Geneviève had now opened the door behind which she had remained listening. Stupefied by all she had heard she let her arms drop, and for a moment remained gazing at Marc, who likewise stood there motionless, at a loss whether to laugh or to feel angry.
'He is mad, my friend,' said Geneviève. 'If I had been in your place I should not have had the patience to listen to him so long; he lies as he has always lied!' Then, as Marc seemed inclined to take things gaily, she continued: 'No, no, it is not at all amusing. The revival of all those horrid things has made me feel quite ill and anxious also, for I do not understand what can have been his purpose in coming here. Why did he make that pretended confession? Why did he select you to hear it?'
'Oh! I think I know, my dear,' Marc answered. 'In all probability Father Crabot and the others no longer give him a copper, that is, apart from some petty monthly allowance which they may have arranged to make him. And as the rascal has a huge appetite he tries to terrify them from time to time, in order to extract some big sum from them. I have had information; they have done their utmost to induce him to leave the region. Twice already, by filling his pockets they have prevailed on him to do so; but as soon as his pockets were empty he came back. They dare not employ the police in the affair, otherwise the gendarmes would have rid them of him long ago. And so, once again, as they have refused to let him have more money, he wishes to give them a good fright by threatening to tell me everything. And he has told me just a little truth mixed with a great deal of falsehood, in the hope that I may speak of it, and that the others in their fright may pay him well to prevent him from telling me all the rest.'
This logical explanation restored the calmness of Geneviève, who merely added: 'The rest—the full, plain truth—he will never tell it!'
'Who knows?' Marc retorted. 'His craving for money is great, but there is yet more hatred in his heart. And he is courageous; he would willingly risk his skin to revenge himself on those old accomplices who have cowardly forsaken him. Moreover, in spite of all his crimes, he really belongs to his Deity of extermination; he glows with a sombre, devouring faith, which would prompt him to martyrdom if he only thought that he might thereby win salvation and cast his enemies into the torments of hell.'
'Shall you try to make any use of what he told you?' Geneviève inquired.
'No, I think not. I shall talk it over with Delbos; but he, I know, has resolved that he will only move when he has a certainty to act upon.... Ah! poor Simon, I despair of ever seeing him rehabilitated; I have become so old!'
All at once, however, the new fact, awaited for so many years, became manifest, and Marc then beheld the realisation of the most ardent desire of his life. Delbos, who placed no faith in any help from Brother Gorgias, had set all his hopes on the Rozan medical man, that Dr. Beauchamp, a juror at the second trial, to whom Judge Gragnon was said to have made his second illegal communication, and who was reported to be tortured by remorse. This scent Delbos followed with infinite patience, having a watch kept upon the doctor, who preserved silence in compliance with the entreaties of his wife, a very pious and also sickly woman, whose death would probably have been hastened by any scandal. All at once indeed she died, and Delbos then no longer doubted the success of his enterprise. It took him another six months to perfect his arrangements; he managed to enter into direct relations with Beauchamp, whom he found all anxiety and indecision, assailed by a variety of scruples. But at last the doctor made up his mind to hand the advocate a signed statement in which he related how one day a friend, acting on behalf of Gragnon, had shown him the pretended confession which a workman, dying at the Beaumont hospital, was said to have made to one of the sisters—a confession in which this man acknowledged that he had engraved a false stamp for Simon, the Maillebois schoolmaster. And Beauchamp added that this secret communication alone had convinced him of the guilt of Simon, whom previously he had been disposed to acquit for lack of all serious proof.
Having secured this decisive statement Delbos did not act precipitately. He waited a little longer. He gathered together other documents, which showed that Gragnon had communicated his extravagant forgery to other jurors, men of the most amazing credulity. Equally extraordinary was it to find that the ex-presiding judge had dared to repeat the trick of Beaumont, carrying a gross forgery in his pocket, circulating it secretly through Rozan, exploiting human imbecility with the most sovereign contempt. And twice had the trick succeeded, Gragnon on the second occasion saving himself from the galleys by sheer criminal audacity. He was now beyond the reach of punishment, for he had lately died, perishing miserably, quite withered away, his features furrowed, it seemed, by invisible claws. And it was certainly his death which had induced Dr. Beauchamp to speak out.
Marc and David had long thought that the Simon affair would be quite settled when the personages compromised in it should have disappeared. At present ex-investigating Magistrate Daix was also dead, while the former Procureur de la République, Raoul de La Bissonnière, had lately been retired with the grant of a Commandership of the Legion of Honour. Then Counsellor Guybaraud, who had presided at the Assizes at Rozan, having been stricken with hemiplegia, was passing away between his confessor and a servant-mistress; whereas Pacard, the ex-demagogue who in spite of a nasty story of cheating at cards had managed to become a public prosecutor, had quitted the magistracy to take up somewhat mysterious duties at Rome as legal adviser to some of the congregations. Again, at Beaumont there were great changes in the political, administrative, clerical, and teaching worlds. Other men had succeeded Lemarrois, Marcilly, Hennebise, Bergerot, Forbes, and Mauraisin. Of the direct accomplices in the crime, Father Philibin had died far away, Brother Fulgence had disappeared, being also dead perhaps, in such wise that there only remained Father Crabot, the great chief. But even he had withdrawn from among the living, cloistered, it was alleged, in some lonely cell, where he was spending his last years in great penitence.