On reaching Louise's quarters at the school, where Geneviève had awaited him, and where they were to dine in company with Clément, Charlotte, and Lucienne, Marc was pleased to find that Sébastien and Sarah were also there, having just arrived from Beaumont to share the meal. Indeed, it was a general family gathering, and several leaves had to be added to the table. There were Marc and Geneviève; then Clément and Charlotte, with their daughter Lucienne, who was already seven years old; then Joseph Simon and Louise; then Sébastien Milhomme and Sarah; then François Simon, Joseph's son, and Thérèse Milhomme, Sarah's daughter, two cousins who had married, and who were already the parents of a little two-year-old named Rose. Altogether they made a dozen, full of health and appetite.
Acclamations arose when Marc recounted his afternoon, describing Adrien's plan and expressing his belief in its success. Joseph alone felt doubtful, for he was not convinced, he said, of the Mayor's favourable disposition. But Charlotte immediately intervened. 'You are mistaken,' she exclaimed; 'my uncle Jules is altogether on our side.... We can rely on him. He is the only one of the family who ever showed me any kindness.'
Charlotte, it should be said, had become dependent on her grandfather, Savin senior, at the time when her mother had eloped, for it had become necessary to place her father in an asylum on account of the alcoholism to which he had given way. The girl had then experienced much suffering, being often cuffed and sparsely fed. Savin, who seemed oblivious of the deplorable result of the pious hypocrisy in which his daughter Hortense had been reared by Mademoiselle Rouzaire, accused his grandchild of being an atheist, a rebel, full of deplorable ways, which were due to the teaching of Mademoiselle Mazeline. As a matter of fact, however, Charlotte was delightful, free from all false prudery, and gifted with healthy uprightness, sense, and tenderness. And Clément having married her in spite of all obstacles, they had since lived together in the happiest and the closest of unions.
'Charlotte is right,' said Marc, who also desired to defend Jules Savin; 'the Mayor is on our side. But the best of all is that, among the contractors for the house which it is proposed to present to Simon, there will be the two Doloirs, Auguste the mason and Charles the locksmith; besides which, by their ties of relationship, even Fernand Bongard and Achille Savin will be indirectly concerned in it.... Ah! Sébastien, my friend, who would have thought that would come to pass in the days when you and those fine fellows attended my school?'
At this sally Sébastien Milhomme began to laugh; though his mood was scarcely a cheerful one, for a recent family loss, a very tragical affair, had affected him painfully. During the previous spring his aunt, Madame Edouard, had died, leaving the stationery business to her sister-in-law, Madame Alexandre. Her son Victor having disappeared, she had of recent years seemed to waste away, no longer attending to the business, in which she had once taken such a passionate interest, and feeling, indeed, quite at sea amidst those new times, which she altogether failed to understand. Madame Alexandre on remaining alone had continued carrying on the business, for she did not wish to inconvenience her son Sébastien, though the latter's position was becoming extremely good. One evening, however, Victor suddenly reappeared, emerging hungry and sordid from the depths in which he had been leading a crapulous life. He had heard of his mother's death, and he instantly demanded that the business should be put up for sale and the old partnership liquidated, in order that he might carry off his share of the proceeds. Such, then, was the end of the little shop in the Rue Courte, where many generations of schoolboys had purchased their copybooks and their pens. For a short time Victor showed himself here and there in Maillebois, leading a merry life, almost invariably in the company of his old chum, Polydor Souquet, who had fallen to the gutter. One evening Marc, having to cross a street of ill-repute, caught sight of them with another man, whose black figure strikingly resembled that of Brother Gorgias. And finally, barely a week before the family dinner given by Louise, the police had found a man lying dead, with his skull split, outside a haunt of debauchery. The dead man was Victor. There had evidently been some dim, ignoble tragedy, which the interested parties endeavoured to hush up.
'Yes, yes,' said Sébastien in reply to Marc, 'I remember my schoolfellows. With a few unfortunate exceptions they have not turned out so badly. But in life one is at times exposed to certain poisons, which prove pitiless.'
The others did not insist. They preferred to inquire after his mother, whom he had now taken to live with him at the Beaumont Training College, and who still enjoyed good health in spite of her great age. Sébastien's new position gave him a great deal of occupation, particularly as he desired to perfect the work of his venerated master, Salvan. 'Ah!' he exclaimed, 'that public reparation offered to Simon, that glorification of a schoolmaster, will be a great joy for all of us. I want my pupils to participate in it, and for that purpose I shall endeavour to obtain a day's holiday for them.'
Marc, who had rejoiced at Sébastien's appointment as if it were a personal triumph, at once signified his approval. 'Quite so,' said he, 'and we will bring the old ones as well—Salvan, Mademoiselle Mazeline, and Mignot. Besides, speaking of school-teachers, there is already a fine battalion here present.'
The others began to laugh. With the exception of the two children they were, indeed, all teachers. Clément and Charlotte still carried on the Jonville schools, Joseph and Louise had decided that they would never quit Maillebois, Sébastien and Sarah relied on remaining at the Beaumont Training College until the former reached the age limit; while as for the younger couple, François and Thérèse, they had not long been appointed to the Dherbecourt schools, where their parents had previously made their débuts. François, in whom one traced a likeness to his parents, Joseph and Louise, also resembled his grandfather Marc, for he had much the same lofty brow and bright eyes, though the latter in his case glowed with what seemed to be a flame of insatiable desire. In Thérèse, on the other hand, one found the great beauty of her mother Sarah softened, quieted, as it were, by the intellectual refinement which she had inherited from her father, Sébastien. And Rose, the young couple's little girl, the last born of the family, and as such worshipped by one and all, seemed to personify the budding future.
The dinner proved delightfully gay. How joyful for Joseph and Sarah, the children of the innocent martyr, tortured for so many years, was the thought of the festival of reparation which was now being planned! Their own children and their grandchild—all that had come from their blood mingled with that of Marc, the martyr's most heroic defender—would participate in that glorification. Four generations, indeed, would be present to celebrate the truth, and the cortège would be formed of all the good workers who, having suffered for its sake, were entitled to share its triumph.