It was a very large and lofty place, as badly kept, as grimy and as

much out of repair as the other. And on a level with the bossy ground,

littered with scrap, were the openings of six batteries of furnaces,

each divided into three compartments. Those narrow, long, glaring

pits whose brick walls occupied the whole basement, were heated by a

mixture of air and flaming gas, which the head caster himself regulated

by means of a mechanical fan. Thus, streaking the beaten ground of

the shadowy hall, there appeared six slits, open above the internal

hell, the ever-active volcano, whose subterranean brazier could be

heard rumbling loudly. Covers, shaped like long slabs, bricks bound

together by an iron armature, were laid across the furnaces. But these

covers did not join, and from each intervening space sprang an intense

pinkish light, so many sunrises as it were, broad rays starting from

the soil and darting in a sheaf to the dusty glass of the roofing. And

whenever a man, according to the requirements of the work, removed one

or another of the covers, one might have thought that some planet was

emerging from all obstacles, for the hall was then irradiated by a

brightness like that of aurora.

It so happened that Luc was able to see the operations. Some workmen

were loading a furnace, and he saw them lower the crucibles of

refractory clay, which had previously been heated till they were red,

and then by means of a funnel, pour in the charges, sixty-six pounds

of metal for each crucible. For some three or four hours fusion would

be in progress, and then the crucibles would have to be removed and

emptied, which was the terrible part of the work. As Luc drew near

to another furnace, where some men provided with long bars had just

assured themselves that the fusion was perfect, he recognised Fauchard

in the drawer whose duty it was to remove the crucibles. Livid and

withered, with a bony, scorched face, Fauchard had none the less

retained strong herculean arms and legs. Physically deformed by the

terrible labour--ever the same--which he had been performing for

fourteen years already, he had suffered yet more considerably in his

intelligence from the machine-like life to which he had been condemned:

perpetually repeating the same movements, without need of thought or

individuality of action, becoming as it were merely an element of the

struggle with fire. His physical defects, the rise of his shoulders,

the hypertrophy of his limbs, the scorching of his eyes, which had

paled from constant exposure to flaming light, were not his only

blemishes--he was also conscious of intellectual downfall; for caught

in the monster's grasp at sixteen years of age, after a rudimentary

education suddenly cut short, he remembered that he had once possessed

intelligence, an intelligence which was now flickering and departing

under the relentless burden of a labour which he performed like some

blinded beast crushed down by destructive baleful toil. And he now had

but one sole craving, one sole delight, which was to drink--to drink

his four quarts of wine at each shift, to drink so that the furnace

might not burn up his baked skin like so much old rind, to drink so

that he might escape crumbling into ashes, so that he might enjoy some

last felicity by finishing his life in the happy stupor of perpetual

intoxication.

That night Fauchard had greatly feared that the fire would boil some

more of his blood. But, already at eight o'clock he was agreeably

surprised to see Natalie, his wife, arrive with the four quarts of wine

which she had obtained on credit from Caffiaux, and which he had no

longer expected. She expressed regret that she had not a little meat

to give him also, but Dacheux, she said, had shown himself pitiless.

Ever in low spirits, and greatly given to complaining, she expressed

her anxiety as to how they would manage to get anything to eat on

the morrow. But her husband, who was well pleased at having secured

his wine, dismissed her saying that he should apply to the manager

for an advance as his mates had done. A crust of bread sufficed him

as food, he drank, and at once found himself full of confidence.

When the time to remove the crucibles arrived he tossed off another

half-quart at a gulp, and went to the water cistern to soak the large

linen apron that enveloped him. Then, with big wooden shoes on his

feet and wet gloves on his hands, armed too with long iron pincers, he

stood astride the furnace, resting his right foot on the cover, which

had just been pushed aside, his chest and stomach being exposed the

while to the frightful heat which arose from the open volcano. For a

moment he appeared quite red, blazing like a torch in the midst of a

brazier. His wooden shoes steamed, his apron and his gloves steamed,

the whole of his flesh seemed to melt away. But without evincing any

haste, he looked below him. His eyes, accustomed to the brightest

glare, sought the crucible in the depths of the burning pit. Then he

stooped slightly in order to seize it with his long pincers, and with

a sudden straightening of the loins, with three supple rhythmical

movements--one of his hands opening and gliding along the rod until

the other joined it--he drew up the crucible, raising easily, at

arm's length, that weight of one hundred and ten pounds--pincers and

crucible combined--and deposited it on the ground, where it looked

like some piece of the sun, at first of dazzling whiteness, which

speedily changed to pink. Then he began the operation afresh, drawing

the crucibles forth one by one amidst the increasing glow, with more

skill even than strength, coming and going amidst that incandescent

matter without ever burning himself, without seeming even to feel the

intolerable heat.

They were going to cast some little shells, of one hundred and

thirty-two pounds. The bottle-shaped moulds were ranged in two rows.

And when the assistants had skimmed the slag off the crucibles with

the aid of iron rods, which came away smoking and dropping purple

slaver, the head caster quickly seized the crucibles with his large,

round-jawed pincers, and emptied two into each mould. And the metal

flowed like white lava, with just a faint pinkish tinge here and there

amidst a shooting of fine blue sparks as delicate as flowers. It might

have been thought that the man was decanting some bright, gold-spangled

liqueur; all was done noiselessly, with precise and nimble movements,

amidst a blaze and a heat that changed the whole place into a devouring

brazier.

Luc, who was unaccustomed to it all, felt stifling, unable to remain

there any longer. At a distance of twelve and even fifteen feet from

the furnaces his face was scorched, and a burning perspiration streamed

from him. The shells had interested him, and he watched them cooling,

asking himself what men they would some day kill. And going on into

the next hall, he there found himself among the steam hammers and

the forging-press. This hall was now asleep, with all its monstrous

appliances. Its press of a force of two thousand tons and its hammers

of lesser power spread out, showing in the depths of the gloom their

black squat silhouettes, which suggested those of barbarian gods. And

here Luc found more projectiles, shells which that very day had been

forged under the smallest steam-hammer, on leaving the moulds after

annealing. Then he became interested in the tube of a large naval gun,

more than nineteen feet long, which was still warm from having passed

under the press. Billets totalling two thousand two hundred pounds of

steel had spread out and adapted themselves like rolls of paste to form

that tube, which was waiting chained, ready to be lifted by powerful

cranes and carried to the turning-lathes, which were farther off,

beyond the hall where the Martin furnace and some of the steel-casting

plant were installed.

