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 Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Truth [Vérité]
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Truth [Vérité]

Author: Émile Zola

Translator: Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

Release date: October 30, 2017 [eBook #55849]

Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Dagny and Marc D’Hooghe

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRUTH [VÉRITÉ]

***
TRUTH
[VÉRITÉ]

By
ÉMILE ZOLA
Translated by

ERNEST A. VIZETELLY

NEW YORK: JOHN LANE

THE BODLEY HEAD

1903

CONTENTS

PREFACE
TRUTH
BOOK I
I
II
III
IV
BOOK II
I
II
III
IV
BOOK III
I
II
III
IV
BOOK IV
I
 II
III
IV

PREFACE

Conspicuous among the writings which influenced the great changes

witnessed by the world at the end of the eighteenth century were
the 'Nouvelle Héloise,' the 'Contrat Social,' the 'Émile ou l'Éducation'
of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. At the close of the nineteenth, the
advent of the twentieth century, one finds three books, 'Fécondité,'
'Travail,' and 'Vérité,' the works of Émile Zola, Rousseau's foremost
descendant. It is too soon by far to attempt to gauge the extent of
the influence which these works may exercise; but, disseminated in
French and in many other languages to the uttermost ends of the
earth, they are works which will certainly have to be reckoned with
in a social as well as a literary sense. The writings of Rousseau,
violently assailed by some, enthusiastically praised by others, ended
by leaving their mark on the world at large. Very few may read them
nowadays, but in certain essential respects their spirit pervaded the
nineteenth century, and their influence is not dead yet, for the
influence which springs from the eternal truths of nature cannot die.
As for the critics who will undoubtedly arise to dispute the likelihood
of any great influence being exercised by the last writings of Émile
Zola, I adjourn them to some twenty years hence. Rome was not
built in a day, many long years elapsed before the spirit of
Rousseau's writings became fully disseminated, and, although the
world moves more quickly now than it did then, time remains a
factor of the greatest importance.
Moreover, the future alone can decide the fate of Émile Zola's last
books; for, while dealing with problems of the present time, they are
essentially books which appeal to the future for their justification.
Each of those three volumes, 'Fécondité,' 'Travail,' and 'Vérité,' takes
as its text an existing state of things, and then suggests alterations
and remedies which can only be applied gradually, long years being
required to bring about any substantial result. It is known that the
series was to have comprised a fourth and concluding volume, which
would have been entitled 'Justice'; and indeed the actual writing of
that volume would have been begun on September 29 last if, at an
early hour on that very day, the hand of Émile Zola had not been
stayed for ever by a tragic death, which a few precautions would
undoubtedly have prevented. At an earlier stage it was surmised—on
many sides I see by the newspaper cuttings before me—that this
unwritten book, 'Justice,' would deal chiefly with the Dreyfus case, in
which Zola played so commanding and well-remembered a part. But
that was a mistake, a misconception of his intentions. Though his
work would have embraced the justice dispensed in courts of law,
his chief thought was social justice, equity as between class and
class, man and man. And thus the hand of death at least robbed
those who are in any way oppressed of a powerful statement of their
rights.
As for the Dreyfus case, it figures in the present volume, or rather it
serves as the basis of one of the narratives unfolded in it. The
Dreyfus case certainly revealed injustice; but it even more
particularly revealed falsehood, the most unblushing and the most
egregious mendacity, the elevation of the suppressio veri and the
suggestio falsi to the dignity of a fine art. The world has known
greater deeds of injustice than the Dreyfus case, but never has it
known—and may it never again know—such a widespread exhibition
of mendacity, both so unscrupulous and so persevering, attended
too by the most amazing credulity on the part of nine-tenths of the
French nation—for small indeed (at the beginning, at all events) was
the heroic band which championed the truth. Behind all the
mendacity and credulity, beyond the personages directly implicated
in the case, stood one of the great forces of the world, the Roman
Catholic Church. Of all the ministers of that Church in France, only
one raised his voice in favour of the truth, all the others were tacitly
or actively accomplices in the great iniquity. And that will explain
much which will be found in Émile Zola's last book.
The horrible crime on which he bases a part of his narrative is not
ascribed to any military man (in fact the army scarcely figures in
'Vérité'); it is one of the crimes springing from the unnatural lives led
by those who have taken vows in the Roman Church, of which some
record will be found in the reports on criminality in France, which the
Keeper of the Seals issues every ten years. Many such crimes,
particularly those which are not carried to the point of murder, are
more or less hushed up, the offenders being helped to escape by
their friends in the Church; but sufficient cases have been legally
investigated during the last thirty years to enable one to say that the
crime set forth in 'Vérité' is not to be regarded as altogether
exceptional in its nature. The scene of the book is laid in the French
school world, and by the intriguing of clericalist teachers the crime
referred to is imputed to a Jew schoolmaster. Forthwith there comes
an explosion of that anti-Semitism—cruelly and cowardly spurred on
by the Roman Church—which was the very fons et origo of the
Dreyfus case.
On the dogmas of the Roman Church, and on her teaching methods
with the young, falls the entire responsibility of such fanaticism and
such credulity. Republican France, fully enlightened respecting the
Church's aims by many circumstances and occurrences—the Dreyfus
case, the treasonable monarchical spirit shown by her officers when
