Truth [Vérité]

by Émile Zola

Marc, who had now seated himself, laughed and thanked his young colleague. 'You don't know how much your news pleases me, my dear Joulic,' he replied. 'When I quitted Maillebois I left a part of my heart there, and I felt worried as to what might become of the work which I had been pursuing for fifteen years; but I have long ceased to feel any anxiety, knowing my old school to be in such capable hands as yours. Yes, if some of the poison which infected Maillebois has been eliminated, it is because the pupils who quit you, year by year, become men of sense and equity.... Ask your old master, Salvan, what he thinks of you.'

But Joulic with a gesture curtailed Marc's praises. 'No, no,' said he, 'I am only a pawn in the great battle. If I am worth anything I owe it to my training, so that the chief merit belongs to our master. Besides, I am not alone at Maillebois; I derive the most precious help, I will even say the greatest support, from Mademoiselle Mazeline. She has often consoled and encouraged me. You cannot imagine how much moral energy that gentle and sensible woman possesses. A large part of our success is due to her, for it is she who has gradually won family people over to our cause by turning out so many good wives and mothers.... When a woman personifies truth, justice, and love, she becomes the greatest power in the world——'

Joulic paused, for at that moment Mignot made his appearance. Those Sunday meetings brought delightful relaxation to Marc's former assistant, who cheerfully walked the two and a half miles which separated Le Moreux from Jonville. Having caught Joulic's last words, he at once exclaimed: 'Ah! Mademoiselle Mazeline—do you know that I wanted to marry her? I never mentioned it, but I may admit it now.... It is all very well to say that she is plain; but at Maillebois, on seeing how good and sensible, how admirable she was, I dreamt of her. And one day I told her of my idea. You should have seen how moved she was—grave, yet smiling, quite sisterly! She explained her position to me, saying that she was too old—already five and thirty, just my own age. Besides, she added, her girls had become her family, and she had long renounced all idea of living for herself.... Yet I fancy that my proposal stirred up some old regrets.... Briefly, we continued good friends, and I decided to remain a bachelor, though this occasionally embarrasses me at Le Moreux, on account of my girl pupils, who would be better cared for by a woman.'

Then he, also, gave some good news of the state of feeling in his parish. All the crass ignorance and error, which Chagnat had voluntarily allowed to accumulate there, were beginning to disappear. Saleur, the Mayor, had experienced great trouble with his son, Honoré, whom he had sent to the Lycée of Beaumont, where he had been stuffed by the chaplain with as much religious knowledge as he would have acquired in a seminary—in such wise that, after being appointed to the management of a little Catholic bank in Paris, he had come to grief there by practices which had nearly landed him in a criminal court. Since then his father, the ex-grazier, who at heart had never liked the priests, never wearied of denouncing what he called the Black Band, exasperated as he was by the downfall of his son, which had quite upset his comfortable life as an enriched peasant. And thus, at each fresh quarrel with Abbé Cognasse, he sided with schoolmaster Mignot, carrying the parish council with him, and threatening to have nothing more to do with the Church if the priest should still treat the inhabitants as a subjugated flock. Indeed, never before had that lonely sluggish village of Le Moreux so freely granted admittance to the new ideas. In part this was due to the better position which the schoolmasters had secured of recent years. Various laws had been passed improving their circumstances, and the lowest annual salaries were now fixed at twelve hundred francs without any deductions.[2] It had not been necessary to wait long for the result of this change. If Férou, ill-paid, ragged, and wretched, had formerly incurred the contempt of the peasantry on being compared by them with Abbé Cognasse, who waxed fat on surplice-fees and presents, and was therefore honoured and feared, Mignot, on the contrary, being able to live in a dignified way, had risen to his proper position—that is the first. Indeed, in that century-old struggle between the Church and the school, the whole region was now favouring the latter, whose victory appeared to be certain.

[2] It is true that such laws have been passed, but in various respects they are merely of a permissive character, and the financial circumstances of the French Government have hitherto prevented the realisation of provisions favoured by the Legislature. Several publications issued in the autumn of 1902, since M. Zola's death, have shown this to be the case. M. Zola, however, in this last section of 'Truth,' anticipates rather than follows events, as will plainly appear in the final chapters; and, as a strong movement in favour of the secular schoolmasters is now following the suppression of the Congregational schools, considerable improvement in the former's position will probably take place before long.—Trans.