Luc went on to the end, across that hall also, the most spacious of

them all, for there the largest pieces were cast. The Martin furnace

enabled one to pour large quantities of steel in a state of fusion into

the cast-iron moulds, whilst eight feet overhead two rolling bridges

worked by electricity gently and easily moved huge pieces weighing many

tons to every requisite point. Then Luc entered the lathe workshop, a

huge closed shed which was rather better kept than the others, and

where on either hand he found a series of admirable appliances in which

incomparable delicacy and power were blended. There were planes for

naval armour-plates which finished off metal-work even as a carpenter's

plane gives a finish to wood. And there were the lathes of precise if

intricate mechanism, as pretty as jewels, and as amusing as toys. Only

some of them worked at night-time, each lighted by a single electric

lamp, and giving forth but a faint sound in the deep silence. Again did

Luc come upon projectiles. There was one shell which had been fixed to

a lathe, to be calibrated externally. It turned round and round with

a prodigious speed, and steel shavings which suggested silver curls

flew away from under the narrow motionless blade. Afterwards it would

only have to be hollowed internally, tempered, and finished. But where

were the men that would be killed by it, after it had been charged?

As the outcome of all that heroic human labour, the subjugation of

iron bringing royalty to man and victory over the forces of nature,

Luc beheld a vision of massacre, all the bloodthirsty madness of a

battle-field! He walked on, and at a little distance came upon a large

lathe, where a cannon similar to the one whose forged tube he had

just seen was revolving. This one, however, was already calibrated

externally, and shone like new money. Under the supervision of a

youth who leant forward, attentively watching the mechanism, like a

clock-maker that of a watch, it turned and turned interminably with

a gentle humming, whilst the blade inside drilled it with marvellous

precision. And when that gun also should have been tempered, cast

from the summit of the tower into a bath of petroleum oil, to what

battle-field would it journey to kill men--how many lives would it mow

down, that gun made of steel which men in a spirit of brotherliness

should have fashioned only into rails and ploughshares!

Luc pushed a door open, and made his escape into the open air. The

night was damply warm, and he drew a long breath, feeling refreshed

by the wind which was blowing. When he raised his eyes he was unable

to distinguish a single star beyond the wild rush of the clouds. But

the lamp globes shining here and there in the yard replaced the hidden

moon, and again he saw the chimneys rising amidst lurid smoke, and a

coal-smirched sky, across which upon every side, forming as it were

some gigantic cobweb, flew all the wires which transmitted electric

power. The machines which produced it, two machines of great beauty,

were working close by in some new buildings. There were also some

works for making bricks and crucibles of refractory clay; there was a

carpenter's shop for model-making and packing, and numerous warehouses

for commercial steel and iron. And Luc, after losing himself for a time

in that little town, well pleased when he came upon deserted stretches,

black peaceful nooks where he seemed to revive to life, suddenly

found himself once more inside the inferno. On looking around him he

perceived that he was again in the gallery containing the furnaces for

the crucibles.

Another operation was now being executed there. Seventy crucibles were

being removed at the same moment for some big piece of casting which

was to weigh over three thousand nine hundred pounds. The mould with

its funnel was waiting in readiness in the pit, in the neighbouring

hall. And the procession was swiftly organised, all the helpers of

the various squads took part in it, two men for each crucible, which

they raised with pincers and carried off with long and easy strides.

Another, then another, then another, the whole seventy crucibles

passed along in a dazzling procession. One might have thought it some

ballet scene, in which vague dancers with light and shadowy feet

passed two-by-two carrying huge Venetian lanterns, orange-red in hue.

And the marvellous part of it all was the extraordinary rapidity, the

perfect assurance of the well-regulated movements in which the bearers

were seen gambolling, as it were, in the midst of fire, hastening

up, elbowing one another, marching off and coming back, juggling all

the while with fusing stars. In less than three minutes the seventy

crucibles were emptied into the mould, whence arose a sheaf of gold, a

great spreading bouquet of sparks.

When Luc at last returned to the hall containing the puddling furnaces

and the rollers, after a good half-hour's promenade, he found Bonnaire

finishing his work.

'I will be with you in a moment, monsieur,' said the puddler.

On the glaring sole of the furnace, whose open door was blazing, he had

already on three occasions isolated one quarter of the incandescent

metal, that is a hundredweight of it, which he had rolled and fashioned

into a kind of ball with the aid of his bar; and those three quarters

had gone one after the other to the hammer. He was now dealing with

the fourth and last portion. For twenty minutes he had been standing

before that voracious maw, his chest almost crackling from the heat of

the furnace, his hands manipulating his heavy hooked bar, and his eyes

clearly seeing how to do the work aright in spite of all the dazzling

flames. He gazed fixedly at the fiery ball of steel which he rolled

over and over continuously in the centre of the brazier; and in the

fierce reverberation which gilded his tall pinkish form against the

black background of darkness, he looked like some maker of planets,

busily creating new worlds. But at last he finished, withdrew his

flaming bar, and handed over to his mate the last hundredweight of the

charge.

The stoker was in readiness with a little iron chariot. Armed with

his pincers the assistant puddler seized hold of the ball, which

suggested some huge fiery sponge that had sprouted on the side of a

volcanic cavern, and with an effort he brought it out and threw it

into the chariot, which the stoker quickly wheeled to the hammer. A

smith at once caught it with his own pincers and placed and turned it

over under the hammer, which all at once began working. Then came a

deafening noise and a perfect dazzlement. The ground quaked, a pealing

of bells seemed to ring out, whilst the smith, gloved and bound round

with leather, disappeared amidst a perfect tornado of sparks. At some

moments the expectorations were so large that they burst, here and

there, like canister shot. Impassive amidst that fusillade, the smith

turned the sponge over and over in order that it might be struck on

every side and converted into a 'lump,' a loaf of steel, ready for

the rollers. And the hammer obeyed him, struck here, struck there,

slackening or hastening its blows without a word even coming from

his lips, without anyone even detecting the signs which he made to

the hammer-lad who sat aloft in his little box with his hand on the

starting-lever.

Luc, who had drawn near whilst Bonnaire was changing his clothes,

recognised little Fortuné, Fauchard's brother-in-law, in the hammer-lad

thus perched on high, motionless for hours together, giving no other

sign of life than a little mechanical gesture of the hand amidst the

deafening uproar which he raised. A touch on the right-hand lever so

that the hammer might fall, a touch on the left-hand lever so that it

might rise, that was all; the little lad's mind was confined to that

narrow space. By the bright gleams of the sparks one could for a

moment perceive him, slim and frail, with an ashen face, discoloured

hair, and the blurred eyes of a poor little being whose growth, both

physically and mentally, had been arrested by brutish work, in which

there was nothing to attract one, in which there was never a chance of

any initiative.

'If monsieur's willing, I'm ready now,' said Bonnaire, just as the

hammer at last became silent.

Luc quickly turned round, and found the master puddler before him,

wearing a jersey and a coarse woollen jacket, whilst under one of his

arms was a bundle made up of his working-clothes and certain small

articles belonging to him--all his baggage in fact, since he was

leaving the works to return to them no more.

