![Truth [Vérité] - Emile Zola](/cover_862278.jpg "Truth [Vérité] - Emile Zola")
The magistrates, thrown back on the theory of some stranger who must have entered and left the boy's room by the window, had to rest content with this first verification of the facts. Only one point as yet was clearly established, the hour of the crime, which must have been perpetrated between half-past ten and eleven o'clock. As for the crime itself it remained engulfed in darkness.
Leaving the authorities, who had certain details to settle, Marc, after embracing Simon in brotherly fashion, was desirous of going home to lunch. The scene between the husband and the wife had taught him nothing, for he well knew how tenderly they loved each other. But tears had come to his eyes, he had been deeply stirred by the sight of such dolorous affection.
Noon was about to strike at St. Martin's Church when he again found himself on the square, which was now blocked by such an increasing crowd that it was difficult for him to open a way. As the news of the crime spread, folk arrived from all directions, pressing towards the closed window, which the two gendarmes could hardly defend; and the horribly exaggerated accounts of the affair which circulated through the crowd raised its indignation to fever heat and made it growl wrathfully. Marc had just freed himself from the throng when a priest approached him and inquired:
'Have you come from the school, Monsieur Froment? Are all these horrible things which people are repeating true?'
The questioner was Abbé Quandieu, priest of St. Martin's, the parish church. Forty-three years old, tall and robust, the Abbé had a gentle, kindly face, with light blue eyes, round cheeks, and a soft chin. Marc had met him at Madame Duparque's, for he was the old lady's confessor and friend. And though the schoolmaster was not fond of priests he felt some esteem for this one, knowing that he was tolerant and reasonable—possessed, too, of more feeling than real mental ability.
In a few words Marc recounted the facts of the case, which were already sufficiently horrid.
'Ah, poor Monsieur Simon!' said the priest compassionately, 'how deeply grieved he must be, for he was very much attached to his nephew and behaved very well in regard to him! I have had proof of it.'
This spontaneous testimony pleased Marc, who remained conversing with the priest for another minute. But a Capuchin Father drew near, Father Théodose, the Superior of the little community attached to the neighbouring chapel. Superbly built, having also a handsome face with large ardent eyes, and a splendid dark beard, which rendered him quite majestic, Father Théodose was a confessor of repute, and a preacher of a mystical turn, whose glowing accents attracted all the devout women of Maillebois. Though he was covertly waging war against Abbé Quandieu, he affected in his presence the deferential manner of a younger and more humbly situated servant of Providence. He immediately gave expression to his emotion and his grief, for he had noticed the poor child, he said, at the chapel on the previous evening. So pious a child he was, a little angel with a cherub's fair curly locks. But Marc did not tarry to listen, for the Capuchin inspired him with unconquerable distrust and antipathy. So he turned his steps homeward; but all at once he was again stopped, this time by a friendly tap on the shoulder.
'What! Férou, are you at Maillebois?' he exclaimed. The man whom he addressed by the name of Férou was schoolmaster at Le Moreau, a lonely hamlet, some two and a half miles from Jonville. The little place had not even a priest of its own, but was looked after, from the religious standpoint, by the Jonville priest, Abbé Cognasse. Férou there led a life of black misery with his wife and his children, three girls. He was a big loosely-built fellow of thirty, whose clothes always seemed too short for him. His dark hair bristled on his long and bony head, he had a bumpy nose, a wide mouth, and a projecting chin, and knew not what to do with his big feet and his big hands.
'You know very well that my wife's aunt keeps a grocery shop here,' he answered. 'We came over to see her. But, I say, what an abominable business this is about the poor little hunchback! Won't it just enable those dirty priests to belabour us and say that we pervert and poison the young!'
Marc regarded Férou as a very intelligent, well-read man, whom a confined life full of privations had embittered to the point of violence and inspired with ideas of revenge. The virulence of the remark he had just made disturbed Marc, who rejoined: 'Belabour us? I don't see what we have to do with it.'
'Then you are a simpleton,' Férou retorted. 'You don't understand that species, but you will soon see the good Fathers and the dear Brothers, all the black gowns, hard at work. Haven't they already allowed it to be surmised that Simon himself strangled his nephew?'
At this Marc lost his temper. Férou's hatred of the Church led him too far.
'You are out of your senses,' said Marc. 'Nobody suspects, nobody for one moment would dare to suspect, Simon. All acknowledge his integrity and kindliness. Even Abbé Quandieu told me a moment ago that he had had proof of his fatherly treatment of the poor victim.'
Férou's lean and lanky figure was shaken by a convulsive laugh, his hair seemed to bristle yet higher on his equine head. 'Ah! it's too amusing,' he replied. 'So you fancy they will restrain themselves when a dirty Jew is in question? Does a dirty Jew deserve to have the truth told about him? Your friend Quandieu and all the others will say whatever may be desirable if it is necessary that the dirty Jew should be found guilty, thanks to the complicity of us others, the scamps who know neither God nor country, and who corrupt the children of France. For that is what the priests say of us—you know it well!'
Then as Marc, chilled to the heart, continued to protest, Férou resumed yet more vehemently: 'But you know what goes on at Le Moreux! I starve there, I'm treated with contempt, pressed down even lower than the wretched road-menders. When Abbé Cognasse comes over to say Mass he'd spit on me if he met me. And if I don't eat bread every day it's simply because I refused to sing in the choir and ring the church bell! You know Abbé Cognasse yourself. You have managed to check him at Jonville, since you contrived to get the mayor over to your side; but, none the less, you are always at war; he would devour you if you only gave him the chance. A village schoolmaster indeed! Why, he's everybody's beast of burden, everybody's lackey, a man without caste, an arrant failure; and the peasants distrust him, and the priests would like to burn him alive in order to ensure the undivided reign of the Church Catechism throughout the country!'
He went on bitterly, enumerating the sufferings of those damned ones, as he called the elementary teachers. He himself, a shepherd's son, successful at the village school which he had attended, and afterwards a student at the Training College, which he had quitted with excellent certificates, had always suffered from lack of means; for in a spirit of rectitude after some trouble with a shop girl at Maillebois, when he was assistant-master there, he had foolishly married her, although she was as poor as himself. But was Marc any happier at Jonville, even though his wife received frequent presents from her grandmother? Was he not always struggling with indebtedness, struggling too with the priest, in order to retain dignity and independence? True, he was seconded by Mademoiselle Mazeline, the mistress of the girls' school, a woman of firm sense, with an inexhaustible heart, who had helped him to win over the parish council and gradually the whole commune. But circumstances had been in his favour, and the example was perhaps unique in the department. On the other hand, the state of affairs at Maillebois completed the picture. There, on one side, one found Mademoiselle Rouzaire won over to the cause of the priests and the monks, learning to take her pupils to church, and fulfilling so well the office of the nuns that it had been considered unnecessary to install a nuns' school in the little town. Then, on the other hand, there was that poor fellow Simon, an honest man certainly, but one who, from fear of being treated as a dirty Jew, tried circumspection with everybody, allowing his nephew to be educated by the dear Brothers, and bowing down to the ground before all the rooks who infested the country.
'A dirty Jew!' cried Férou with emphasis, by way of conclusion. 'He is, and always will be, a dirty Jew. And to be both a schoolmaster and a Jew beats everything. … Ah! well, you'll see, you'll see!'
Then,
