[III]
During the year which followed, a year full of anxiety, uneasiness, and contention, the Church made a supreme effort to regain her power. Never had her position been more critical, more threatened, than during that desperate battle, by which the duration of her empire might be prolonged for a century, or perhaps two centuries, should she win it. In order to do so it was necessary she should continue to educate and train the youth of France, retain her sway over children and women, and avail herself of the ignorance of the humble in such wise as to mould them and make them all error, credulity, and submissiveness, even as she needed them to be in order to reign. The day when she might be forbidden to teach, when her schools would be closed, and disappear, would prove for her the beginning of the end, when she would be annihilated amidst a new and free people, which would have grown up outside the pale of her falsehoods, cultivating an ideal of reason and humanity. And the hour was a grave one. That Simon affair, with the expected return and triumph of the innocent prisoner, might deal a most terrible blow to the Congregational schools by glorifying the secular ones. Meantime Father Crabot, who wished to save Judge Gragnon, was so compromised himself that he had disappeared from society and hidden himself, pale and trembling, in his lonely cell. Father Philibin, who had been consigned to an Italian convent, was spending the remainder of his days in penitence, unless indeed he were already dead. Brother Fulgence, removed by his superiors in punishment for the discredit which had fallen on his school, a third of whose pupils had already quitted it, was said to have fallen dangerously ill in the distant department whither he had been sent. Finally, Brother Gorgias had fled, fearing that he might be arrested, and feeling that his principals were forsaking him, willing to sacrifice him as an expiatory victim. And this flight had increased the anxiety of the defenders of the Church, who lived only with the thought of fighting a last and merciless battle when the Simon affair should come before the Rozan Assize Court.
Marc also, while lamenting Simon's ill health, which delayed his return to France, was preparing for that same battle, fully realising its decisive importance. Almost every Thursday, sometimes with David, sometimes alone, he repaired to Beaumont, calling first on Delbos, to whom he made suggestions, and whom he questioned about the slightest incidents of the week. And afterwards he went to see Salvan, who kept him informed of the state of public opinion, every fluctuation of which set all classes in the town agog. In this wise, then, one Thursday, Marc paid a visit to the Training College, and on quitting it went down the Avenue des Jaffres, where, close to the cathedral of St. Maxence, he was upset by a most unexpected meeting.
On one of the deserted sidewalks of the avenue, at a spot where scarcely anybody was ever seen after four o'clock, he perceived Geneviève seated on a bench, and looking very downcast, weary, and lonely in the cold shadow falling from the cathedral, whose proximity encouraged the moss to grow on the trunks of the old elms.
For a moment Marc remained motionless, quite thunderstruck. He had met his wife in Maillebois at long intervals, but invariably in the company of Madame Duparque; and on those occasions she had passed through the streets with absent-minded eyes, on her way, no doubt, to some devotional exercise. This time, however, they found themselves face to face, in perfect solitude, parted by none. Geneviève had seen him, and was looking at him with an expression in which he fancied he could detect great suffering, and an unacknowledged craving for help. Thus he went forward, and even ventured to seat himself on the same bench, though at some little distance from her, for fear lest he should frighten her and drive her away.
Deep silence reigned. It was June, and the sun, descending towards the horizon in a vast stretch of limpid sky, transpierced the surrounding foliage with slender golden darts; while little wandering zephyrs already began to cool the warm afternoon atmosphere. And Marc still looked at his wife, saying nothing, but feeling deeply moved as he noticed that she had grown thinner and paler, as if after a serious illness. Her face, crowned by splendid fair hair, and with large eyes which once had been all passion and gaiety, had not only become emaciated, but had acquired an expression of ardent anxiety, the torment of a parching thirst, which nothing could assuage. Her eyelids quivered, and two tears, which she vainly tried to force back, coursed down her cheeks. Then Marc began to speak—in such a way that it seemed as if he had quitted her only the previous day, such indeed was his desire to reassure her.
'Is our little Clément well?' he asked.
She did not answer immediately, for she feared, no doubt, that she might reveal the emotion which was choking her. The little boy, who had lately completed his fourth year, was no longer at Dherbecourt. Having removed him from his nurse, Geneviève now kept him with her in spite of all her grandmother's scoldings.
'He is quite well,' she said at last in a slightly tremulous voice, though on her side also she strove to affect a kind of indifferent quietude.