'Quite so--let us be off,' said Luc.

But Bonnaire paused for another moment. As if he fancied that he might

have forgotten something he gave a last glance inside the plank hut

which served as a cloakroom. Then he looked at his furnace, the furnace

which he had made his own by more than ten years of hard toil, turning

out there thousands of pounds of steel fit for the rollers. He was

leaving the establishment of his own free will, in the idea that such

was his duty towards both his mates and himself, but for that very

reason the severance was the more heroic. However, he forced back the

emotion which was clutching him at the throat, and passed out the first

in advance of Luc.

'Take care, monsieur,' he said; 'that piece is still warm--it would

burn your boot.'

Neither spoke any further. They crossed the two dim yards under the

lunar lights, and passed before the low building where the tilt-hammers

were beating ragefully. And as soon as they were outside the Abyss

the black night seized hold of them again, and the glow and growl of

the monster died away behind them. The wind was still blowing, a wind

carrying the ragged flight of clouds skyward; and across the bridge the

bank of the Mionne was deserted, not a soul was visible.

When Luc had found Josine reclining on the bench where he had left

her, motionless and staring into the darkness, with Nanet asleep and

pressing his head against her, he wished to withdraw, for he considered

his mission ended, since Bonnaire would now find the poor creature some

place of shelter. But the puddler suddenly became embarrassed and

anxious at the idea of the scene which would follow his homecoming when

his wife, that terrible Toupe, should see him accompanying that hussy.

The scene was bound to be the more frightful since he had not told his

wife of his intention to quit the works. He foresaw, indeed, that a

tremendous quarrel would break out when she learnt that he was without

work, through throwing himself voluntarily out of employment.

'Shall I accompany you?' Luc suggested; 'I might be able to explain

things.'

'Upon my word, monsieur,' replied the other, feeling relieved, 'it

would perhaps be the better if you did.'

No words passed between Bonnaire and Josine. She seemed ashamed in

presence of the master puddler, and if he, with his good nature,

knowing too all that she suffered with Ragu, evinced a kind of

fatherly pity towards her, he none the less blamed her for having

yielded to that bad fellow. Josine had awakened Nanet on seeing the

two men arrive, and after an encouraging sign from Luc, she and the

boy followed them in silence. All four turned to the right, skirting

the railway embankment, and thus entering Old Beauclair, whose hovels

spread like some horrid stagnant pool over the flat ground just at the

opening of the gorge. There was an intricate maze of narrow streets

and lanes lacking both air and light, and infected by filthy gutters

which the more torrential rains alone cleansed. The overcrowding of

the wretched populace in so small a space was hard to understand, when

in front of it one perceived La Roumagne spreading its immense plain

where the breath of heaven blew freely as over the sea. The bitter

keenness of the battle for money and property alone accounted for the

niggardly fashion in which the right of the inhabitants to some little

portion of the soil, the few yards requisite for everyday life, had

been granted. Speculators had taken a hand in it all, and one or two

centuries of wretchedness had culminated in a cloaca of cheap lodgings,

whence people were frequently expelled by their landlords, low as might

be the rents demanded for certain of those dens, where well-to-do

people would not have allowed even their dogs to sleep. Chance-wise

over the ground had risen those little dark houses, those damp shanties

of plaster-work, those vermin and fever-breeding nests; and mournful

indeed at that night hour, under the lugubrious sky, appeared that

accursed city of labour, so dim, so closely-pent, filthy too, like

some horrid vegetation of social injustice.

Bonnaire, walking ahead, followed a lane, then turned into another,

and at last reached the Rue des Trois Lunes, one of the narrowest of

the so-called streets. It had no footways, and was paved with pointed

pebbles picked from the bed of the Mionne. The black and creviced house

of which he occupied the first floor had one day suddenly 'settled,'

lurching in such wise that it had been necessary to shore up the

frontage with four great beams; and Ragu, as it happened, occupied

the two rooms of the second story, whose sloping floor those beams

supported. Down below, there was no hall; the precipitous ladder-like

stairs started from the very threshold.

'And so, monsieur,' Bonnaire at last said to Luc, 'you will be kind

enough to come up with me.'

He had once more become embarrassed. Josine understood that he did

not dare take her to his rooms for fear of some affront, though he

suffered at having to leave her still in the street with the child. In

her gentle resigned way she therefore arranged matters. 'We need not go

in,' she said; 'we'll wait on the stairs up above.'

Bonnaire immediately fell in with the suggestion. 'That's best,' said

he. 'Have a little patience, sit down a moment, and if the key's in my

place, I'll bring it to you, and then you can go to bed.'

Josine and Nanet had already disappeared into the dense darkness

enveloping the stairs. One could no longer even hear them breathing,

they had ensconced themselves in some nook overhead. And Bonnaire in

his turn then went up, guiding Luc, warning him respecting the height

of the steps, and telling him to keep hold of the greasy rope which

served in lieu of a hand-rail.

'There, monsieur, that's it. Don't move,' he said at last. 'Ah! the

landings aren't large, and one would turn a fine somersault if one were

to fall.'

He opened a door and politely made Luc pass before him into a fairly

spacious room, where a little petroleum lamp shed a yellowish light.

In spite of the lateness of the hour La Toupe was still mending some

house linen beside this lamp; whilst her father, Daddy Lunot, as he was

called, had fallen asleep in a shadowy nook, with his pipe, which had

gone out, between his gums. In a bed, standing in one corner, slept the

two children, Lucien and Antoinette, one six, the other four years

old, and both of them fine, big children for their respective ages.

Apart from this common room, where the family cooked and ate their

meals, the lodging only comprised two others, the bed-room of the

husband and wife, and that of Daddy Lunot.

La Toupe, stupefied at seeing her husband return at that hour, for she

had been warned of nothing, raised her head, exclaiming: 'What, is it

you?'

He did not wish to start the great quarrel by immediately telling her

that he had left the Abyss. He preferred to settle the matter of Josine

and Nanet first of all. So he replied evasively: 'Yes, I've finished,

so I've come back.' Then, without leaving his wife time to ask any more

questions, he introduced Luc, saying: 'Here, this gentleman, who is a

friend of Monsieur Jordan's, came to ask me something--he'll explain it

to you.'

Her surprise and suspicion increasing, La Toupe turned towards the

young man, who thereby perceived her great likeness to her brother

Ragu. Short and choleric, she had his strongly marked face, with thick

ruddy hair, a low forehead, thin nose and massive jaws. Her bright

complexion, the freshness of which still rendered her attractive and

young-looking at eight-and-twenty years of age, alone explained the

reason which had induced Bonnaire to marry her, though he had been

well acquainted with her abominable temper. That which everybody had

then foreseen had come to pass. La Toupe made the home wretched by her

everlasting fits of anger. In order to secure some peace her husband

had to bow to her will in every little matter of their daily life. Very

coquettish, consumed by the ambition to be well-dressed and possess

jewellery, she only evinced a little gentleness when she was able to

deck herself in a new gown.

