Geneviève, meantime, had become dreamy; her glance seemed to wander away to far-off memories. 'Ah! poor Férou!' she murmured, 'I was not always kind to him and his family. That is one of my regrets. But how can one remedy so much suffering and disaster? We have so little power, we are still so few. There are times when I despair.' Then, suddenly waking up, as it were, and smiling, she nestled close to her husband and resumed: 'There, there, don't scold me, my dear, I did wrong to speak like that. But you must allow me enough time to become fearless and reproachless as you yourself are.... Come, it's understood, we are going to set to work, and we shall conquer.'
Thereupon they all became merry, and Mignot, who wished to escort his friends a little way, ended by accompanying them almost to Jonville. There, at the roadside, stood a large square building, a kind of factory, the branch establishment of the Good Shepherd of Beaumont, which had been promised at the time of the consecration of the parish to the Sacred Heart, and which had now been working for several years. The fine clerical folk had made a great noise about the prosperity which such an establishment would bring with it: all the daughters of the peasants would find employment and become skilful workwomen, there would be a great improvement in their morality, drones and gadabouts would be duly corrected, and the business might end by endowing the district with quite an industry.
The specialty of the Good Shepherd establishments was to provide the big drapery shops of Paris with petticoats, knickers, and chemises—the finest, most ornamental, and most delicate feminine body linen. At Jonville, under the superintendence of some ten sisters, two hundred girls worked from morning till night, trying their eyes over all that rich and fashionable underwear, which was often destined for strange festivities. And those two hundred little lingères constituted but a tiny fraction of all the poor hirelings who were thus exploited, for the Order had establishments from one to the other end of France; nearly fifty thousand girls toiled in its workshops, scantily paid, ill-treated, and ill-fed, while they earned for it millions of francs. At Jonville, there had been speedy disenchantment, none of the fine promises had been fulfilled, the establishment seemed a gulf which swallowed up the last energies of the region. The farms were raided and their women folk carried off, the peasants could no longer keep their daughters with them,—the girls all dreamt of becoming young ladies, of spending their days on chairs, engaged in light work. But they soon repented of their folly, for what with the long hours of enforced immobility, the exhausting strain of unremitting application, never was there more frightful drudgery; the stomach remained empty, the head became heavy, there was no time for sleep in summer, and there was no fire in winter. The place was a prison-house, where, under the pretext of practising charity, of promoting morality, woman was exploited in the most frightful manner, sweated in her flesh, stupefied in her intelligence, turned into a beast of burden, from whom the greatest gain possible was extracted. And scandals burst forth at Jonville; one girl nearly perished of cold and starvation, another became half mad, while another, turned out of doors penniless after years of crushing toil, rebelled, and threatened the good sisters with a sensational lawsuit.[1]
[1] In the above account of the Good Shepherd establishments, M. Zola has made use of numerous incidents brought to light by proceedings in the French law courts, and also by the action of the Bishop of Nancy, who, in attempting to put a stop to abominable practices, incurred the odium of all the money-grubbing Congregations.—Trans.
Marc, stopping short on the road, looked at the big factory, silent like a prison, deathly like a cloister, where so many young lives were wearing themselves away, nothing carolling, meanwhile, the happiness of fruitful work.
'One source of the Church's strength,' said he, 'a very simple matter in practice, is that she stoops to present-day requirements and borrows our own weapons to fight us. She manufactures and she trades; there is no object or article of daily consumption that she does not produce or sell, from clothes to liqueurs. Several Orders are merely industrial associations, which undersell other people, as they secure labour for next to nothing, and thus compete disloyally with our smaller producers. The millions of francs they gain go into the cash-boxes of the Black Band, supplying sinews for the war of extermination which is waged against us, swelling the thousands of millions which the Congregations possess already, and which may render them so redoubtable.'
Geneviève and Mignot had listened thoughtfully. And a moment of anxious silence now followed amid the evening quietude, while the sunset cast a great pink glow on the closed and mournful factory of the Good Shepherd.
'Why, I myself seem to be despairing now!' Marc resumed gaily. 'They are still very powerful, it is certain. But we have a book on our side, the little book of elementary knowledge, which brings truth with it, and which will end by for ever overcoming the falsehoods they have circulated for so many centuries. All our strength is in that, Mignot. They may accumulate ruins here, they may lead poor ignorant folk backward, and destroy the little good done by us formerly; but it will suffice for us to resume our efforts to bring about progress by knowledge, and we shall regain the lost ground, and continue to advance until we at last reach the City of solidarity and peace. Their prison-house of the Good Shepherd will crumble like all others, their Sacred Heart will go whither all the gross fetiches of the dead religions have gone. You hear me, Mignot; each pupil in whom you instil a little truth will be another helper in the cause of justice. So to work, to work! Victory is certain, whatever difficulties and sufferings may be encountered on the road!'
That cry of faith and everlasting hope rang out across the quiet countryside amid the calm setting of the planet which foretold a bright to-morrow. And Mignot bravely returned to his task at Le Moreux, while Marc and Geneviève went homeward to begin their work at Jonville.
Arduous work it was, requiring much will and patience, for it was necessary to free Mayor Martineau, the parish council, and indeed the whole village from the hands of the priest, who was determined not to relax his hold. On hearing of Marc's appointment, Abbé Cognasse, instead of evincing any anger or fear of the redoubtable adversary who was being sent to face him, had contented himself with shrugging his shoulders and affecting extreme contempt. He said on all sides that this beaten man, this disgraced mediocrity, who had lost all honour by his complicity in the Simon case, would not remain six months at Jonville. His superiors had merely sent him there in order to finish him off, not wishing to execute him at one blow. In reality, no doubt, Abbé Cognasse scarcely felt at ease, for he knew the man he had to deal with—a man all calmness and strength, derived from his reliance on truth. And that the priest plainly scented danger was shown by the prudence and sangfroid which he himself strove to preserve, for fear of spoiling everything if he should yield to some of his customary fits of passion. Thus the unexpected spectacle of a superbly diplomatic Abbé Cognasse, who left to Providence the duty of striking down the enemy, was presented to the village. As his servant Palmyre, who with increasing age had become quite terrible, did not possess sufficient self-restraint to imitate his silent contempt, he scolded her in public when she ventured to declare that the new schoolmaster had stolen some consecrated wafers from the church at Maillebois for the purpose of profaning them in the presence of his pupils. That was not proved, said the Abbé, nor was there any proof of the story that hell had lent Marc a devil, who, on being summoned, stepped out of the wall and helped him with his class-work. Indoors, however, all was agreement between the priest and the servant, who both displayed extraordinary greed and avarice, the former picking up as many Masses as possible, the latter keeping the accounts, and growling angrily when money did not come in. With reference to Marc, then, there ensued, on the Abbé's part, a stealthy and venomous campaign, with the object of destroying both the master and his school, in order that he, Cognasse, might continue to reign over the parish.