educated in Jesuit colleges, the whole Nationalist agitation, and the
very educational exhibits sent by the Religious Orders to the last
great world-show in Paris, exhibits which proved peremptorily that
1,600,000 children were being reared by Brothers and Sisters in
hatred and contempt of the government of the country—France is
now driving the Church from both the elementary and the superior
schools. Those who merely glance with indifference at the Paris
letters and telegrams appearing in the newspapers may be told that
a great revolution is now taking place in France, a revolution
partaking of some of the features of the Reformation, a change such
as England, for instance, has not witnessed since Henry VIII. and
James II. The effects of that change upon the world at large may be
tremendous; Rome knows it, and resists with the tenacity of despair;
but faith in her dogmas and belief in her protestations have departed
from the great majority of the French electorate; and, driven from
the schools, unable in particular to continue moulding the women by
whom hitherto she has so largely exercised her influence, the
Church already finds herself in sore straits, at a loss almost how to
proceed. By hook or crook she will resist, undoubtedly, to the last
gasp; but with the secularisation of the whole educational system it
will be difficult for her to recruit adherents in the future, and poison
the national life as she did poison it throughout the years of the
Dreyfus unrest. She sowed the storm and now she is reaping the
whirlwind.
Besides the powerful 'story of a crime' which is unfolded in the
pages of 'Vérité,' besides the discussion of political and religious
methods and prospects, and the exposition of educational views
which will be found in the book, it has other very interesting
features. The whole story of Marc Froment and his struggle with his
wife Geneviève is admirable. It has appealed to me intensely, for
personal reasons, though happily my home never knew so fierce a
conflict. Yet experience has taught me what may happen when man
and woman do not share the same faith, and how, over the most
passionate love, the sincerest affection, there may for that reason
fall a blighting shadow, difficult indeed to dispel. And though Marc
Froment at last found his remedy, as I found mine, living to enjoy
long after-years of perfect agreement with the chosen helpmate, it is
certain that a difference of religious belief is a most serious danger
for all who enter the married state, and that it leads to the greatest
misery, the absolute wrecking of many homes. In 'Vérité' the subject
is treated with admirable insight, force, and pathos; and I feel
confident that this portion of the book will be read with the keenest
interest.
Of the rest of the work I need hardly speak further; for I should
merely be paraphrasing things which will be found in it. Some of the
personages who figure in its pages will doubtless be recognised.
Nobody acquainted with the Dreyfus case can doubt, I think, the
identity of the scoundrel who served as the basis of Brother Gorgias.
Father Crabot also is a celebrity, and Simon, David, Delbos, and
Baron Nathan are drawn from life. There are several striking scenes
—the discovery of the crime, the arrest and the first trial of the Jew
schoolmaster, the parting of Marc from his wife, and subsequently
from his daughter Louise, the deaths of Madame Berthereau and
Madame Duparque, and the last public appearance of the impudent
Gorgias. But amid all the matter woven into the narrative one never
loses sight of the chief theme—the ignominy and even the futility of
falsehood, the debasing effects of credulity and ignorance, the
health and power that come from knowledge—this being the
stepping-stone to truth, which ends by triumphing over all things.
Let me add that the book is the longest as well as the last of my
dear master's writings. While translating it I have pruned it slightly
here and there in order to get rid of sundry repetitions. In so long a
work some repetition is perhaps necessary; and it must be
remembered that with Émile Zola repetition was more or less a
method. One blow seldom, if ever, sufficed him; he was bent on
hammering his points into his reader's skull. With the last part of
'Vérité' I have had some little difficulty, the proofs from which my
translation has been made containing some scarcely intelligible
passages, as well as various errors in names and facts, which I have
rectified as best I could. These, however, are matters of little
moment, and can hardly affect the work as a whole, though, of
course, it is unfortunate that Zola should not have been spared to
correct his last proofs.
And now as this is, in all likelihood, the last occasion on which I shall
be privileged to present one of his works in an English dress, may I
tender to all whom my translations have reached—the hundreds of
reviewers and the many thousands of readers in the lands where the
English language is spoken—my heartfelt thanks for the courtesy,
the leniency, the patience, the encouragement, the favour they have
shown to me for several years? As I said in a previous preface, I am
conscious of many imperfections in these renderings of mine. I can
only regret that they should not have been better; but, like others, I
have my limitations. At the same time I may say that I have never
undertaken any of these translations in a perfunctory or a mere
mercantile spirit. Such as they are, they have been to me essentially
a labour of love. And now that I am about to lay down my pen, that
I see a whole period of my life closing, I think it only right to express
my gratitude to all whose support has helped me to accomplish my
self-chosen task of placing the great bulk of Émile Zola's writings
within the reach of those Anglo-Saxons who, unfortunately, are
unable to read French. My good friend once remarked that it was a
great honour and privilege to be, if only for one single hour, the
spokesman of one's generation. I feel that the great honour and
privilege of my life will consist in having been—imperfectly no doubt,
yet not I hope without some fidelity—his spokesman for ten years
among many thousands of my race.
E. A. V.
Merton, Surrey, England
January, 1903

