Complete Works of Emile Zola (1694 page)

In itself the story of the thirty francs was very simple. Ever since there had been a schoolmaster at Jonville he had been paid that sum annually to ring the church bell. But Marc, being unwilling to do so, ended by persuading the parish council to devote the money to another purpose. If the priest needed a bellringer he could surely pay for one himself. But the old clock in the church steeple was in a sad condition, constantly losing time, and a former clockmaker, dwelling in the vicinity, was willing to repair it and keep it in working order for that very sum of thirty francs a year. It was with some little malice that Marc suggested the acceptance of the offer, while the peasants reflected and sounded themselves, wondering whether their interests would be best served by having the bell rung for Mass, or by having a clock to tell them the correct time. As for ensuring both services by voting an additional thirty francs, they never gave that point a moment’s thought, for their policy was to burden the parish with no useless expense whatever. Nevertheless, there was a fine tussle, in which the influence of the priest and that of the schoolmaster came into collision, the latter finally remaining victorious, in spite of the maledictions which Abbé Cognasse, in his sermons, heaped on the impious folk who, by silencing the bell, wished to silence the call of religion. One fine Sunday morning, however, after a month’s quietude, a succession of furious peals resounded from the church steeple; and people then discovered that the priest’s old servant, the terrible Palmyre, was ringing the bell with all the furious strength of her wiry little arms.

Abbé Cognasse understood that the Mayor was escaping him, and, though inwardly aglow with anger, he henceforth became prudent, displaying all the flexible craft of his cloth. Then, as Martineau grew conscious of the firmness of the hands to which he had confided himself, he more and more frequently consulted Marc, who at last felt that he was master. As parish clerk the young man ended by discreetly guiding the council, duly respecting the self-esteem of its members and remaining in the background, content to inspire those peasants, whose chief desire was for quietude and prosperity, with intelligence, sense, and healthy determination. Under the young man’s auspices education spread, casting light upon all things, destroying foolish superstitions, and driving not only mental poverty but also the poverty of homes away; for wealth comes with knowledge. Never indeed had Jonville made so much progress; it was becoming the most prosperous and the happiest parish of the department.

It must be said that Marc was greatly assisted in his work by Mademoiselle Mazeline, the mistress of the girls’ school, which a wall alone separated from the boys’ school, where the young man was master. Short and dark, quite destitute of beauty, but very charming, with a broad face, a full kindly mouth, fine black eyes glowing with tenderness and abnegation beneath a lofty and bossy brow, Mademoiselle Mazeline was all intelligence, sense, healthy and upright determination, like one born to educate and emancipate the little girls confided to her. She came from that Training School of Fontenay-aux-Roses which, thanks to the heart and mind of an illustrious master, has already sent forth a whole cohort of able pioneers, whose mission it is to form the wives and mothers of tomorrow. And if, at six and twenty years of age, the young woman was already mistress of a school, it was thanks to her intelligent superiors, Salvan and Le Barazer, who were giving her a trial in that lonely village in order to ascertain if she would turn out the good work which they awaited. At heart they felt some anxiety on account of her advanced opinions, fearing that she might indispose her pupils’ parents by her anti-clerical views, her conviction that woman would only bring happiness to the world when she was at last delivered from the priests. But Mademoiselle Mazeline behaved with great sense and good humour, and if she did not take her girls to Mass, she treated them in such a motherly fashion, taught them and cared for them so affectionately, that the peasants became deeply attached to her. Thus she greatly helped Marc in his work by proving that, although one may not go to Mass, and although one may set one’s belief more particularly in human work and conscientiousness, one may nevertheless become the most intelligent, most upright, and kindly woman in the world.

