Truth [Vérité]

by Émile Zola

Marc looked at him in astonishment. 'What! find that corner? It would be a wonderful chance if we should do so! We even admitted that it might have been torn away by the victim's teeth.'

'Oh! that is not credible,' Delbos answered. 'Besides, in that case the fragment would have been found on the floor. Nothing was found, so the corner was intentionally torn off. Besides, we here detect the intervention of Father Philibin, for, as you have told me, your assistant Mignot remembers that at his first glance the copy-slip appeared to him to be intact, and that he felt surprised when, after losing sight of it for a moment, he saw it still in Father Philibin's hands and mutilated. So there is no doubt on the point; the corner was torn away by Father Philibin. Throughout the campaign it was he, always he who turned up at decisive moments to save the culprit! And this is why I should like to have complete proof—that is to say, the little fragment of paper which he carried away with him.'

At this David in his turn expressed his surprise: 'You think that he kept it?'

'Certainly I think so. At all events he may have kept it. Philibin is a taciturn man, extremely dexterous, however coarse and heavy he may look. He must have preserved that fragment as a weapon for his own defence, as a means of keeping a hold over his accomplices. I nowadays suspect that, influenced by some motive which remains obscure, he was the great artisan of the iniquity. Perhaps he was merely guided by a spirit of fidelity towards his chief, Father Crabot; perhaps there has been some skeleton between them since that suspicious affair of the donation of Valmarie; perhaps too Philibin was actuated simply by militant faith and a desire to promote the triumph of the Church. At all events he's a terrible fellow, a man of determination and action, by the side of whom that noisy, empty Brother Fulgence is merely a vain fool.'

Marc had begun to ponder. 'Father Philibin, Father Philibin.... Yes, I was altogether mistaken about him. Even after the trial I still thought him a worthy man, a man of upright nature, even if warped by his surroundings.... Yes, yes, he was the great culprit, the artisan of forgery and falsehood.'

But David again turned to Delbos: 'Suppose,' said he, 'that Philibin should have kept the corner which he tore from the slip, you surely don't expect that he will give it to you, if you ask him for it—do you?'

'Oh! no,' the advocate answered with a laugh. 'But before attempting anything decisive I should like to reflect, and ascertain if there is no means of securing the irrefutable proof. Moreover, a demand for the revision of a case is a very serious matter, and nothing ought to be left to chance.... Let me complete our case if I can; give me a few days—two or three weeks if necessary—and then we will act.'

On the morrow Marc understood by his wife's manner that her grandmother had spoken out and that the Congregations, from Father Crabot to the humblest of the Ignorantines, were duly warned. The affair suddenly burst into life again, there came increasing agitation and alarm. Informed as they were of the discovery of the duplicate copy-slip, conscious that the innocent man's family were now on the road to the truth, hourly expecting to see Brother Gorgias denounced, the guilty ones, Brother Fulgence, Father Philibin, and Father Crabot, returned to the fray, striving to hide their former crime by committing fresh ones. They divined that the masterpiece of iniquity which they had reared so laboriously, and defended so fiercely, was now in great peril, and, yielding to that fatality whereby one lie inevitably leads to endless others, they were ready for the worst deeds in order to save their work from destruction. Besides, it was no mere question of protecting themselves, the salvation of the Church would depend on the battle. If the infamous structure of falsehood should collapse, would not the Congregations be buried beneath it? The Brothers' school would be ruined, closed, while the secular school triumphed; the Capuchins' business would be seriously damaged, customers would desert them, their shrine of St. Antony of Padua would be reduced to paltry profits; the college of Valmarie likewise would be threatened, the Jesuits would be forced to quit the region which they now educated under various disguises; and all religious influence would decline, the breach in the flanks of the Church would be enlarged, and free thought would clear the highway to the future. How desperate therefore was the resistance, how fiercely did the whole clerical army arise in order that it might not be compelled to cede aught of the wretched region of error and dolour, which, for ages, it had steeped in night!

Before Brother Gorgias was even denounced, his superiors felt it necessary to defend him, to cover him at all costs, to forestall the threatened attack, by concocting a story which might prove his innocence. At the first moment, however, there was terrible confusion; the Brother was seen hurrying wildly, on his long thin legs, along the streets of Maillebois and the roads of the neighbourhood. With his eagle beak set between his projecting cheek-bones, his deep black eyes, with their thick brows, and his grimacing mouth, he resembled a fierce, scoffing bird of prey. In the course of one day he was seen on the road to Valmarie, then quitting the residence of Philis, the Mayor of Maillebois, then alighting from a train which had brought him from Beaumont. Moreover, both in the town and the surrounding country many cassocks and frocks were encountered hurrying hither and thither, thus testifying to a perfect panic. It was only on the morrow that the meaning of the agitation was made evident by an article in Le Petit Beaumontais, announcing in violent language that the whole Simon affair was to be revived by the friends of the ignoble Jew, who were about to agitate the region by denouncing a worthy member of one of the religious Orders, the holiest of men.

Brother Gorgias was not yet named, but from that moment a fresh article appeared every day, and by degrees the version of the affair which the Brother's superiors had concocted was set out in opposition to the version which, it was foreseen, would be given by David, though the latter had revealed it to nobody. However, the desire of the clericals was to wreck it beforehand. Everything was flatly denied. It was impossible that Brother Gorgias could have paused before Zéphirin's window on the night of the crime, for witnesses had proved that he had already returned to the school at half-past ten o'clock. Besides, the initialling on the copy-slip was not his, for the experts had fully recognised Simon's handwriting. And everything could be easily explained. Simon, having procured a writing slip, had imitated the Brother's paraph, which he had found in one of Zéphirin's copybooks. Then, as he knew that the slips were stamped at the Brothers' school, he had torn off one corner with diabolical cunning, in order to create a belief in some precaution taken by the murderer; his infernal object being to cast the responsibility of his own crime on some servant of God, and thereby gratify the hatred of the Church which possessed him—-Jew that he was, fated to everlasting damnation. And this extravagant story, repeated every day, soon became the credo of the readers whom the newspaper debased and poisoned with its falsehoods.