'My peasants are still very ignorant,' Mignot continued. 'You cannot imagine what a sluggish spot Le Moreux is, all numbness and routine. The peasants have lands of their own, they have never lacked bread, and they would submit to be fleeced as in former times rather than turn to anything novel and strange.... But there is some change all the same; I can see it by the way they take off their hats to me, and the more and more preponderating position which the school assumes in their estimation. And, by the way, this morning, when Abbé Cognasse came over to say Mass, there were just three women and a boy in the church. When the Abbé went off he banged the vestry door behind him, threatening that he wouldn't come back any more, as it was useless for him to walk all that distance for nobody.'

Marc began to laugh. 'Yes,' said he, 'I've heard that the Abbé is getting surly again at Le Moreux. Here he still restrains himself, and strives to win the battle by diplomatic artfulness, particularly with the women, for his superiors have taught him, no doubt, that one is never beaten so long as one has the women on one's side. I have been told that he frequently goes to Valmarie to see Father Crabot, and it is surely there that he acquires that unctuous, caressing way with the ladies which surprises one so much in a rough, brutal man of his stamp. When he again loses his temper, as he will some day, it will be all over.... Besides, things are quite satisfactory at Jonville. We gain a little ground every year; the parish is regaining prosperity and health. In consequence of the recent scandals the peasants no longer allow their daughters to work at the factory of the Good Shepherd. And it seems that the parish council—Martineau at the head of it—greatly regrets its imbecility in having allowed Abbé Cognasse and Jauffre to dedicate Jonville to the Sacred Heart. I am on the lookout for an opportunity to efface that remembrance, and I shall end by finding one.'

There came a short pause. Then Salvan, who had listened complacently, said, by way of conclusion, in his quiet, cheerful manner: 'All that is very encouraging. Maillebois, Jonville, and Le Moreux are advancing towards those better times for which we have battled. The others thought they would conquer us, exterminate us for ever, and indeed, for months, it seemed as if we were dead; but now comes the slow awakening, the seed has germinated in the ground; it was sufficient for us to resume our work in silence, and the good grain grows and flowers once more. And now nothing will hinder the future harvest. The fact is that we have been on the side of truth, which nothing can destroy, nothing arrest in its splendour.... No doubt, things are not quite satisfactory at Beaumont. The sons of Doutrequin, that old Republican of the heroic times who lapsed into clericalism, have obtained advancement, and Mademoiselle Rouzaire still gorges her girls with Bible history and Catechism. But even public feeling at Beaumont is beginning to change. Moreover, Mauraisin has not succeeded at the Training College. Some of the students have told me jocularly that my ghost appears to him there, and paralyses him with fear. The fact is that the impulse had been given, and he has found it impossible to stop the emancipation of the schoolmaster. I even hope that we shall soon be rid of him.... And a very hopeful symptom is that, behind Maillebois, Jonville, and Le Moreux, there are other small towns and villages, nearly all in fact, where the schoolmaster is defeating the priest, and setting the secular school erect on the ruins of the Congregational school. Reason is triumphing, and justice and truth are slowly increasing their sphere of conquest at Dherbecourt, Juilleroy, Rouville, and Les Bordes. It is a general awakening, an irresistible movement, carrying France towards her liberating mission.'

'But it is your work!' cried Marc with sudden enthusiasm. 'There is a pupil of yours in each of the localities you have named. They are the children of your heart and mind; it was you who sent them as missionaries into lonely country districts to diffuse the new gospel of truth and justice. If people are at last awaking, returning to manly dignity, becoming an equitable, free, and healthy democracy, it is because a generation of your pupils is now installed in our classrooms, instructing the young, and making true citizens of them. You are the good workman; you realised that no progress is possible save by reason and knowledge.'

Then Joulic and Mignot seconded Marc with similar enthusiasm: 'Yes, yes, you have been the father, we are your children! The country will only be worth what the schoolmasters may make it, and the schoolmasters themselves can only be worth what the training colleges have made them.'