Luc, being thus called upon to speak, felt the necessity of gaining her

good will by a compliment. From the moment of crossing the threshold,

however bare might be the scanty furniture, he had remarked that

the room seemed very clean, thanks undoubtedly to the housewife's

carefulness. And drawing near to the bed he exclaimed: 'Ah! what fine

children, they are sleeping like little angels.'

La Toupe smiled, but looked at him fixedly and waited, feeling

thoroughly convinced that this gentleman would not have put himself out

to call there if he had not had something of importance to obtain from

her. And when he found himself obliged to come to the point, when he

related how he had found Josine starving on a bench, abandoned there

in the night, she made a passionate gesture, and her jaws tightened.

Without even answering the gentleman, she turned toward her husband in

a fury: 'What! What's this again? Is it any concern of mine?'

Bonnaire, thus compelled to intervene, strove to pacify her in his

kindly, conciliatory way.

'All the same,' said he, 'if Ragu left the key with you, one ought to

give it to the poor creature, because he's over yonder at Caffiaux's

place, and may well pass the night there. One can't leave a woman and a

child to sleep out of doors.'

At this La Toupe exploded: 'Yes, I've got the key!' said she. 'Yes,

Ragu gave it to me, and precisely because he wanted to prevent that

hussy from installing herself any more in his rooms, with her little

scamp of a brother! But I don't want to know anything about those

horrors! I only know one thing, it was Ragu who confided the key to me,

and it's to Ragu that I shall return it.'

Then, as her husband again attempted to move her to pity, she violently

silenced him. 'Do you want to make me take up with my brother's fancies

then?' she cried. 'Just let the girl go and kick the bucket elsewhere,

since she chose to listen to him. A nice state of things it's been,

and no mistake! No, no, each for himself or herself; and as for her,

let her remain in the gutter; a little sooner, a little later, it all

amounts to the same thing!'

Luc listened, feeling hurt and indignant. In her he found all the

harshness of the virtuous women of her class, who show themselves

pitiless towards the girls that stumble amidst their trying struggle

for life. And in La Toupe's case, ever since the day when she had

learnt that her brother had bought Josine a little silver ring, there

had been covert jealousy and hatred of that pretty girl whom she

pictured fascinating men and wheedling gold chains and silk gowns out

of them.

'One ought to be kind-hearted, madame,' was all that Luc could say, in

a voice that quivered with compassion.

But La Toupe did not have time to answer, for all at once an uproar of

heavy stumbling footsteps resounded on the stairs, and hands fumbled

at the knob of the door, which opened. It was Ragu with Bourron,

one following the other like a pair of good-humoured drunkards who,

having wetted their whistles in company, could no longer separate.

Nevertheless Ragu, who had some sense left him, had torn himself away

from Caffiaux's wine-shop, saying that, however pleasant it might be

there, he none the less had to go back to work on the morrow. And thus

he had looked in at his sister's with his mate, in order to get his key.

'Your key!' cried La Toupe sharply, 'there it is! And I won't keep it

again, mind. I've just had a lot of foolish things said to me in order

to make me give it to that gadabout. Another time when you want to turn

somebody out of the house just do it yourself.'

Ragu, whose heart had doubtless been softened by liquor, began to

laugh: 'She's so stupid, is Josine,' he said. 'If she had wanted to be

pleasant she would have drunk a glass with us instead of snivelling.

But women never know how to tackle men.'

He was unable to express himself more fully, for just then Bourron,

who had fallen on a chair, laughing at nothing with his everlasting

good humour, inquired of Bonnaire: 'I say, is it true then that you're

leaving the works?'

La Toupe turned round, starting as if a pistol had been fired off

behind her. 'What! He's leaving the works!' she cried.

Silence fell. Then Bonnaire courageously came to a decision. 'Yes, I'm

leaving the works; I can't do otherwise.'

'You're leaving the works! you're leaving the works!' bawled his wife,

quite furious and distracted as she took her stand before him. 'So

that two months' strike, which made us spend all our savings, wasn't

enough, eh? It's for you to pay the piper now, eh? So we shall die of

starvation, and I shall have to go about naked!'

He did not lose his temper, but gently answered: 'It's quite possible

that you won't have a new gown for New Year's Day, and perhaps too we

shall have to go on short commons. But I repeat to you that I'm doing

what I ought to do!'

She did not give up the battle as yet, but drew still nearer, shouting

in his face: 'Oh, bunkum! you needn't imagine that folks will be

grateful to you! Your mates don't scruple to say that if it hadn't been

for that strike of yours they'd never have starved during those two

months. Do you know what they'll say when they hear that you've left

the works? They'll say that it serves you right, and that you're only

an idiot! I'll never allow you to do such a foolish thing! You hear,

you'll go back to-morrow!'

Bonnaire looked at her fixedly with his bright and steady eyes. If as

a rule he gave way on points of domestic policy, if he allowed her

to reign despotically in ordinary household matters, he became like

iron whenever any case of conscience arose. And so, without raising

his voice, in a firm tone which she well knew, he answered: 'You will

please keep quiet. Those are matters for us men; women like you don't

understand anything about them, and so it's better that they shouldn't

meddle with them. You're very nice, but the best thing you can do is to

go on mending your linen again if you don't want a quarrel.'

He thereupon pushed her towards the chair near the lamp, and forced her

to sit down again. Conquered, trembling with wrath which she knew would

henceforth be futile, she took up her needle, and made a pretence of

feeling no further interest in the questions from which she had been so

decisively thrust aside. Awakened by the noise of voices, Daddy Lunot

her father, without evincing any astonishment at the sight of so many

people, lighted his pipe once more and listened to the talk with the

air of an old philosopher who had lost every illusion; whilst in their

little bed the children Lucien and Antoinette, likewise roused from

their slumber, opened their eyes widely, and seemed to be striving to

understand the serious things which the big folk were saying.

Bonnaire was now addressing himself to Luc, as if to invoke his

testimony.

'Each has his honour, is that not so, monsieur? The strike was

inevitable, and if it had to be begun over again, I should begin it

over again--that is, I should employ my influence in urging my mates to

try to secure justice. One can't let oneself be devoured--work ought

to be paid at its proper price, unless men are willing to become mere

slaves. And we were so much in the right that Monsieur Delaveau had to

give way on every point by accepting our new wage tariff. But I can now

see that he is furious, and that somebody, as my wife puts it, has got

to pay for the damage. If I were not to go off willingly to-day, he'd

find a pretext for turning me out to-morrow. So what? Am I to hang on

obstinately and become a pretext for everlasting disputes? No, no! It

would all fall on my mates, it would bring them all sorts of worries,

and it would be very wrong of me. I pretended to go back, because my

mates talked of continuing the strike if I didn't. But now that they

are all back at work and quite quiet I prefer to take myself off. That

will settle everything; none of them will stir, and I shall have done

what I ought to do. That's my view of honour, monsieur--each has his

own.'

