'In that case, do not your feelings rebel at the idea that he is in prison?'
'Oh! it certainly isn't amusing for him,' Achille admitted; 'but there are so many other innocent people in prison. Besides, the officials may release him for all I care.... One has quite enough worries of one's own, so why should one spoil one's life by meddling with the troubles of others?'
Then Philippe, in a more gentle voice, expressed his opinion, saying: 'I don't bother about that affair, for it would worry me too much. I can understand that it would be one's duty to act if one were the master. But when one can do nothing whatever, the best way is to ignore it all and keep quiet.'
In vain did Marc censure the indifference, the cowardly egotism, and desertion which those words implied. The great voice, the irresistible will of the people, said he, was compounded of individual protests, the protests of the humblest and the weakest. Nobody could claim exemption from his duty, the action of one single isolated individual might suffice to modify destiny. Besides, it was not true to say that only one person's fate was at stake in the struggle, all the members of the nation were jointly and severally interested, for each defended his own liberty by protecting that of his fellow. And then what a splendid opportunity it was to accomplish at one stroke the work of a century of slow political and social progress. On one side all the forces of reaction were leagued against an unhappy, innocent man for the sole purpose of keeping the old Catholic and monarchical scaffoldings erect; and on the other, all who were bent on ensuring the triumph of the future, all who believed in reason and liberty, had gathered together from the four points of the compass, and united in the name of truth and justice. And an effort on the part of the latter ought to suffice to throw the former beneath the remnants of those old, worm-eaten scaffoldings which were cracking on all sides. The scope of the affair had expanded: it was no longer merely the case of a poor innocent man who had been wrongly convicted; for that man had become the incarnation of the martyrdom of all mankind, which must be wrested from the prison of the ages. The release of Simon indeed would mean increase of freedom for the people of France and an acceleration of its march towards more dignity and happiness.
But Marc suddenly lapsed into silence, for he saw that Achille and Philippe were looking at him in bewilderment, their weak eyes blinking in their pale and sickly faces.
'Oh! Monsieur Froment, what's all that? When you put so many things into the affair we can't follow you, that's certain. We know nothing of those things, we can do nothing.'
Savin for his part had listened, sneering and fidgeting, though unwilling to interrupt. Now, however, turning to the schoolmaster, he exploded. 'All that is humbug—excuse me for saying so, Monsieur Froment. Simon innocent—well, that's a matter on which I have my doubts. I don't conceal it; I'm of the same opinion as formerly, and I read nothing; I would rather let myself be killed than consent to swallow a line of all the trash that is published. And, mind, I don't say that because I like the priests. The dirty beasts—why, I wish a pestilence would sweep them all away! Only, when there is a religion, there is one. It's the same with the army. The army is the blood of France. I am a Republican, I am now a Freemason, I will go so far as to say that I am a Socialist, in the good sense of the word; but, before everything else, I am a Frenchman, and I won't have people setting their hands on what constitutes the grandeur of my country. Simon then is guilty; everything proves it: public sentiment, the proofs submitted to the Court, his condemnation, and the ignoble trafficking carried on by the Jews in order to save him. And if, by a miracle, he should not be guilty, the misfortune for the country would be too great; it would be absolutely necessary that he should be guilty all the same.'
Confronted by so much blindness, blended with so much folly, Marc could only bow. And he was about to withdraw when Savin's daughter Hortense made her appearance with her little girl Charlotte, now nearly seven years of age. Hortense was no longer the good-looking young person of former days; compelled to marry her seducer, the milkman's assistant, and lead with him a hard and toilsome life of poverty, she appeared faded and careworn. Savin, moreover, received her without cordiality, full of spite as he was, ashamed of that marriage which had mortified his pride. Only the grace and keen intelligence of little Charlotte assuaged, in some slight degree, his intensely bitter feelings.
'Good-morning, grandpapa; good-morning, grandmamma,' said the child. 'You know, I have been first in reading again, and Mademoiselle Mazeline has given me the medal.'[1]