'You have read all the documents which have been published? All the inquiry of the Court of Cassation?'
'Why, yes! I have read everything that has appeared in Le Petit Beaumontais. You know very well that grandmother takes that paper every morning.'
With a violent gesture Marc gave expression to his disgust and indignation. 'Ah well, my darling, you are, indeed, fully informed! The vile print you speak of is a sewer of poison, which disseminates only filth and falsehood. Documents are falsified in it, texts are mutilated, and the poor credulous minds of the poor and the lowly are gorged with stupid fables.[1]... You are simply poisoned like many other worthy folk.'
[1] This is exactly what happened in the Dreyfus case. If, apart from all those who, hating Dreyfus as a Jew, were resolved a priori to regard him as guilty whatever might be the evidence, there are still millions of Frenchmen who honestly retain a belief in his culpability, this is because scores of French newspapers—those owned or patronised by the Nationalist party and the Roman Catholic Church—deliberately falsified and mutilated documents and evidence, serving to their readers only such particulars as tended to indicate the prisoner's guilt. It is hardly too much to say that half of France is still ignorant of the real facts of the Dreyfus case. We are often told that the press has much power for good: never was its power for evil more strikingly exemplified than in that lamentable affair, from the effects of which France is still suffering.—Trans.
She herself, no doubt, was conscious that the folly and impudence of Le Petit Beaumontais were excessive, for again she cast down her eyes, and looked distressed.
'Listen!' Marc resumed. 'Let me send you the complete verbatim report of the Court's inquiry, with the documents annexed to it; and promise me that you will read everything attentively and straightforwardly.'
But at this suggestion she vivaciously raised her head: 'No, no; send me nothing. I do not wish it.'
'Why?'
'Because it is useless. There is no need for me to read anything.'