TRUTH

BOOK I

On the previous evening, that of Wednesday, Marc Froment, the

Jonville schoolmaster, with Geneviève his wife and Louise his little
girl, had arrived at Maillebois, where he was in the habit of spending
a month of his vacation, in the company of his wife's grandmother
and mother, Madame Duparque and Madame Berthereau—'those
ladies,' as folk called them in the district. Maillebois, which counted
two thousand inhabitants and ranked as the chief place of a canton,
was only six miles distant from the village of Jonville, and less than
four from Beaumont, the large old university town.
The first days of August were oppressively hot that year. There had
been a frightful storm on the previous Sunday, during the
distribution of prizes; and again that night, about two o'clock, a
deluge of rain had fallen, without, however, clearing the sky, which
remained cloudy, lowering, and oppressively heavy. The ladies, who
had risen at six in order to be ready for seven o'clock Mass, were
already in their little dining-room awaiting the younger folk, who
evinced no alacrity to come down. Four cups were set out on the
white oilcloth table-cover, and at last Pélagie appeared with the
coffee-pot. Small of build and red-haired, with a large nose and thin
lips, she had been twenty years in Madame Duparque's service, and
was accustomed to speak her mind.
'Ah! well,' said she, 'the coffee will be quite cold, but it will not be
my fault.'
When she had returned, grumbling, to her kitchen, Madame
Duparque also vented her displeasure. 'It is unbearable,' she said;
'one might think that Marc took pleasure in making us late for Mass
whenever he stays here.'
Madame Berthereau, who was more indulgent, ventured to suggest
an excuse. 'The storm must have prevented them from sleeping,'
she replied; 'but I heard them hastening overhead just now.'
Three and sixty years of age, very tall, with hair still very dark, and a
frigid, symmetrically wrinkled face, severe eyes, and a domineering
nose, Madame Duparque had long kept a draper's shop, known by
the sign of 'The Guardian Angel,' on the Place St. Maxence, in front
of the cathedral of Beaumont. But after the sudden death of her
husband, caused, it was said, by the collapse of a Catholic banking-
house, she had sensibly disposed of the business, and retired, with
an income of some six thousand francs a year, to Maillebois, where
she owned a little house. This had taken place about twelve years
previously, and her daughter, Madame Berthereau, being also left a
widow, had joined her with her daughter Geneviève, who was then
entering her eleventh year. To Madame Duparque, the sudden death
of her son-in-law, a State revenue employé, in whose future she had
foolishly believed but who died poor, leaving his wife and child on
her hands, proved another bitter blow. Since that time the two
widows had resided together in the dismal little house at Maillebois,
leading a confined, almost claustral, life, limited in an increasing
degree by the most rigid religious practices. Nevertheless Madame
Berthereau, who had been fondly adored by her husband, retained,
as a memento of that awakening to love and life, an affectionate
gentleness of manner. Tall and dark, like her mother, she had a
sorrowful, worn, and faded countenance, with submissive eyes and
tired lips, on which occasionally appeared her secret despair at the
thought of the happiness she had lost.
It was by one of Berthereau's friends, Salvan, who, after being a
schoolmaster at Beaumont, became an Inspector of Elementary
Schools and, subsequently, Director of the Training College, that the
marriage of Marc and Geneviève was brought about. He was the
girl's surrogate-guardian. Berthereau, a liberal-minded man, did not
follow the observances of the Church, but he allowed his wife to do
so; and with affectionate weakness he had even ended by
accompanying her to Mass. In a similarly affectionate way, Salvan,
whose freedom of thought was yet greater than his friend's, for he
relied exclusively on experimental certainty, was imprudent enough
to foist Marc into a pious family, without troubling himself about any
possibility of conflict. The young people were very fond of each
other, and in Salvan's opinion they would assuredly arrange matters
between them. Indeed, during her three years of married life,
Geneviève, who had been one of the best pupils of the Convent of
the Visitation at Beaumont, had gradually neglected her religious
observances, absorbed as she was in her love for her husband. At
this Madame Duparque evinced deep affliction, although the young
woman, in her desire to please her, made it a duty to follow her to
church whenever she stayed at Maillebois. But this was not sufficient
for the terrible old grandmother, who in the first instance had tried
