Truth [Vérité]

by Émile Zola

'We shall all group ourselves around you,' said Marc, quivering; 'we will not suffer you to be stopped in your work, the most urgent and loftiest of all at the present time!'

Salvan smiled sadly. 'Oh, all, my friend! How many are there around me then? There is yourself, and there was also that unfortunate fellow, Simon, on whom I greatly relied. Again, there is Mademoiselle Mazeline, the schoolmistress at your village, Jonville. If we had a few dozen teachers like her we might expect that the next generation would at last see women, wives and mothers, delivered from the priests! As for Férou, wretchedness and revolt are driving him crazy, bitterness of feeling is poisoning his mind. And after him comes the mere flock of indifferent, egotistical folk, stagnating in the observance of routine, and having only one concern, that of flattering their superiors in order to secure good reports. Then too there are the renegades, those who have gone over to the enemy, as, for instance, that Mademoiselle Rouzaire, who alone does the work of ten nuns, and who behaves so shamefully in the Simon affair. I was forgetting another, Mignot, one of our best pupils, who is certainly not a bad fellow, but whose mind requires forming, liable as it is to turn out good or bad, according to influence.'

Salvan was growing excited, and it was with increased force that he continued: 'But a case that one may well despair of is that of Doutrequin, whom you saw leaving me just now. A schoolmaster himself, he is the son of one; in '70 he was fifteen, and three years later he entered the college still shuddering at the thought of the invasion, and dreaming of revenge. At that time considerations of patriotism influenced the whole of our educational system in France. The country asked us merely for soldiers; the army was like a temple, a sanctuary, that army which has remained waiting with arms grounded for thirty years, and which has devoured thousands upon thousands of millions of francs! And thus we have been turned into a warrior France instead of becoming a France of progress, truth, justice, and peace, such as alone could have helped to save the world. And now one sees so-called patriotism changing Doutrequin, once a good Republican, a supporter of Gambetta, and still quite recently an anti-clerical, into an anti-Semite, even as it will end by changing him into a clerical altogether. A few minutes ago he favoured me with an extraordinary speech, an echo of the articles in Le Petit Beaumontais. "France before everything else," said he; it was necessary to drive out the Jews, to make a fundamental dogma of respect for the army, and to allow more liberty in education, by which he meant to allow the religious Congregations full freedom to keep the masses ignorant. He typifies the bankruptcy of the earlier patriotic Republicans. Yet he is a worthy man, an excellent teacher, with five assistants under him, and the best-kept school in Beaumont. Two of his sons are already assistant-teachers in other schools of the department, and I know that they share their father's views and even exaggerate them as young men are wont to do. What will become of us if such sentiments should continue to animate our elementary masters? Ah! it is high time to provide others, to send a legion of men of free intelligence to teach the people truth, which is the one sole source of equity, kindliness, and happiness!'

He spoke these last words with such fervour that Marc smiled! 'Ah! my dear master, now I recognise you,' he said. 'You are not going to give up the battle! You will end by winning it, for you have truth on your side.'

Salvan gaily admitted that he had previously given way to a fit of discouragment. The infamous proceedings with which Simon was threatened had unnerved him. 'Advice?' he repeated, 'you asked me for advice as to how you should act. Let us see; let us examine the situation together.'

There was Forbes, the Academy Rector,[2] gentle and affable, a very able man of letters, and a very intelligent man also. But he was deep in historical studies, covertly disdainful of the present age, and he acted as a mere go-between for the intercourse of the Minister of Public Instruction and the university staff. Then, however, came Le Barazer, the Academy Inspector; and Salvan's hope of future victory was centred in that sensible and courageous man, who was also a skilful politician. The experience of Le Barazer, who was now barely fifty years of age, dated back to the heroic days of the Republic, when the necessity of secular and compulsory education had imposed itself as the one sole possible basis of a free and just democracy. A worker for the good cause from the very outset, Le Barazer had retained all his hatred of clericalism, convinced that it was absolutely necessary to drive the priests from the schools, and to free people's minds from all mendacious superstitions, if one desired that the nation should be strong, well-instructed, and capable of acting in the plenitude of its intelligence. But age, the obstacles he had encountered, the ever tenacious resistance of the Church, had added great prudence and tactical skill to his Republican zeal.

[2] See foot-note, p. 44, ante.

Nobody knew better than he how to utilise the little ground which he gained each day, and to oppose inertia to the assaults of his adversaries, when forcible resistance was impossible. He exerted the power he held as Academy Inspector without ever entering into a direct contest with anybody, either the Prefect or the Deputies or the Senators of the department, though, on the other hand, he refused to yield so long as his views were not adopted.

It was thanks to him that Salvan, although violently attacked by the clerical faction, was able to continue his work of regeneration, the renewing of the personnel of the elementary schoolmasters; and doubtless he alone could in a measure defend Simon against his subordinate, Inspector Mauraisin. For that handsome gentleman also had to be reckoned with, and he was likely to prove ferocious, a traitor to the university cause, and an accomplice of the Congregations, since he had come to the conclusion that the Church would prove victorious in the affair, and pay a higher reward than the other side for the services rendered to it.