He said all this with simple grandeur, with so easy and courageous

an air that Luc felt deeply touched. From that man whom he had seen

black and taciturn, toiling so painfully before his furnace, from that

man whom he had seen gentle and kindly, tolerant and conciliatory in

household matters, there now arose one of the heroes of labour, one

of those obscure strugglers who have given their whole being to the

cause of justice, and who carry their brotherliness to the point of

immolating themselves in silence for the sake of others.

Without ceasing to draw her needle La Toupe meanwhile repeated

violently: 'And we shall starve.'

'And we shall starve, it's quite possible,' said Bonnaire, 'but I shall

be able to sleep in peace.'

Ragu began to sneer. 'Oh! starve, that's useless, that's never done any

good. Not that I defend the masters--a pretty gang they are, all of

them! Only as we need them we always have come to an understanding with

them, and do pretty well as they want.'

He rattled on, jesting, and revealing his true nature. He was the

average workman, neither good nor bad, the spoilt product of the

present-day wage system. He cried out at times against capitalist rule,

he was enraged by the strain of the labour imposed on him, and was even

capable of a short rebellion. But prolonged atavism had bent him; he

really had the soul of a slave, respecting established traditions and

envying the employer--that sovereign master who possessed and enjoyed

everything; and the only covert ambition that he nourished was that of

taking the employer's place some fine morning in order to possess and

enjoy life in his turn. Briefly his ideal was to do nothing, to be the

master so that he might have nothing to do.

'Ah! that pig Delaveau!' he said, 'I should like to be just a week in

his skin and to see him in mine. It would amuse me to see him smoking

one of those big cigars of his while making a ball. But everything

happens, you know, and we may all become masters in the next shake-up!'

This idea amused Bourron vastly; he gaped with admiration before Ragu

whenever they had drunk together. 'That's true, ah! dash it, what a

spree it will be when we become the masters!'

But Bonnaire shrugged his shoulders, full of contempt for that base

conception of the future victory of the toilers over their exploiters.

He had read, reflected, and he thought he knew. Excited by all that had

just been said, wishing to show that he was right, he again spoke. In

his words Luc recognised the Collectivist idea such as it is formulated

by the irreconcilable ones of the party. First of all the nation had

to resume possession of the soil and all instruments of labour in

order to socialise and restore them to one and all. Then labour would

be reorganised, rendered general and compulsory, in such wise that

remuneration would be proportionate to the hours of toil which each man

supplied. The matter on which Bonnaire grew muddled was the practical

method to employ in order to establish this socialisation, and

particularly the working of it when it should be put into practice; for

such intricate machinery would need direction and control, a harsh and

vexatory State police system. And when Luc, who did not yet go so far

as Bonnaire did in his humanitarian cravings, offered some objections,

the other replied with the quiet faith of a believer: 'Everything

belongs to us; we shall take everything back, so that each may have

his just share of work and rest, trouble and joy. There is no other

reasonable solution, the injustice and the sufferings of the world have

become too great.'

Even Ragu and Bourron agreed with this. Had not the wage-system

corrupted and poisoned everything! It was that which disseminated

anger and hatred, gave rise to class warfare, the long war of

extermination which capital and labour were waging. It was by the

wage-system that man had become wolfish towards man amidst the

conflict of egotism, the monstrous tyranny of a social system based

on iniquity. Misery had no other cause. The wage-system was the evil

ferment which engendered hunger with all its disastrous consequences,

theft, murder, prostitution, the downfall and rebellion of men and

women cast beyond the pale of love, thrown like perverse, destructive

forces athwart society. And there was only one remedy, the abolition

of the wage-system, which must be replaced by the other, the new,

dreamt-of system, whose secret to-morrow would disclose. From that

point began the battle of the systems, each man thinking that in his

own system rested the happiness of the coming centuries; and a bitter

political _mêlée_ resulted from the clashing of the Socialist parties,

each of which sought to impose on the others its own plans for the

reorganisation of labour and the equitable distribution of wealth. But

none the less the wage-system in its present form was condemned by one

and all, and nothing could save it; it had served its time, and it

would disappear even as slavery, once so universal, had disappeared

when one of the periods of mankind's history had ended by reason of the

ever-constant onward march. That wage-system even now was but a dead

organ which threatened to poison the whole body, and which the life of

nations must necessarily eliminate under penalty of coming to a tragic

end.

'For instance,' Bonnaire continued, 'those Qurignons who founded the

Abyss were not bad-hearted people. The last one, Michel, who came to

so sad an end, tried to ameliorate the workman's lot. It is to him

one owes the creation of a pension fund, for which he gave the first

hundred thousand francs, engaging also to double every year such sums

as were paid in by the subscribers. He also established a free library,

a reading-room, a dispensary where one can see the doctor gratis twice

a week, a workshop, too, and a school for the children. And though

Monsieur Delaveau isn't at all so well disposed towards the men, he

has naturally been obliged to respect all that. It has been working

for years now, but when all is said it's of no good at all. It's mere

charity; it isn't justice! It may go on working for years and years

without starvation and misery being any the less. No, no, the people

who talk of "relieving" distress are simply good-natured fools; there's

no relief possible, the evil has to be cut off at the root.'

At this moment old Lunot, whom the others thought asleep again, spoke

from out of the shadows: 'I knew the Qurignons,' said he.

Luc turned and perceived him on his chair, vainly pulling at his

extinguished pipe. He was fifty years old, and had remained nearly

thirty years a drawer at the Abyss. Short and stout as he was, with a

pale, puffy face, one might have thought that the furnaces had swollen

instead of withering him. Perhaps it was the water with which he had

been obliged to drench himself in the performance of his work that had

first given him the rheumatics. At all events he had been attacked

in the legs at an early age, and now he could only walk with great

difficulty. And as he had not fulfilled the necessary conditions to

obtain even the ridiculous pension of three hundred francs a year[3]

to which the new workmen would be entitled later on, he would have

perished of starvation in the streets, like some old stricken beast

of burden, if his daughter, La Toupe, on the advice of Bonnaire, had

not taken him in, making him pay for her generosity in this respect by

subjecting him to continual reproaches and all sorts of privations.

'Ah, yes,' he slowly repeated, 'I knew the Qurignons. There was

Monsieur Michel, who's now dead and who was five years older than me.