But Abbé Cognasse, whatever his repulse at Jonville, fully revenged himself at Le Moreux, a little parish some two and a half miles distant, which, having no priest of its own, was dependent upon him. If, however, there were less than two hundred inhabitants at Le Moreux, and if the village was hidden away among the hills, the difficult roads cutting it off from frequent intercourse with the rest of the world, on the other hand it was by no means a wretched spot. Its only poor family was that of its schoolmaster; all the others possessed fertile lands, and lived with hardly a care amid the sleepy quietude of routine. Saleur, the Mayor, a short stout man with a bovine muzzle and little or no neck, had been a grazier, and had suddenly made a fortune by selling his meadow lands, herds, and flocks at a high price to a company, which wished to syndicate all the stock-raising in the department. Since then he had transformed his house into a coquettish villa, and had become a
bourgeois
, sending his son Honoré to the Beaumont Lycée before letting him go as a student to Paris. Although the people of Moreux were jealous of Saleur, they reappointed him Mayor at each election, for the all-sufficient reason that, having to do nothing for a living, he was well able to attend to the parish affairs. He, however, cast them upon the shoulders of Férou, the schoolmaster, who as parish clerk received an annual salary of one hundred and eighty francs, in return for which he had to perform no little work, keep the registers, draw up reports, write letters, and attend to something or other at almost every moment.

Saleur was dense and heavy, crassly ignorant, scarce able to sign his name, and, though not harsh at bottom, he treated Férou as if the latter were a mere writing machine, regarding him indeed with the quiet contempt of a man who had needed nothing like so much learning to make his fortune and live at his ease. Moreover, the Mayor bore the schoolmaster a grudge for having quarrelled with Abbé Cognasse by refusing to take his pupils to church, and sing as a choirman. It was not that Saleur himself followed the observances of the Church; for it was merely as a supporter of the cause of order that he went to Mass with his wife, a lean, insignificant, red-haired woman, who was neither devout nor coquettish, but who also regarded attendance at church on Sundays as a social duty. Thus Saleur’s grudge against Férou arose simply from the circumstance that the schoolmaster’s rebellious attitude aggravated the quarrels which were perpetually occurring between the priest of Jonville and the inhabitants of Le Moreux.

For instance, the latter complained that the priest treated them with little or no respect, that they only obtained from him some scraps of Masses, bestowed on them like alms, that they were compelled to send their children to Jonville for the catechism classes and the first Communion, and that all sorts of difficulties were placed in their way with respect to weddings, baptisms, and churchings; whereupon the infuriated Abbé retorted that when folk wished to obtain favours from Heaven their first duty was to provide themselves with a priest of their own. On weekdays, when it was invariably closed, the church of Le Moreux looked like a dismal empty barn; but for half an hour every Sunday Abbé Cognasse swept down on it like a tempest, feared by everybody and terrorising the parish with his capriciousness and his violence.

Marc, who was acquainted with the situation, could not think of Férou without feeling much compassionate sympathy. In that well-to-do village of Le Moreux, he, the schoolmaster, alone was unable to satisfy his hunger. The horrible misery which assails so many poor schoolmasters became in his case most tragically acute. He had made his
début
at Maillebois as an assistant teacher, with a salary of nine hundred francs, when he was twenty-four years of age. And now, after six years’ work, exiled to Le Moreux on account of his bitter disposition, he still only received a thousand francs a year, or, allowing for the amount deducted for the pension fund, sixty-five francs a month — that is to say, fifty-two sous a day.’ Yet he had a wife and three little girls to keep Î Black misery reigned in the damp old hovel which served as a school, the food was often such as dogs would have scorned to touch, the girls went about shoeless, the wife did not possess a decent gown. And indebtedness was always increasing, the threatening, deadly indebtedness in which so many humble servants of the State become engulfed, while those at the head of affairs are often wickedly paid six times as much as their services deserve.

How great was the courage, the heroism which Férou needed to try to hide that misery, to remain erect in his threadbare frock-coat, to hold his rank as a man of letters, a monsieur who by the regulations was forbidden to carry on any commercial calling whatever. Morning after morning the struggle began afresh, night was only reached by force of energy and will. That shepherd’s son, whose keenly intelligent mind had retained great independence, discharged his duties passionately, as often as not without any show of resignation. His wife, a stout and pleasant blonde, formerly assistant to her aunt, who kept a shop at Maillebois, where Férou had met and married her honestly enough, after getting her into trouble, gave him it is true some little help, attending for instance to the girls, teaching them to read and sew, while he had on his hands the ill-bred, dense, and malicious boys. Under all the circumstances was it surprising that he sometimes yielded to the discouragement which comes from ungrateful toil, to the sudden rebellion of his suffering heart? Born poor, he had always suffered from poverty, ill fed and ill clad, and now that he was a monsieur his poverty became the more frightfully bitter. Around him he saw only happy folk, peasants possessed of lands, able to eat their fill, proud of the crown pieces they had put by. Most of them were brutish, scarcely able to write. They invariably needed his help when a letter had to be drafted. Yet he, the only man of intellect, education, and culture among them, often lacked a franc to buy himself a couple of new collars or to pay for the repair of his old shoes. And the others treated him as a lackey, overwhelmed him with scorn, jeered at his ragged coat, of which, at heart, they were jealous.

