![Truth [Vérité] - Emile Zola](/cover_862278.jpg "Truth [Vérité] - Emile Zola")
Monsieur Froment,' Madame Alexandre replied in her gentle way. 'We have just seen the Commissary pass.'
'And it is certain, you know,' said Madame Edouard in her turn, looking him straight in the face, and anticipating the question which she had already read in his eyes, 'it is quite certain that Victor never had that pretended copy-slip. I have questioned him, and I am convinced that he is telling no falsehood.'
The boy raised his face, with its square chin and large eyes full of quiet impudence. 'No, of course I am not telling a falsehood,' he said.
Amazed, chilled to the heart, Marc turned to Madame Alexandre: 'But what was it your son said, madame? He saw that copy in his cousin's hands—he declared it!'
The mother appeared ill at ease and did not immediately answer. Her little Sébastien had already taken refuge in her skirts as if to hide his face, and she with a quivering hand fondled his hair, covered his head anxiously and protectingly.
'No doubt, Monsieur Froment,' she at last responded, 'he saw it, or rather he fancied he saw it. At present he is not very sure: he thinks he may have been mistaken. And so, you see, there is nothing more to be said.'
Unwilling to insist with the women, Marc addressed himself to the little boy. 'Is it true that you did not see the copy? There is nothing so wicked as a lie, my child.'
Sébastien, instead of answering, pressed his face more closely to his mother's skirt, and burst into sobs. It was evident that Madame Edouard, like a good trader, who feared that by taking any particular side in the conflict she might lose a part of her custom, had imposed her will upon the others. She was as firm as a rock, and it would be impossible to move her. However, she condescended to indicate the reasons by which she was guided.
'Mon Dieu, Monsieur Froment,' she said, 'we are against nobody, you know; we need everybody's help in our business. Only it must be admitted that all the appearances are against Monsieur Simon. Take, for instance, that train which he says he missed, that return ticket which he threw away in the station yard, that four-mile walk when he met nobody. Besides, Mademoiselle Rouzaire is positive that she heard a noise about twenty minutes to eleven o'clock, whereas he pretends that he did not return till an hour later. Explain, too, how it happened that Monsieur Mignot had to go and wake him when it was nearly eight o'clock in the morning—he who is usually up so early. … Well, perhaps he will justify himself. For his sake, let us hope so——'
Marc stopped her with a gesture. She was repeating what he had read in Le Petit Beaumontais, and he was terrified by it. He cast a keen glance on both women—the one who so resolutely silenced her conscience, the other who trembled from head to foot; and he himself shuddered at the thought of their sudden falsehood which might lead to such disastrous consequences. Then he left them and hastened to Simon's.
A closed vehicle, guarded by two plain-clothes officers, was waiting at the door. The orders were stringent, but Marc at last contrived to enter. While two other officers guarded Simon in the classroom, the Commissary of Police, who had arrived with a warrant signed by Investigating Magistrate Daix, conducted a fresh and very minute perquisition through the whole house, seeking, no doubt, for copies of the famous writing slip. But he found nothing; and when Marc ventured to ask one of the officers if a similar perquisition had taken place at the school kept by the Brothers of the Christian Doctrine, the man looked at him in amazement. A perquisition at the good Brothers' school? What for, indeed? But Marc was already shrugging his shoulders at his own simplicity, for, even supposing that the officers had gone to the Brothers', the latter had been allowed ample time to burn and destroy everything likely to compromise them.
The young man had to exert all his powers of restraint to prevent himself from expressing his feelings of revolt. His powerlessness to demonstrate the truth filled him with despair. For yet another hour he had to remain in the hall, waiting for the finish of the Commissary's search. At last, just as the officers were about to remove Simon, he was able to see him for a moment. Madame Simon and her two children were there also, and she flung herself, sobbing, about her husband's neck, while the Commissary, a rough but not hard-hearted man, made a pretence of giving some last orders. There came a most heart-rending scene.
Simon, livid, crushed by the downfall of his life, strove to preserve great calmness.
'Do not grieve, my darling,' he said. 'It can only be an error, an abominable error. Everything will certainly be explained as soon as I am interrogated, and I shall soon return to you.'
But Rachel sobbed yet more violently, with a wild expression on her tear-drenched face, while she raised the poor little ones, Joseph and Sarah, in order that their father might kiss them once again.
'Yes, yes, the poor children; love them well; take good care of them until my return. And I beg you do not weep so; you will deprive me of all my courage.'
He tore himself from her clasp, and then, at the sight of Marc, his eyes sparkled with infinite joy. He quickly grasped the hand which the young man offered him: 'Ah! comrade, thank you! Let my brother David be warned at once; be sure to tell him I am innocent. He will seek everywhere, he will find the culprit, it is to him that I confide my honour and my children's.'
'Be easy,' replied Marc, half-choking with emotion, 'I will help him.'
But the Commissary now returned and put an end to the leave-taking. It was necessary that Madame Simon, wild with grief, should be removed at the moment when Simon was led away by the two officers. What followed was monstrous. The hour fixed for the funeral of little Zéphirin was three, and, in order to prevent any regrettable collision, it had been decided to arrest Simon at one o'clock. But the perquisition had lasted so long that the very thing which the authorities had wished to prevent took place. When Simon appeared outside, on the little flight of steps, the square was already crowded with people who had come to see the funeral procession. And this crowd, which had gorged itself with the tales of Le Petit Beaumontais, and which was still stirred by the horror of the crime, raised angry shouts as soon as it perceived the schoolmaster, that accursed Jew, that slayer of little children, who for his abominable witchery needed their virgin blood, whilst it was yet sanctified by the presence of the Host. That was the legend, never to be destroyed, which sped from mouth to mouth, maddening the tumultuous and menacing crowd.
'To death! To death with the murderer and sacrilegist! To death, to death with the Jew!'
Chilled to his bones, paler and yet more rigid than before, Simon, from the top of the steps, responded by a cry which henceforth came without cessation from his lips as if it were the very voice of his conscience: 'I am innocent, I am innocent!'
Then rage transported the throng, the hoots ascended tempestuously, a huge human wave bounded forward to seize the accursed wretch and throw him down and tear him into shreds.
'To death! to death with the Jew!'
But the officers had quickly pushed Simon into the waiting vehicle, and the driver urged his horse into a fast trot, while the prisoner, never tiring, repeated his cry in accents which rose above the tempest:
'I am innocent! I am innocent! I am innocent!'
All the way down the High Street the crowd rushed, howling louder and louder, behind the vehicle. And Marc, who had remained in the square, dazed and full of anguish, began to think of the other demonstration, the indignant murmurs, the explosion of revolt which had attended the end of the prize-giving at the Brothers' school two days previously. Barely forty-eight hours had sufficed for a complete revulsion of public opinion, and he was terrified by the abominable skill, the cruel promptitude displayed by the mysterious hands which had gathered so much darkness together. His hopes had crumbled, he felt that truth was obscured, defeated,