And there's still Monsieur Jérôme, under whom I first went to the

works when I was eighteen years old. He was already forty-five at that

time, but that doesn't prevent him from still being alive. But before

Monsieur Jérôme, there was Monsieur Blaise, the founder, who first

installed himself at the Abyss with his tilt-hammers nigh on eighty

years ago. I didn't know him myself. But my father Jean Ragu, and my

grandfather, Pierre Ragu, worked with him; and one may even say that

Pierre Ragu was his mate, since they were both mere workmen with hardly

a copper in their pockets when they started on the job together, in

the gorge of the Bleuse Mountains, then deserted, near the bank of

the Mionne, where there was a waterfall. The Qurignons made a big

fortune, whereas here am I, Jacques Ragu, with my bad legs and never

a copper, and here's my son, Auguste, who'll never be any richer than

I am after thirty years' hard work, to say nothing of my daughter and

her children, who are all threatened with starvation, just as the Ragus

have always been for a hundred years or more.'

It was not angrily that he said these things, but rather with the

resignation of an old stricken animal. For a moment he looked at his

pipe, surprised at seeing no smoke ascend from it. Then, remarking that

Luc was listening to him with compassionate interest, he concluded with

a slight shrug of the shoulders: 'Bah! monsieur, that's the fate of

all of us poor devils! There will always be masters and workmen. My

grandfather and father were just as I am, and my son will be the same

too. What's the use of rebelling? Each of us draws his lot when he's

born. All the same, one thing that's desirable when a man gets old

is that he should at least have the means to buy himself sufficient

tobacco.'

'Tobacco!' cried La Toupe, 'why you've smoked two sous' worth to-day!

Do you imagine that I'm going to keep you in tobacco, now that we

sha'n't even be able to buy bread?'

To her father's great despair she rationed him with respect to tobacco.

It was in vain that he tried to get his pipe alight again; decidedly

only ashes were left in it. And Luc, with increasing compassion in

his heart, continued looking at him as he sat there, huddled up on

his chair. The wage-system ended in that lamentable wreck of a man,

the worker done for at fifty years of age, the drawer condemned to

be always a drawer, deformed, hebetated, reduced to imbecility and

paralysis by his mechanical toil. In that poor being there survived

nothing save the fatalist sentiment of slavery.

But Bonnaire protested superbly: 'No, no! It won't always be like that,

there won't always be masters and toilers; the day will come when one

and all will be free and joyful men! Our sons will perhaps see that

day, and it is really worth while that we the fathers should suffer a

little more if thereby we are to procure happiness for them to-morrow.'

'Dash it!' exclaimed Ragu, in a merry way. 'Hurry up, I should like to

see that. It would just suit me to have nothing more to do, and to eat

chicken at every meal!'

'And me too, and me too!' seconded Bourron in ecstasy. 'Keep me a

place!'

With a gesture expressive of utter disillusion, old Lunot silenced

them in order to resume: 'Let all that be, those are the things one

hopes for when one's young! A man's head is full of folly then, and

he imagines that he's going to change the world. But then the world

goes on, and he's swept away with the others. I bear no grudge against

anybody, I don't. At times, when I can drag myself about a bit, I meet

Monsieur Jérôme in his little conveyance, which a servant pushes along.

And I take off my cap to him, because it's only fit that one should

do so to a man who gave one work to do, and who's so rich. I fancy,

though, that he doesn't know me, for he contents himself with looking

at me with those eyes of his, which seem to be full of clear water. But

when all's said the Qurignons drew the big prize, so they are entitled

to be respected.'

Ragu thereupon related that Bourron and he, on leaving the works that

very evening, had seen Monsieur Jérôme pass in his little conveyance.

They had taken off their caps to him, and that was only natural. How

could they do otherwise without being impolite? All the same, that a

Ragu should be on foot in the mud, with his stomach empty, bowing to a

well-dressed Qurignon with a rug over him and a servant wheeling him

about like a baby who'd grown too fat, why that was enough to put one

in a rage. In fact it gave one the idea of throwing one's tools into

the water and compelling the rich to shell out, in order that one might

take one's turn in doing nothing.

'Doing nothing, no, no! That would be death,' resumed Bonnaire.

'Everybody ought to work, in that way happiness would be won, and

unjust misery would at last be vanquished. One must not envy those

Qurignons. When they are quoted as examples, when people say to us:

"You see very well that with intelligence, toil, and economy, a workman

may acquire a large fortune," I feel a little irritated, because I

understand very well that all that money can only have been gained by

exploiting our mates, by docking their food and their liberty; and

a horrid thing like that is always paid for some day! The excessive

prosperity of any one individual will never be in keeping with general

happiness. No doubt we have to wait if we want to know what the future

has in reserve for each of us. But I've told you what my idea is--that

those youngsters of mine in the bed yonder, who are listening to us,

may some day be happier than I shall ever be, and that later on their

children may in turn be happier than they. To bring that about we only

have to resolve on justice, to come to an understanding like brothers,

and secure it, even at the price of a good deal more wretchedness.'

As Bonnaire said, Lucien and Antoinette had not gone to sleep again.

Interested apparently by all those people who were talking so late,

they lay, plump and rosy, with their heads motionless on the bolster, a

thoughtful expression appearing in their large eyes, as if indeed they

could understand the conversation.

'Some day happier than us!' said La Toupe viciously. 'Yes, of course,

that is if they don't perish of want to-morrow, since you'll have no

more bread to give them.'

Those words fell on Bonnaire like a hatchet-stroke. He staggered,

quailing amidst his dream beneath the sudden icy chill of the misery

which he seemed to have sought by quitting the works. And Luc felt

the quiver of that misery pass through that large bare room where the

little petroleum lamp was smoking dismally. Was not the struggle an

impossible one? Would they not all--grandfather, father, mother, and

children--be condemned to an early death if the wage-earner should

persist in his impotent protest against capital? Heavy silence came,

a big black shadow seemed to fall chilling the room, and for a moment

darkening every face.

But a knock was heard, followed by laughter, and in came Babette,

Bourron's wife, with her dollish face which ever wore a merry look.

Plump and fresh, with a white skin and heavy tresses of a wheaten

hue, she seemed like eternal spring. Failing to find her husband at

Caffiaux's wine-shop, she had come to seek him at Bonnaire's, well

knowing that he had some trouble in getting home when she did not lead

him thither herself. Moreover, she showed no desire to scold; on the

contrary she seemed amused, as if she thought it only right that her

husband should have taken a little enjoyment.

'Ah! here you are, father Joy!' she gaily cried when she perceived him.

'I suspected that you were still with Ragu, and that I should find you

here. It's late, you know, old man. I've put Marthe and Sébastien to

bed, and now I've got to put you to bed too!'

Even as she never got angry with him, so Bourron never got angry with

her, for she showed so much good grace in carrying him off from his

mates.

