He went on bitterly, enumerating the sufferings of those damned ones, as he called the elementary teachers. He himself, a shepherd's son, successful at the village school which he had attended, and afterwards a student at the Training College, which he had quitted with excellent certificates, had always suffered from lack of means; for in a spirit of rectitude after some trouble with a shop girl at Maillebois, when he was assistant-master there, he had foolishly married her, although she was as poor as himself. But was Marc any happier at Jonville, even though his wife received frequent presents from her grandmother? Was he not always struggling with indebtedness, struggling too with the priest, in order to retain dignity and independence? True, he was seconded by Mademoiselle Mazeline, the mistress of the girls' school, a woman of firm sense, with an inexhaustible heart, who had helped him to win over the parish council and gradually the whole commune. But circumstances had been in his favour, and the example was perhaps unique in the department. On the other hand, the state of affairs at Maillebois completed the picture. There, on one side, one found Mademoiselle Rouzaire won over to the cause of the priests and the monks, learning to take her pupils to church, and fulfilling so well the office of the nuns that it had been considered unnecessary to install a nuns' school in the little town. Then, on the other hand, there was that poor fellow Simon, an honest man certainly, but one who, from fear of being treated as a dirty Jew, tried circumspection with everybody, allowing his nephew to be educated by the dear Brothers, and bowing down to the ground before all the rooks who infested the country. 'A dirty Jew!' cried Férou with emphasis, by way of conclusion. 'He is, and always will be, a dirty Jew. And to be both a schoolmaster and a Jew beats everything.... Ah! well, you'll see, you'll see!' Then, with impetuous gestures which shook the whole of his big loose frame he took himself off and mingled with the crowd. Marc had remained on the kerb of the footway, shrugging his shoulders and regarding Férou as a semi-lunatic, for the picture which he had drawn seemed to him full of exaggeration. But of what use was it to answer that poor fellow whose brain would soon be turned by ill luck? Yet Marc was haunted by what he had heard, and grew vaguely anxious as he resumed his walk towards the Place des Capucins. It was a quarter past twelve when he reached the little house, and for a quarter of an hour the ladies had been awaiting him in the dining-room, where the table was already laid. This fresh delay had quite upset Madame Duparque. She said nothing, but the brusqueness with which she sat down and nervously unfolded her napkin denoted how culpable she considered this lack of punctuality.