest no likelihood of ever being united again. In former times woman, in the hands of the Church, had become an instrument of torture for man, who was already freed. Ah! how many tears were shed in those days, how many homes were broken up!’

Silence fell again; then Geneviève, who was deeply moved, in her turn said: ‘Yes, my dear Marc, I often regarded you wrongly, I often tortured you in the old days, and you do right to recall those evil years; your words cannot wound me now, since I have had strength enough to overcome the poison. But how many women remained agonising in the old dungeon, how many homes perished in grief? I myself have never been entirely cured; I have always trembled with the dread of being mastered once more by long heredity and the perverting influence of early education. And if I have managed to remain erect, it is thanks to you, your sturdy good sense and active affection, for all which I thank you, my good Marc.’

Happy tears had come into her eyes, and she continued with increasing emotion: ‘Ah! my poor grandmother, my poor mother! Yes, they were to be pitied! They were so wretched, assailed by destructive ferments, cast out of their sex, as it were, by their voluntary martyrdom. My poor grandmother was a terrible woman; but then she had never known a joy in life, she lived in perpetual nothingness — and thus why should she not have dreamt of reducing others to the same painful renunciation of everything which she had imposed upon herself? And my poor mother, too, what a long agony did she undergo from having tasted the delight of being loved, and afterwards from having lapsed for ever into that religion of falsehood and death which denies all the powers and joys of life!’

While Geneviève spoke two shadowy forms seemed to flit by — the vanished forms of Madame Duparque and Madame Berthereau — those pitiable, disquieting devotees of another age, one of whom had belonged entirely to the ferocious exterminating Church, while the other, of a gentler nature, had died in despair at the thought that she had never attempted to sever her chain. Geneviève’s eyes seemed to wander away after them both. She herself had known the great battle, for it had been waged around her and within her; and it was happiness for her to think that she had one day felt free again, and had returned to life and to health. But her eyes at last fell upon her daughter Louise, who smiled at her very lovingly, and then leant forward to kiss her.

‘Mother,’ said Louise, ‘you were the bravest and the most deserving, for it was you who fought and suffered. It is to you we owe the victory, paid for with so many tears. I remember. Coming as I did after you, it was no great merit for me to free myself from the past; and if never a quiver of error disturbed me,
it
was because I profited by the terrible lesson which at one’ time made all our hearts bleed in our poor mourning home.’

‘Be quiet, you flatterer,’ replied Geneviève, laughing and returning her kiss. ‘You were the child who saved us, whose strong and skilful little mind intervened so lovingly and triumphed over every obstacle. We owe our peace to you; you were the first free little woman with enough intelligence, will, and resolution to set happiness on earth.’

Then Marc, turning towards Thérèse, explained: ‘You were not born, my dear, at the time of all those things, and you are ignorant of them. Having come after Louise, having never had anything to do with baptism or confession or communion, you find it easy and simple to live freely beyond the pale of religious imposture and social prejudice, with no other bonds about you than those of your own reason and conscience. But, for things to be as they are, mothers and grandmothers passed through frightful crises, the worst follies, the worst torments.... As is the case with all the social questions, the one solution lay in education. It was necessary to impart knowledge to woman before setting her in her legitimate place as the equal and companion of man. That was the first thing necessary, the essential condition of human happiness, for woman could only free man after being freed herself. As long as she remained the priest’s servant and accomplice, an instrument of reaction, espionage, and warfare in the home, man himself remained in chains, incapable of all virile and decisive action. The strength of the future will lie in the absolute agreement of man and wife.... And so, my dear, you see how sad it makes us that misfortune should again have come into your home. There is no abyss created by different beliefs between you and François. You are of the same spheres, the same education. He is not your master by law and custom, as he would have been in the old days; you are not his servant, seeking an opportunity to revenge yourself on him for his mastery. You have the same rights as he has.

You can dispose of your life as you choose. Your joint peace and agreement are based solely on reason, logic, and the dictates of life itself, which, to be lived in health and all fulness, requires the mating of man and woman. But, alas! we see your peace destroyed by the eternal frailty of human nature, unless indeed kindness of heart should help you to win it back.’

Thérèse had listened, calm, dignified, and with an expression of great deference: ‘I know all those things, grandfather; you must not think I have forgotten them,’ said she. ‘But why has François been living with you for some days past? He might have remained here. There are two lodgings, the schoolmaster’s and the schoolmistress’s, and I do not prevent him from taking possession of the former while I occupy the other. In that fashion he can resume his duties when the boys come back in a few days’ time. We are free, as you say, and I desire to remain free.’

Her father and her mother, Sébastien and Sarah, then tried to intervene affectionately; and Geneviève, Louise, and Charlotte, indeed all the women present, smiled at her, entreated her with their glances; but she would listen to nothing, she rejected their suggestions resolutely, though without any anger.

‘François has wounded me cruelly,’ she said. ‘I thought I had quite ceased to love him, and I should be telling you a falsehood if I said that I am now certain I love him still.... You cannot wish me to tell an untruth, you cannot wish me to resume life in common with him, when it would be cowardice and shame.’