That was all that could be got out of him. When Marc pressed him, his answers became incoherent, while his parents themselves said yes or no chancewise, according to what they deemed to be their interest. It was Bongard's prudent habit to jog his head in approval of every opinion expressed by those who spoke to him, for fear of compromising himself. Yes, yes, it was a frightful crime, and if the culprit should be caught it would be quite right to cut off his head. Each man to his trade, the gendarmes knew theirs, there were rascals everywhere. As for the priests, there was some good in them, but all the same one had a right to follow one's own ideas. And at last, as Marc could learn nothing positive, he had to take himself off, watched inquisitively by the children, and pursued by the shrill voice of little Angèle, who began chattering with her brother as soon as the gentleman could no longer detect what she said. The young man gave way to some sad reflections as he returned to Maillebois. He had just come in contact with the thick layer of human ignorance, the huge blind, deaf multitude still enwrapped in the slumber of the earth. Behind the Bongards the whole mass of country folk remained stubbornly, dimly vegetating, ever slow to awaken to a true perception of things. There was a whole nation to be educated if one desired that it should be born to truth and justice. But how colossal would be the labour! How could it be raised from the clay in which it lingered, how many generations perhaps would be needed to free the race from darkness! Even at the present time the vast majority of the social body remained in infancy, in primitive imbecility. In the case of Bongard one descended to mere brute matter, which was incapable of being just because it knew nothing and would learn nothing. Marc turned to the left, and after crossing the High Street found himself in the poor quarter of Maillebois. Various industrial establishments there polluted the waters of the Verpille, and the sordid houses of the narrow streets were the homes of many workpeople. Doloir the mason tenanted four fairly large rooms on a first floor over a wineshop in the Rue Plaisir. Marc, imperfectly informed respecting the address, was seeking it when he came upon a party of masons who had just quitted their work to drink a glass together at the bar of the wineshop. They were discussing the crime in violent language. 'A Jew's capable of anything,' one big fair fellow exclaimed. 'There was one in my regiment who was a thief, but that did not prevent him from being a corporal, for a Jew always gets out of difficulties.' Another mason, short and dark, shrugged his shoulders. 'I quite agree,' said he, 'that the Jews are not worth much, but all the same the priests are no better.'