In the evening, after returning from the funeral, Geneviève cast her arms round her husband's neck, and made him a frank confession: 'If you only knew!' said she. 'I was beset again when I heard that grandmother was all alone, so bravely and loftily adhering to her stubborn faith.... Yes, I asked myself if my place were not beside her, and if I had done right in leaving her.... But what can you expect, dear? I shall never be quite cured. In the depths of my being I shall always retain a little of my old belief.... Yet, what a frightful death that was! And how right you are in asking that people should live as they ought to; that women should be liberated, set in their right position as the equals and companions of men, and that life should partake of all that is good and true and just!'
A month later the two long-deferred weddings at last took place. Louise was married to Joseph, Sarah to Sébastien; and in those espousals Marc perceived a beginning of victory. The good crop, sown with so much difficulty in the midst of persecution and outrage, was germinating and growing already.
[II]
Years went by, and Marc continued his work, sturdy yet at sixty years of age, and as passionately attached to truth and justice as he had been at the outset of the great struggle. And one day, when he happened to go to Beaumont to call on Delbos, the latter suddenly said to him: 'By the way, my dear fellow, I have had a strange encounter.... The other evening, at dusk, while I was returning home I noticed a man of about your age, looking wretched and ravaged, walking ahead of me along the Avenue des Jaffres.... And, all at once, in the blaze of light coming from the confectioner's shop at the corner of the Rue Gambetta, it seemed to me that I recognised our Gorgias.'
'Eh, our Gorgias?'
'Why, yes, Brother Gorgias, not wearing an Ignorantine's cassock, but a greasy frock-coat, and slipping alongside the walls, with the suspicious gait of an emaciated old wolf.... He must have come back secretly, and must be living in some dark nook or other, still trying to frighten and exploit his old accomplices.'
Marc, whom the announcement had greatly surprised, remained full of doubt. 'You must have been mistaken,' said he; 'Gorgias attaches too much value to his skin to return to Beaumont and run the risk of being sent to the galleys—that is whenever the discovery of a new fact may enable us to apply for the quashing of the Rozan judgment.'
'It is you who are mistaken, my friend,' Delbos answered. 'Our man has nothing more to fear. According to our law of limitation there can be no public action in a criminal matter after the expiration of ten years, and so, even nowadays, little Zéphirin's murderer can walk the streets in the daylight without any fear of arrest.... However, I may have been deceived by a mere resemblance; and in any case the return of Gorgias can have no interest for us, for you agree with me, do you not, that we can derive nothing useful from him?'