to prevent the marriage, and who now harboured a feeling of dark
rancour against Marc, accusing him of robbing her of her
grandchild's soul.
'A quarter to seven!' she muttered as she heard the neighbouring
church clock strike. 'We shall never be ready!'
Then, approaching the window, she glanced at the adjacent Place
des Capucins. The little house was built at a corner of that square
and the Rue de l'Église. On its ground floor, to the right and the left
of the central passage, were the dining and drawing rooms, and in
the rear came the kitchen and the scullery, which looked into a dark
and mouldy yard. Then, on the first floor, on the right hand were
two rooms set apart for Madame Duparque, and, on the left, two
others occupied by Madame Berthereau; whilst under the tiles, in
front of Pélagie's bed-chamber and some store places, were two
more little rooms, which had been furnished for Geneviève during
her girlhood, and of which she gaily resumed possession whenever
she now came to Maillebois with her husband. But how dark was the
gloom, how heavy the silence, how tomblike the chill which fell from
the dim ceilings! The Rue de l'Église, starting from the apse of the
parish church of St. Martin, was too narrow for vehicular traffic;
twilight reigned there even at noontide; the house-fronts were
leprous, the little paving-stones were mossy, the atmosphere stank
of slops. And on the northern side the Place des Capucins spread out
treeless, but darkened by the lofty front of an old convent, which
had been divided between the Capuchins, who there had a large and
handsome chapel, and the Brothers of the Christian Schools, who
had installed a very prosperous educational establishment in some of
the conventual dependencies.
Madame Duparque remained for a moment in contemplation of that
deserted space, across which flitted merely the shadowy figures of
the devout; its priestly quietude being enlivened at intervals only by
the children attending the Brothers' school. A bell rang slowly in the
lifeless air, and the old lady was turning round impatiently, when the
door of the room opened and Geneviève came in.
'At last!' the grandmother exclaimed. 'We must breakfast quickly: the
first bell is ringing.'
Fair, tall, and slender, with splendid hair, and a face all life and gaiety
inherited from her father, Geneviève, childlike still, though two and
twenty, was laughing with a laugh which showed all her white teeth.
But Madame Duparque, on perceiving that she was alone, began to
protest: 'What! is not Marc ready?'
'He's following me, grandmother; he is coming down with Louise.'
Then, after kissing her silent mother, Geneviève gave expression to
the amusement she felt at finding herself once more, as a married
woman, in the quiet home of her youth. Ah! she knew each paving-
stone of that Place des Capucins; she found old friends in the
smallest tufts of weeds. And by way of evincing amiability and
gaining time, she was going into raptures over the scene she viewed
from the window, when all at once, on seeing two black figures
pass, she recognised them.
'Why, there are Father Philibin and Brother Fulgence!' she said.
'Where can they be going at this early hour?'
The two clerics were slowly crossing the little square, which, under
the lowering sky, the shadows of their cassocks seemed to fill.
Father Philibin, forty years of age and of peasant origin, displayed
square shoulders and a course, round, freckled face, with big eyes, a
large mouth, and strong jaws. He was prefect of the studies at the
College of Valmarie, a magnificent property which the Jesuits owned
in the environs of Maillebois. Brother Fulgence, likewise a man of
forty, but little, dark, and lean, was the superior of the three
Brothers with whom he carried on the neighbouring Christian School.
The son of a servant girl and a mad doctor, who had died a patient
in a madhouse, he was of a nervous, irritable temperament, with a
disorderly overweening mind; and it was he who was now speaking
to his companion in a very loud voice and with sweeping gestures.
'The prizes are to be given at the Brothers' school this afternoon,'
said Madame Duparque by way of explanation. 'Father Philibin, who
is very fond of our good Brothers, has consented to preside at the
distribution. He must have just arrived from Valmarie; and I suppose
he is going with Brother Fulgence to settle certain details.'
But she was interrupted, for Marc had at last made his appearance,
carrying his little Louise, who, scarcely two years old, hung about his
neck, playing and laughing blissfully.
'Puff, puff, puff!' the young man exclaimed as he entered the room.
'Here we are in the railway train. One can't come quicker than by
train, eh?'
Shorter than his three brothers, Mathieu, Luc, and Jean, Marc
