Truth [Vérité]. Emile Zola

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      Then another legend, that of the foundation of the College of Valmarie, endeared him to the devotees of the region. The Valmarie estate had previously belonged to the old Countess de Quédeville, who, after notorious amours, had retired thither to sanctify her last years by the practice of extreme piety. Her son and daughter-in-law having perished in an accident while travelling, she remained alone with her grandson and sole heir, Gaston, a boy of nine years, who was most aggressively turbulent, violent in speech, and wild in his play. Not knowing how to subdue him, and not daring to trust him to school life, the Countess had engaged as tutor a young Jesuit of six and twenty, Father Philibin, whose manners suggested his peasant origin, but who was recommended to her for his extreme firmness. He, no doubt, made the Countess acquainted with Father Crabot, who was some five or six years his senior, and who was then at the height of his celebrity, radiant with the halo of his great passion and its tragic, divine ending. Six months later, as friend and confessor, he reigned at Valmarie, evil-minded people asserting that he was the lover of the Countess.

      As that turbulent boy Gaston seemed to disturb the happy quietude of the domain, a truly royal one with its grand old trees, its running waters, its great stretches of green velvet, there was at one moment some thought of sending him to the Jesuit Fathers in Paris. He climbed the loftiest poplars for rooks' nests, took to the river in his clothes to fish for eels, came home in rags, with arms and legs bruised, and his face bleeding, giving his grandmother no rest whatever from anxiety, in spite of Father Philibin's reputed firmness. But all at once the situation was tragically altered: Gaston was drowned one day while walking out, under the nominal supervision of his tutor. The latter related that the boy had fallen into a dangerous hole full of water, whence it had been impossible to extricate him, in spite of the efforts of a young fellow of fifteen, Georges Plumet—the son of one of the gardeners and sometimes Gaston's companion in his escapades—who had run up on seeing the accident from a distance. The Countess, profoundly grieved, died during the following year, bequeathing Valmarie and all her fortune to Father Crabot—or, to be exact, to a petty clerical banker of Beaumont, who lent his name in such matters—with directions to establish a Jesuit College on the estate. Crabot, for a time, had taken himself elsewhere, then had returned with the rank of Rector, and for ten years now the College had been prospering under his control.

      He reigned there from his austere and retired little cell, whose walls were bare, and whose furniture was limited to a little pallet, a table, and two chairs. He made the bed, he swept the floor himself; and though he heard the confessions of his female penitents in the chapel, it was in that cell that he listened to those of the men, as if he were proud of the poverty and solitude into which he withdrew like some redoubtable divinity, leaving to Father Philibin, the Prefect of the Studies, all usual daily intercourse with the pupils of the establishment. But, although he rarely showed himself to them in the class-rooms, he reserved 'parlour-days' to himself, lavished attentions on his pupils' relations, particularly on the ladies and young girls of the local aristocracy, busying himself with the future of his dear sons and dear daughters, arranging their marriages, insuring them good positions, in fact disposing of all those fine folk for the greater glory of God and of his particular Order. And it was thus that he had become an all-powerful personage.

      'To tell the truth,' Delbos resumed, 'Father Crabot strikes me as being a mediocrity, whose entire strength proceeds from the stupidity of those among whom he works. I am more distrustful of Father Philibin, whom you think a worthy man. I am impressed by his affected roughness and frankness. Suspicion clings to his doings and to Crabot's in the time of the Countess de Quédeville, such as the drowning of that child Gaston, and all the more or less lawful manœuvring to acquire the estate and the fortune. It happens that the only witness of Gaston's death, Georges Plumet, the gardener's son, is precisely Brother Gorgias, for whom Philibin assumed great affection and of whom he made an Ignorantine, when, of course, he changed his name. And now we find those three men together again, and the solution of the present mystery is to be found, perhaps, in that circumstance; for, if Brother Gorgias be guilty, the efforts of the others to save him might be explained by strong personal motives, the existence of some skeleton in their cupboard, and the dread lest he should speak out if he were abandoned. Unfortunately, as you said just now, we can only form suppositions, whereas we need substantial, authentic facts. However, let us keep on searching. Defence, I repeat it, will only be possible if I am armed sufficiently to be an accuser and an avenger.'

