![Truth [Vérité] - Emile Zola](/cover_862278.jpg "Truth [Vérité] - Emile Zola")
life which he led behind that façade so mendaciously suggestive of class superiority and easy circumstances! The bitterness of his feelings came from his consciousness that he was bound fast to his humble duties, that he had no prospect whatever of advancement, but was condemned for life to never-changing toil and a contemptible salary, which only just saved him from starvation. Poor in health and soured, humble and irritable at one and the same time, feeling as much terror as rage in his everlasting anxiety lest he might displease his superiors, he showed himself obsequious and cowardly at his office, whilst at home he terrorised his wife with his fits of passion, which suggested those of a sickly child. She smiled at them in her pretty, gentle way, and after attending to the children and the household she found a means to work bead-flowers for a firm at Beaumont, very delicate and well-paid work, which provided the family with little luxuries. But her husband, vexed at heart, such was his middle-class pride, would not have it said that his wife was forced to work, and so it was necessary for her to shut herself up with her beads, and deliver her work by stealth.
For a moment Marc heard a sharp voice speaking angrily. Then, after a gentle murmur, silence fell, and Madame Savin reappeared: 'Please follow me, monsieur.'
Savin scarcely rose from the arm-chair in which he was nursing his attack of fever. A village schoolmaster was of no consequence. Short, lean, and puny, quite bald already, although he was only thirty-one years old, the clerk had a poor, cadaverous countenance, with slight, tired features, light eyes, and a very scanty beard of a dirty yellowish tinge. He finished wearing out his old frock coats at home, and that day the coloured scarf he had fastened about his neck helped to make him look like a little old man, burdened with complaints and quite neglectful of his person.
'My wife tells me, monsieur,' he said, 'that you have called about that abominable affair, in which Simon the schoolmaster, according to some accounts, is likely to be compromised; and my first impulse, I confess it, was to refuse to see you.'
Then he stopped short, for he had just noticed on the table some bead-work flowers which his wife had been making as she sat beside him, while he perused Le Petit Beaumontais. He gave her a terrible glance which she understood, for she hastened to cover her work with the newspaper.
'But don't regard me as a Reactionary, monsieur,' Savin resumed. 'I am a Republican—in fact a very advanced Republican; I do not hide it, my superiors are well aware of it. When one serves the Republic it is only honest to be a Republican, is it not? Briefly, I am on the side of the Government for and in all things.'
Compelled to listen politely, Marc contented himself with nodding his assent.
'My views on the religious question are very simple,' Savin continued. 'The priests ought to remain in their own sphere. I am an anti-clerical as I am a Republican. But I hasten to add that in my opinion a religion is necessary for women and children, and that as long as the Catholic religion is that of the country, why, we may as well have that one as another! Thus, with respect to my wife, I have made her understand that it is fitting and necessary for a woman of her age and position to follow the observances of religion in order that she may have a rule and a morale in the eyes of the world. She goes to the Capuchins!'
Madame Savin became embarrassed, her face turned pink, and she cast down her eyes. That question of religious practices had long been a great source of unpleasantness in her home. She, with all her charming delicacy, her gentle, upright, heart, had always regarded those practices with repugnance. As for her husband, he, wild with jealousy, ever picking quarrels with her respecting what he called her unfaithfulness of thought, looked upon Confession and Communion solely as police measures, moral curbs, excellently suited to restrain women from descending the slope which leads to betrayal. And his wife had been obliged to yield to him in the matter, and accept the confessor whom he selected, the bearded Father Théodose, though with her woman's instinct she divined the latter to be a man of a horrid nature. But if she was wounded at heart and blushed with offended delicacy, she none the less shrugged her shoulders and continued to obey her husband for the sake of domestic quietude.
'As for my children, monsieur,' Savin was now saying, 'my resources have not enabled me to send Achille and Philippe, my twin sons, to college; so, naturally enough, I have sent them to the secular school in accordance with my duty as a functionary and a Republican. In the same way my daughter Hortense goes to Mademoiselle Rouzaire's; but, at bottom, I am well pleased to find that that lady has religious sentiments, and conducts her pupils to church—for, after all, such is her duty, and I should complain if she did not do so. Boys always pull through. And yet if I did not owe an account of my actions to my superiors, would it not have been more advantageous for my sons if I had sent them to a Church school? Later in life they would have been helped on, placed in good situations, supported, whereas now they will simply vegetate, as I myself have vegetated.'
His bitter rancour was overflowing; and, seized with a secret dread, he added in a lower tone: 'The priests, you see, are the stronger, and in spite of everything one ought always to be with them.'
A feeling of compassion came over Marc; that poor, puny, trembling being, driven desperate by mediocrity of circumstances and foolishness of nature, seemed to him in sore need of pity. Foreseeing the conclusion of all his speeches the young man had already risen. 'And so, monsieur,' he said, 'the information which I desired to obtain from your children——'
'The children are not here,' Savin answered; 'a lady, a neighbour, has taken them for a walk. But, even if they were here, ought I to allow them to answer you? Judge for yourself. A functionary can in no case take sides. And I already have quite enough worries at my office without incurring any responsibility in this vile affair.'
Then, as Marc hastily bowed, he added: 'Although the Jews prey on our land of France I have nothing to say against that Monsieur Simon, unless it be that a Jew ought never to be allowed to be a schoolmaster. I hope that Le Petit Beaumontais will start a campaign on that subject. … Liberty and justice for all—such ought to be the watchwords of a good Republican. But the country must be put first, the country alone must be considered, when it is in danger! Is that not so?'
Madame Savin, who since Marc's entry into the room had not spoken a word, escorted the young man to the door of the flat, where, while still retaining an air of embarrassment amid her submissiveness—that of a slave-wife superior to her harsh master—she contented herself with smiling divinely. Then at the bottom of the stairs Marc encountered the children whom the neighbour was bringing home. Hortense, the girl, now nine years old, was already a pretty and coquettish little person, with artful eyes which gleamed with maliciousness when she did not veil them with the expression of hypocritical piety which she had learnt to acquire at Mademoiselle Rouzaire's. But Marc was more interested in the twin boys, Achille and Philippe, two thin pale lads, sickly like their father, and very unruly and sly for their seven years. They pushed their sister against the banister, and almost made her fall; and when they had climbed the stairs, and the door of the flat opened, an infant's wail was heard, that of little Jules, who had awoke and was already in the arms of his mother, eager for her breast.
As Marc walked down the street, he caught himself talking aloud. So they were all agreed, from the ignorant peasant to the timid and idiotic clerk, passing by way of the brutified workman, the spoilt fruit of barrack-life and the salary system. In ascending the social scale one merely found error aggravated by narrow egotism and base cowardice. Men's minds remained steeped in darkness; the semi-education which was nowadays acquired without method, and which reposed on no serious scientific foundation, led simply to a poisoning of the brain, to a state of disquieting corruption. There must be education certainly, but complete education, whence hypocrisy and falsehood would be banished—education which would free the mind by acquainting it with truth in its entirety. Marc trembled at the thought of the abyss of ignorance, error, and hatred which opened before him. What an awful bankruptcy there would be if those folk were needed some day for some work of truth and justice! And those folk typified France; they were the multitude, the heavy, inert