Froment had a longer and a thinner face, with the lofty towerlike
family forehead greatly developed. But his particular characteristics
were his spell-working eyes and voice, soft clear eyes which dived
into one's soul, and an engaging conquering voice which won both
mind and heart. Though he wore moustaches and a slight beard,
one could see his rather large, firm, and kindly mouth. Like all the
sons of Pierre and Marie Froment,[1] he had learned a manual
calling, that of a lithographer, and, securing his bachelor's degree
when seventeen years of age, he had come to Beaumont to
complete his apprenticeship with the Papon-Laroches, the great firm
which supplied maps and diagrams to almost every school in France.
It was at this time that his passion for teaching declared itself,
impelling him to enter the Training College of Beaumont, which he
had quitted in his twentieth year as an assistant-master, provided
with a superior certificate. Having subsequently secured that of
Teaching Capacity, he was, when seven and twenty, about to be
appointed schoolmaster at Jonville when he married Geneviève
Berthereau, thanks to his good friend Salvan, who introduced him to
the ladies, and who was moved by the sight of the love which drew
the young folk together. And now, for three years past, Marc and
Geneviève, though their means were scanty and they experienced all
manner of pecuniary straits and administrative worries, had been
leading a delightful life of love in their secluded village, which
numbered barely eight hundred souls.
[1] See M. Zola's novel, Paris.
But the happy laughter of the father and the little girl did not
dissipate the displeasure of Madame Duparque. 'That railway train is
not worth the coaches of my youth,' said she. 'Come, let us
breakfast quickly, we shall never get there.'
She had seated herself, and was already pouring some milk into the
cups. While Geneviève placed little Louise's baby-chair between
herself and her mother, in order to keep a good watch over the child,
Marc, who was in a conciliatory mood, tried to secure the old lady's
forgiveness.
'Yes, I have delayed you, eh?' he said. 'But it is your fault,
grandmother; one sleeps too soundly in your house, it is so very
quiet.'
Madame Duparque, who was hurrying over her breakfast, with her
nose in her cup, did not condescend to answer. But a pale smile
appeared on the face of Madame Berthereau after she had directed
a long look at Geneviève, who seemed so happy between her
husband and her child. And in a low voice, as if speaking
involuntarily, the younger widow murmured, glancing slowly around
her: 'Yes, very quiet, so quiet that one cannot even feel that one is
living.'
'All the same, there was some noise on the square at ten o'clock,'
Marc retorted. 'Geneviève was amazed. The idea of a disturbance at
night on the Place des Capucins!'
He had blundered badly in his desire to make the others laugh. This
time it was the grandmother who, with an offended air, replied: 'It
was the worshippers leaving the Capuchin Chapel. The offices of the
Adoration of the Holy Sacrament were celebrated yesterday evening
at nine o'clock. The Brothers took with them those of their pupils
who attended their first Communion this year, and the children were
rather free in talking and laughing as they crossed the square. But
that is far better than the abominable pastimes of the children who
are brought up without moral or religious guidance!'
Silence, deep and embarrassing, fell immediately. Only the rattle of
the spoons in the cups was to be heard. That accusation of
abominable pastimes was directed against Marc's school, with its
system of secular education. But, as Geneviève turned on him a little
glance of entreaty, he did not lose his temper. Before long he even
resumed the conversation, speaking to Madame Berthereau of his
life at Jonville, and also of his pupils, like a master who was attached
to them and who derived from them pleasure and satisfaction.
Three, said he, had just obtained the certificate awarded for
successful elementary studies.
But at this moment the church bell again rang out slowly, sending a
wail through the heavy atmosphere above the mournful, deserted
district.
'The last bell!' cried Madame Duparque. 'I said that we should never
get there in time!'
She rose, and had already begun to hustle her daughter and her
granddaughter, who were finishing their coffee, when Pélagie, the
servant, again appeared, this time trembling, almost beside herself,
and with a copy of Le Petit Beaumontais in her hand.
'Ah! madame, madame, how horrible! The newspaper boy has just
told me——'
'What? Make haste!'
The servant was stifling.
'That little Zéphirin, the schoolmaster's nephew, has just been found
murdered, there, quite near, in his room.'
'Murdered!'
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