Truth [Vérité]. Emile Zola
![Truth [Vérité] - Emile Zola](limg_read862278.jpg "Truth [Vérité] - Emile Zola")
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
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