Salvan, who had been pacing the room slowly, halted in front of the young man. 'I do not wish you to sacrifice yourself, my friend,' he said; 'I should regret it all my life if your happiness should be compromised, if the bitterness born of conflict should infect your hearth. But you are of the metal out of which heroes are wrought.... Do not give me an answer now. Take a week to think the matter over. Come again next Thursday; we will then have another chat, and arrive at a decision.' Marc returned to Jonville that evening, feeling very worried. Ought he to silence his fears, which he scarcely dared to acknowledge to himself, and engage in a struggle with his wife's relations--a struggle in which all the joy of his life might be annihilated? He had decided at first that he would have a frank explanation with Geneviève; but afterwards his courage failed him, he foresaw only too well that she would simply tell him to act in accordance with his opinions and as his duty directed. Thus, assailed by increasing anguish of mind, discontented with himself, the young man did not speak to his wife of Salvan's offer. Two days went by amid hesitation and doubt; and then he ended by reviewing the situation and weighing the various reasons which might induce him to accept or refuse the Maillebois appointment. He pictured the little town. There was Darras the Mayor, who, although a good-natured man and one of advanced views, no longer dared to be openly just for fear of losing his official position, and placing his fortune in jeopardy. There were also all the Bongards, the Doloirs, the Savins, the Milhommes, all those folk of average intellect and morality who had favoured him with such strange discourses, in which cruelty was blended with imbecility; while behind them came the multitude, a prey to even more ridiculous fancies and capable of more immediate ferocity. The superstitions of savages prevailed among the masses, their mentality was that of a nation of barbarians, adoring fetiches, setting its glory in massacre and rapine, and displaying neither a shred of tolerance, nor of sense, nor of kindliness. But why did they remain steeped--at their ease, as it were--in all the dense filth of error and falsehood? Why did they reject logic, even mere reason, with a kind of instinctive hatred, as if they were terrified by everything that was pure, simple, and clear? And why, in the Simon case, had they given to the world the extraordinary and deplorable spectacle of a people paralysed in its sensibility and intelligence, determined neither to see nor to understand, but bent on enveloping itself in all possible darkness, in order that it might be unable to see, and free to clamour for death amid the black night of its superstitions and its prejudices? Those folk had assuredly been contaminated, poisoned; day by day newspapers like _Le Petit Beaumontais_ and _La Croix de Beaumont_ had poured forth the hateful beverage which corrupts and brings delirium.