![Truth [Vérité] - Emile Zola](/cover_862278.jpg "Truth [Vérité] - Emile Zola")
and then that frightful awakening in the morning.'
These remarks gave Marc an opportunity to ask a few questions. 'Did you meet nobody on the road?' he inquired. 'Did nobody see you arrive here at the hour you named?'
'Why, no! I met nobody, and I think nobody saw me come in. At that late hour nobody is about in Maillebois.'
Silence fell. Then Marc resumed: 'But as you did not take the train back you did not use your return ticket. Have you still got it?'
'My return ticket? No! I was so furious when I saw the half-past ten o'clock train going off without me, that I threw the ticket away, in the station yard, directly I decided to return on foot.'
Silence fell again, and Simon gazed fixedly at his friend, saying: 'Why do you put these questions to me?'
Marc affectionately grasped his hands once more, and retained them for a moment in his own, whilst resolving to warn him of impending danger, indeed to tell him everything. 'I regret,' he said, 'that nobody saw you, and I regret still more that you did not keep your return ticket. There are so many fools and malicious folks about! It is being reported that this morning the police found overwhelming proofs here, copies of the writing-slip, initialled in the same way as the one which formed part of the gag. Mignot, it seems, is astonished that he should have found you so sound asleep yesterday morning; and Mademoiselle Rouzaire now remembers that about a quarter to eleven o'clock on the night of the crime, she heard voices and footsteps, as if somebody were entering the house.'
Very pale but very calm, Simon smiled and shrugged his shoulders: 'Ah! that's it, is it? They are suspecting me. Well, I now understand the expressions I have seen on the faces of the folk who have been passing the school since early this morning! Mignot, who is a good fellow at heart, will of course say as everybody else says, for fear of compromising himself with a Jew like me. As for Mademoiselle Rouzaire, she will sacrifice me ten times over, if her confessor has suggested it to her, and if she finds a chance of advancement or merely additional consideration in such a fine deed. Ah! they are suspecting me, are they? and the whole pack of clerical hounds has been let loose!'
He almost laughed as he spoke. But Rachel, whose customary indolence seemed to have been increased by her deep grief, had now suddenly risen, her beautiful countenance all aglow with dolorous revolt.
'You, you! They suspect you of such ignominy!' she exclaimed; 'you who were so kind and gentle when you came home, and clasped me in your arms, and spoke such loving words to me! They must be mad! Is it not sufficient that I should speak the truth, tell of your return, and of the night we spent together?'
Then she flung herself upon his neck, weeping and relapsing into the weakness of an adored and caressed woman. Pressing her to his heart her husband strove to reassure and calm her.
'Don't be distressed, my darling! Those stories are idiotic, they stand on nothing. I am quite at ease; the authorities may turn everything here upside down; they may search all my past life, they will find no guilt in it. I have only to speak the truth, and, do you know, nothing can stand against the truth; it is the great, the eternal victor.'
Then, turning to his friend, he added: 'Is it not so, my good Marc? is one not invincible when one has truth on one's side?'
If Marc had not been convinced already of Simon's innocence his last doubts would have fled amid the emotion of that scene. Yielding to an impulse of his heart he embraced both husband and wife, as if giving himself to them entirely, in order to help them in the grave crisis which he foresaw. Desirous as he was of taking immediate action, he again spoke of the copy-slip, for he felt that it was the one important piece of evidence on which the elucidation of the whole affair must be reared. But how puzzling was that crumpled, bitten slip of paper, soiled by saliva, with its initialling or its blot half effaced, and with one of its corners carried away, no doubt, by the victim's teeth! The very words 'Love one another,' lithographed in a fine English round-hand, seemed fraught with a terrible irony. Whence had that slip come? Who had brought it to that room—the boy or his murderer? And how could one ascertain the truth when the Mesdames Milhomme, the neighbouring stationers, sold such slips almost daily?
Simon, for his part, could only repeat that he had never had that particular one in his school. 'All my boys would say so. That copy never entered the school, never passed under their eyes.'
Marc regarded this as valuable information. 'Then they could testify to that effect!' he exclaimed. 'As it is being falsely rumoured that the police found similar copies in your rooms, one must re-establish the truth immediately—call on your pupils at their homes, and demand their evidence before anybody tries to tamper with their memory. Give me the names of a few of them; I will take the matter in hand, and carry it through this afternoon.'
Simon, strong in the consciousness of his innocence, at first refused to do so. But eventually, among his pupils' parents, he named Bongard, a farmer on the road to La Désirade, Masson Doloir, a workman living in the Rue Plaisir, and Savin, a clerk in the Rue Fauche. Those three would suffice unless Marc should also like to call on the Mesdames Milhomme. Thus everything was settled, and Marc went off to lunch, promising that he would return in the evening to acquaint Simon with the result of his inquiries.
Once outside on the square, however, he again caught sight of handsome Mauraisin. This time the Elementary Inspector was deep in conference with Mademoiselle Rouzaire. He was usually most punctilious and prudent with the schoolmistresses, in consequence of his narrow escape from trouble, a few years previously, in connection with a young assistant-teacher who had shrieked like a little booby when he had simply wished to kiss her. Malicious people said that Mademoiselle Rouzaire did not shriek, although she was so ugly, and that this explained both the favourable reports she secured and her prospects of rapid advancement.
Standing at the gate of her little garden, she was now speaking to Mauraisin with great volubility, making sweeping gestures in the direction of the boys' school; while the Inspector, wagging his head, listened to her attentively. At last they entered the garden together, gently closing the gate behind them. It was evident to Marc that the woman was telling Mauraisin about the crime and the sounds of footsteps and voices which she now declared she had heard. At the thought of this the quiver of the early morning returned to Marc; he again experienced discomfort—a discomfort arising from his hostile surroundings, from the dark, stealthy plot which was brewing, gathering like a storm, rendering the atmosphere more and more oppressive. Singular indeed was the fashion in which that Elementary Inspector went to the help of a threatened master: he began by taking the opinions of all the surrounding folk whom jealousy or hatred inspired!
At two o'clock in the afternoon Marc found himself on the road to La Désirade, just outside Maillebois. Bongard, whose name had been given him by Simon, there owned a little farm of a few fields, which he cultivated himself with difficulty, securing, as he put it, no more than was needed to provide daily bread. Marc luckily met him just as he had returned home with a cartload of hay. He was a strong, square-shouldered, and stoutish man, with round eyes and placid silent face, beardless but seldom fresh shaven. On her side La Bongard, a long bony blonde, who was also present, preparing some mash for her cow, showed an extremely plain countenance, outrageously freckled, with a patch of colour on each cheek-bone, and an expression of close reserve. Both looked suspiciously at the strange gentleman whom they saw entering their yard.
'I am the Jonville schoolmaster,' said Marc. 'You have a little boy who attends the Communal school at Maillebois, have you not?'
At that moment Fernand, the boy in question, who had been playing on the road, ran up. He was a sturdy lad of nine years, fashioned, one might have thought, with a billhook, and showing a low brow and a dull, heavy countenance. He was followed by his sister Angèle, a lass of seven, with a similarly massive but more knowing face, for in her quick eyes one espied