But the comparison which they drew between him, the schoolmaster, and Abbé Cognasse, the priest, was particularly unfavourable to Férou. The schoolmaster was so poorly paid and so wretched, he was treated impertinently by his pupils, and disdainfully by their parents; he was destitute, too, of all authority, unsupported by his superiors; whereas the priest, far more liberally remunerated, receiving moreover all sorts of presents in addition to his stipend, was backed up by his bishop and petted by the devout, whilst as for authority he spoke like one who had only to address himself to his Master to bring as he pleased thunder, or rain, or sunshine on the crops. Thus, although Abbé Cognasse was always quarrelling with the folk of Le Moreux, and although they had lost their faith and had almost ceased to follow the observances of religion, he still reigned over them. And thus, on the other hand, schoolmaster Férou, tortured by his life of indigence, gorged with bitterness, turned into a Socialist by sheer force of circumstances, drew bad reports upon himself by expressing subversive views with respect to that social system which condemned him,
the representative of intelligence and knowledge, to starve, whilst all around him stupidity and ignorance possessed and enjoyed.

The winter proved very severe that year. Already in November Jonville and Le Moreux were buried in snow and ice. Marc heard that two of Férou’s little girls were ill and that their father was scarcely able to provide them with broth. He strove to assist him, but he himself was very poor, and had to obtain Mademoiselle Mazeline’s help in the good work. Like Férou indeed, Marc, as schoolmaster, only received a salary of one thousand francs a year, but his duties as parish clerk were better remunerated than his colleague’s. Again, the building in which the Jonville boys’ and girls’ schools were lodged — the former village parsonage, restored and enlarged — was more healthy than that of Le Moreux. Nevertheless, the young man hitherto had only made both ends meet by the liberality of Madame Duparque, his wife’s grandmother, who sent frocks for Louise, linen for Geneviève, besides little presents in money at certain seasons of the year. Since the Simon case, however, she had given nothing, and Marc was almost relieved, for the harsh words accompanying each of her presents had often hurt his feelings. But how straitened did the home now become, and what toil, courage, and economy were needed to live and discharge one’s office with dignity!

Marc, who loved his profession, had returned to it with a kind of dolorous ardour, and nobody, on seeing him at work, punctually discharging each duty through those first winter months so hard to the poor, had any suspicion of the sombre grief, the bitter despair, which he hid so jealously beneath a brave assumption of tranquillity. He had remained sorely hurt ever since the condemnation of Simon; the wound dealt him by that monstrous iniquity would not heal. In moments of privacy he lapsed into black reveries, and Geneviève often heard him exclaim: ‘It is frightful! I thought I knew my country, and I did not know it!’

Yes, how had it been possible for such an infamous thing to take place in France, the France of the Great Revolution, which Marc had regarded hitherto as the deliverer and justiciar promised to the world? He loved his country dearly for its generosity, for its independent courage, for all the noble and great work which he thought it was destined to accomplish. And now it allowed — nay, actually demanded — the condemnation of an innocent man! And it reverted to the old-time imbecility, the barbarity of ancient days! Had it been changed, had it been poisoned to bring about that dementia? Grief and shame haunted him; it was as if he himself had had a share in that crime. And with his eager passion for truth and his craving to impose it upon all, he felt intolerable discomfort when he saw falsehood triumph, and found himself powerless to fight and destroy it by shouting aloud the truth which he had sought so zealously. He lived through the affair again, he still sought and sought, without discovering anything more, so great was the tangle created by invisible hands. And after his long hours of teaching, such despair at times came over him in the evening that Geneviève gently cast her arms about him and kissed him tenderly, desirous of giving him a little comfort.