'Ah! that's a good 'un!' he cried. 'Did you hear it? My wife puts me to

bed! Well, well, I'm agreeable since it always has to end like that!'

He rose, and Babette, realising by the gloominess of everybody's face,

that she had stumbled upon some serious worry, perhaps even a quarrel,

endeavoured to arrange matters. She, in her own household, sang from

morning till night, showing much affection for her husband, consoling

him and telling him triumphant stories of future prosperity whenever

he felt discouraged. The hateful want in which she had been living

ever since childhood had made no impression upon her good spirits. She

was quite convinced that things would turn out all right, and for ever

seemed to be on the road to Paradise.

'What is the matter with you all?' she asked. 'Are the children ill?'

Then, as La Toupe once more exploded, relating that Bonnaire was

leaving the works, that they would all be dead of starvation before a

week was over, and that all Beauclair, indeed, would follow suit, for

people were far too wretched and it was no longer possible to live,

Babette burst forth into protests, predicting no end of prosperous days

of sunshine, in her gay and confident manner.

'No, no, indeed!' she cried. 'Don't upset yourself like that, my dear.

Everything will settle down, you'll see. Everybody will work and

everybody will be happy.'

Then she led her husband away, diverting him as she did so, saying such

comical and affectionate things that he, likewise jesting, followed her

with docility, his inebriety being subjugated and rendered inoffensive.

Luc was making up his mind to follow them when La Toupe, in putting

her work together on the table, there perceived the key which she had

thrown down for her brother to pick up.

'Well, are you going to take it?' she exclaimed. 'Are you going to bed

or not? You've been told that your hussy's waiting for you somewhere.

Oh! you're free to take her back again if you choose, you know!'

For a moment Ragu, in a sneering way, let the key swing from one of his

thumbs. Throughout the evening he had been shouting in Bourron's face

that he did not mean to feed a lazybones who had stupidly lost a finger

in a boot-stitching machine, and had not known how to get sufficient

compensation for it. Since his return, however, he had become more

sober, and no longer felt so maliciously obstinate. Besides, his sister

exasperated him with her perpetual attempts to dictate a proper line of

conduct to him.

'Of course I can take her back if I choose,' he said. 'After all she's

as good as many another. One might kill her and she wouldn't say a bad

word to one.' Then turning to Bonnaire, who had remained silent: 'She's

stupid, is Josine, he said, 'to be always getting frightened like that.

Where has she got to now?'

'She's waiting on the stairs with Nanet,' said the master puddler.

Ragu thereupon threw the door wide open to shout: 'Josine! Josine!'

Nobody replied, however, not the faintest sound came from the dense

darkness enveloping the stairs. In the faint gleam of light which the

lamp cast in the direction of the landing one could see merely Nanet,

who stood there, seemingly watching and waiting.

'Ah! there you are, you little rascal!' cried Ragu. 'What on earth are

you doing there?'

The child was in no wise disconcerted, he did not so much as flinch.

Drawing up his little figure, no taller than a jackboot, he bravely

answered: 'I was listening so as to know.'

'And your sister, where's she? Why doesn't she answer when she's

called?'

'_Ma grande_? She was upstairs with me, sitting on the stairs. But when

she heard you come in here, she was afraid that you might go up to beat

her. So she thought it best to go down again, so that she could run

away if you were bad-tempered.'

This made Ragu laugh. Besides the lad's pluck amused him. 'And you,

aren't you frightened?' he asked.

'I? If you touch me, I'll shriek so loud that my sister will be warned

and able to run away.'

Quite softened, the man went to lean over the stairs, and call again:

'Josine! Josine! Here, come up, don't be stupid. You know very well

that I sha'n't kill you.'

But the same death-like silence continued, nothing stirred, nothing

ascended from the darkness. And Luc, whose presence was no longer

requisite, took leave, bowing to La Toupe, who with her lips compressed

stiffly bent her head. The children had gone off to sleep again. Old

Lunot, still with his extinguished pipe in his mouth, had managed to

reach the little chamber where he slept, hugging the walls on his way.

And Bonnaire, who in his turn had sunk upon a chair, silent amidst his

cheerless surroundings, his eyes gazing far away into the threatening

future, was waiting for an opportunity to follow his terrible wife to

bed.

'Keep up your courage, _au revoir_,' said Luc to him, whilst vigorously

shaking his hand.

On the landing Ragu was still calling, in tones which now became

entreating: 'Josine! come, Josine! I tell you that I'm no longer angry.'

And as no sign of life came from the darkness he turned towards Nanet,

who meddled with nothing, preferring that his sister should act as she

pleased: 'Perhaps she's run off,' said the man.

'Oh! no, where would you have her go? She must have sat down on the

stairs again.'

Luc was now descending, clinging the while to the greasy rope and

feeling the high and precipitous stairs with his feet for fear lest

he should fall, so dense was the darkness. It seemed to him as if he

were descending into a black abyss by means of a fragile ladder placed

between two damp walls. And as he went lower and lower he fancied that

he could hear some stifled sobs rising from the dolorous depths of the

gloom.

Overhead Ragu resumed resolutely: 'Josine! Josine! Why don't you

come--do you want me to go and fetch you?'

Then Luc paused, for he detected a faint breath approaching, something

warm and gentle, a light, living quiver, scarcely perceptible, which

became more and more tremulous as it drew nearer. And he stepped back

close to the wall, for he well understood that a human creature was

about to pass him, invisibly, recognisable only by the discreet touch

of her figure, as she went upward.

'It is I, Josine,' he whispered, in order that she might not be

frightened.

The little breath was still ascending, and no reply came. But that

creature, all distress and misery, passed, brushing lightly, almost

imperceptibly against him. And a feverish little hand caught hold of

his own, a burning mouth was pressed to that hand of his, and kissed it

ardently, in an impulse of infinite gratitude instinct with the gift

of a soul. She thanked him, she gave herself, like one unknown, veiled

from sight, full of the sweetest girlishness. Not a word was exchanged;

there was only that silent kiss, moistened by warm tears, in the dense

gloom.

The little breath had already passed, the light form was still

ascending. And Luc remained overcome, affected to the depths of his

being by that faint touch. The kiss of those invisible lips had gone

to his heart. A sweet and powerful charm had flowed into his veins.

He tried to think that he simply felt well pleased at having at last

helped Josine to secure a resting-place that night. But why had she

been weeping, seated on the step of the stairs on the very threshold of

the house? And why had she so long delayed returning an answer to the

man overhead, who offered her a lodging once more? Was it that she had

experienced mortal grief and regret, that she had sobbed at the thought

of some unrealisable dream, and that in going up at last she had simply

yielded to the necessity of resuming the life which fate condemned her

to lead?