      That conversation with Delbos inspirited David and Marc. And, even as had been foreseen, they tasted for a moment the pleasure of witnessing a quarrel in the clerical camp. At the outset of the affair Abbé Quandieu, the parish priest of Maillebois, had not concealed his belief in the innocence of Simon. He did not go so far as to accuse one of the Brothers; but he allowed it to be seen that he disapproved of the frantic campaign which the Brothers and the Capuchins were carrying on with the object of gaining the whole district for themselves; for, apart from his own loss of parishioners, it distressed him, for religion's sake, to see the basest superstitions triumphing. When he found public opinion suddenly poisoned with respect to Simon's case, he became neutral, never speaking of the affair, but dreading, in his sincere piety, lest his dear gentle Lord of charity and love should be slain and replaced by a God of falsehood and iniquity. His only consolation was that his views coincided with those of Monseigneur Bergerot, the Bishop, who was fond of him and whom he often visited. Like the priest himself, the Bishop was accused of Gallicanism, which simply meant that he did not invariably bow to Rome, and that the idolatrous worship of images and the impudent trafficking of those who contracted to perform spurious miracles were repugnant to his pure faith. For instance, he observed with saddened eyes the invading tendencies of the Maillebois Capuchins, who so openly traded on the shrine of St. Antony of Padua which they had set up in their chapel, thus competing disloyally with the church of St. Martin, where Abbé Quandieu officiated. The Bishop's anxiety increased when behind the Capuchins he divined the presence of the Jesuits, all the disciplined troops of his enemy Father Crabot, who was always employing his influence to thwart him, and who dreamt of becoming master of the diocese.

      The Bishop reproached the Jesuits with compelling God to go to men, instead of forcing men to go to God, and he also saw in them the artisans of the society compromise, of the falling off both in faith and in observances, which in his opinion was destroying the Church. In the Simon affair, on finding them so intent upon ruining the unhappy prisoner, he became suspicious and studied the case very carefully with Abbé Quandieu, who was well informed. He must then have arrived at a decisive opinion. Perhaps indeed he learnt who was really the culprit. But what course could he take, how could he give up a member of the religious Orders, without risk of doing harm to religion? He lacked the courage to go as far as that. Yet certainly his silence was full of bitterness, and he felt anxious as to the consequences of the monstrous adventure into which others were forcing the Church, which he would have liked to see all peace, equity, and kindliness.

      Thus Monseigneur Bergerot's resignation was not absolute. The idea of abandoning his dear Abbé Quandieu, of allowing those whom he called 'the dealers of the Temple' to consummate his ruin, was unbearable to him. On coming, then, to Maillebois in the course of a pastoral round of inspection, he officiated personally in the ancient church of St. Martin, and delivered an address in which he blamed all gross superstition, referring plainly to the commerce carried on by the Capuchins in their chapel, which was now driving as much trade as a bazaar. Nobody was mistaken as to the Bishop's meaning; moreover, everyone felt that the blow was directed not only against Father Théodose, but against Father Crabot who was behind him. And as Monseigneur ended by expressing the hope that the Church of France would remain the pure source of all truth and justice, the scandal became the greater, for in those words an allusion to the Simon affair was detected, and the Bishop was accused of casting the Brothers of the Christian Doctrine to the Jews, the bribe-takers, and the traitors. On returning to his episcopal palace Monseigneur Bergerot must have trembled at the thought of the courage he had shown, particularly as everything was done to embitter his position still more. Some intimates, in recounting the visit of thanks which Abbé Quandieu paid him, СКАЧАТЬ