[II]
Then, during the months and months that the inquiry of the Court of Cassation lasted, Marc again had to shut himself up in his school, and devote himself, body and soul, to his task of instructing the humble, and rendering them more capable of truth and justice.
Among the hopes and the despairs which continued to enfever him, according as the news he heard proved good or bad, there was one thought that haunted him more and more. Long previously, at the very outset of the affair, he had wondered why France, all France, did not rise to exact the release of the innocent prisoner. One of his dearest illusions had been his belief in a generous France, a magnanimous and just France, which many times already had passionately espoused the cause of equity, and which would surely prove its goodness of heart yet once again by striving its utmost to repair the most execrable of judicial errors. And the painful surprise he had experienced on finding the country so stolid and indifferent after the trial at Beaumont now increased daily, became more and more torturing; for in the earlier stages of the affair he had been able to excuse it, realising that people were ignorant of the true facts and poisoned with lies. But now, when so much light had been cast on the affair, so much truth made manifest, he could find no possible explanation for such prolonged and such shameful slumber in iniquity. Had France been changed, then? Was it no longer the liberator? Since it now knew the truth, why did it not rise en masse, instead of remaining an obstacle, a blind, deaf multitude barring the road?
And Marc always returned in thought to his starting-point, when the necessity of his humble work as a schoolmaster had become apparent to him. If France still slept the heavy sleep of conscienceless matter, it was because France did not yet know enough. A shudder came upon him: how many generations, how many centuries would be needed for a people, nourished with truth, to become capable of equity? For nearly fifteen years he had been endeavouring to train up just men, a generation had already passed through his hands, and he asked himself what was really the progress that had been effected. Whenever he met any of his old pupils he chatted with them, and compared them both with their parents, who were less freed from the original clay, and with the boys who nowadays attended his school, and whom he hoped to free yet more than their forerunners. Therein lay his great task, the mission he had undertaken at a decisive hour of his life, and prosecuted throughout all his sufferings, doubting its efficacy in occasional moments of weariness, but on the morrow always taking it up again with renewed faith.
One bright August evening, having strolled along the road to Valmarie as far as Bongard's farm, Marc perceived Fernand, his former pupil, who was returning home with a scythe on his shoulder. Fernand had lately married Lucile, the daughter of Doloir, the mason; he now being five-and-twenty, and she nineteen years of age. They had long been friends, having played together in the old days on leaving school; and that evening the young wife, a little blonde, with a gentle, smiling demeanour, was also there, seated in the yard and mending some linen.
'Well, Fernand, are you satisfied? Is there a good crop of wheat this year?' Marc inquired.
Fernand still had a heavy face with a hard and narrow brow, and his words came slowly as in his childish days. 'Oh! Monsieur Froment,' he replied, 'one can never be satisfied; there's too much worry with this wretched land, it takes more than it gives.'
As his father, though barely fifty years of age, was already heavy of limb, tortured by rheumatic pains, Fernand, on finishing his term of military service, had resolved to help him, instead of seeking employment elsewhere. And the struggle at the farm was the same bitter one as of old, the family living from father to son on the fields whence it seemed to have sprung, and toiling and moiling blindly in its stubborn ignorance and neglect of progress.