For the last time Ragu's voice was heard up above. 'Ah! there you

are--it's none too soon. Come, you big stupid, let's go up. We sha'n't

kill one another to-night, at any rate.'

Then Luc fled, feeling such despair that he instinctively sought the

why and wherefore of that frightful bitterness. Whilst he found his

way with difficulty through the dim maze of the filthy lanes of Old

Beauclair he pondered over things and gave rein to his compassion. Poor

girl! She was the victim of her surroundings, never would she have led

such a life had it not been for the crushing weight and perverting

influence of misery and want. And, picturing mankind as plough land,

Luc thought how thoroughly it would have to be turned over in order

that work might become honour and delight, in order that strong and

healthy love might sprout and flower amidst a great harvest of truth

and justice! Meantime, it was evidently best that the poor girl should

remain with that man Ragu, provided that he did not ill-treat her too

much. Then Luc glanced upward at the sky. The tempest blast had ceased

blowing, and stars were appearing between the heavy and motionless

clouds. But how dark was the night, how great the melancholy in which

his heart was steeped!

All at once he came out on the bank of the Mionne near the wooden

bridge. In front of him was the Abyss ever at work, sending forth a

dull rumble amidst the clear dancing notes of its tilt-hammers which

the deeper thuds of the helve-hammers punctuated. Now and again a fiery

glow transpierced the gloom, and huge livid clouds of smoke passing

athwart the rays of the electric lamps showed like a stormy horizon

about the works. And the nocturnal life of that monster whose furnaces

were never extinguished brought back to Luc a vision of murderous

labour, imposed on men as in a convict prison, and remunerated, for

the most part, with mistrust and contempt. Then Bonnaire's handsome

face passed before the young fellow's eyes; he perceived him as he

had left him, in the dim room yonder, overcome like a vanquished man

in presence of the uncertain future. And without transition there came

another memory of his evening, the vague profile of Lange the potter,

pouring forth his curse with all the vehemence of a prophet, predicting

the destruction of Beauclair beneath the sum of its crimes. But at that

hour the terrorised town had fallen asleep, and all one could see of it

on the fringe of the plain was a confused dense mass where not a light

gleamed. Nothing indeed seemed to exist save the Abyss, whose hellish

life knew no respite; there a noise as of thunder continually rolled

by, and flames incessantly devoured the lives of men.

Suddenly a clock struck midnight in the distance. And Luc then crossed

the bridge and again went down the Brias road on his way back to La

Crêcherie, where his bed awaited him. As he was reaching it a mighty

glow suddenly illumined the whole district, the two promontories of

the Bleuse Mountains, the slumbering roofs of the town, and even the

far-away fields of La Roumagne. That glow came from the blast furnace

whose black silhouette appeared half way up the height as in the midst

of a conflagration. And as Luc raised his eyes it once more seemed to

him as if he beheld some red dawn, the sunrise promised to his dream of

the renovation of humanity.

[1] That is about 1_d_. per pound.

[2] 220 1/2 lbs.

[3] 12_l_.

III

On the morrow, Sunday, just as Luc had risen, he received a friendly

note from Madame Boisgelin, inviting him to lunch at La Guerdache.

Having learnt that he was at Beauclair, and that the Jordans would

only return home on the Monday, she told him how happy she would be

to see him again, in order that they might chat together about their

old friendship in Paris, where they had secretly conducted some big

charitable enterprises together in the needy district of the Faubourg

St. Antoine. And Luc, who regarded Madame Boisgelin with a kind of

affectionate reverence, at once accepted her invitation, writing word

that he would be at La Guerdache by eleven o'clock.

Superb weather had suddenly followed the week of heavy rain by which

Beauclair had almost been submerged. The sun had risen radiantly in

the sky, which was now of a pure blue, as if it had been cleansed

by all the showers. And the bright sun of September still diffused

so much warmth that the roads were already dry. Luc was, therefore,

well pleased to walk the couple of thousand yards which separated La

Guerdache from the town. When, about a quarter past ten, he passed

through the latter--that is, the new town, which stretched from the

Place de la Mairie to the fields fringing La Roumagne--he was surprised

by its brightness, cheerfulness, and trimness, and sorrowfully recalled

the dismal aspect of the poverty-stricken quarter which he had seen

the previous night. In the new town were assembled the sub-prefecture,

the law court, and the prison, the last being a handsome new building,

whose plaster-work was scarcely dry. As for the church of St. Vincent,

an elegant sixteenth-century church astride the old and the now towns,

it had lately been repaired, for its steeple had shown an inclination

to topple down upon the faithful. And as Luc went on he noticed that

the sunlight gilded the smart houses of the _bourgeois_, and brightened

even the Place de la Mairie, which spread out beyond the populous Rue

de Brias, displaying a huge and ancient building which served as both a

town hall and a school.

Luc, however, speedily reached the fields by way of the Rue de

Formerie, which stretched straight away beyond the square like a

continuation of the Rue de Brias. La Guerdache was on the Formerie

road, just outside Beauclair. Thus Luc had no occasion to hurry; and

indeed he strolled along like one in a dreamy mood. At times he even

turned round, and then, northward, beyond the town, whose houses

descended a slight slope, he perceived the huge bar of the Bleuse

Mountains parted by the precipitously enclosed gorge through which

the Mionne torrent flowed. In that kind of estuary opening into the

plain one could distinctly perceive the close-set buildings and lofty

chimneys of the Abyss as well as the blast-furnace of La Crêcherie--in

fact, quite an industrial city, which was visible from every side of La

Roumagne, leagues and leagues away. Luc remained gazing at the scene

for some little time, and when he slowly resumed his walk towards La

Guerdache, which he could already discern beyond some clusters of

magnificent trees, he recalled the typical history of the Qurignons,

which his friend Jordan had once told him.

It was in 1823 that Blaise Qurignon, the workman by whom the Abyss had

been founded, had installed himself there, on the bank of the torrent,

with his two tilt-hammers. He had never employed more than a score

of hands, and making but a small fortune, had contented himself with

building near the works a little brick pavilion in which Delaveau,

the present manager, now resided. It was Jérôme Qurignon, the second

of the line, born in the year when his father founded the Abyss, who

became a real king of industry. In him met all the creative power

derived from a long ancestry of workmen, all the incipient efforts,

the century-old growth and rise of 'the people.' Hundreds of years of

latent energy, a long line of ancestors obstinately seeking happiness,

wrathfully battling in the gloom, working themselves at times to

death, now at last yielded fruit, culminated in the advent of this

victor who could toil eighteen hours a day, and whose intelligence,

good sense, and will swept all obstacles aside. In less than twenty

years he caused a town to spring from the ground, gave employment to

twelve hundred workpeople, and gained millions of francs. And at last,

stifling in the humble little house erected by his father, he expended

eight hundred thousand francs[1] on the purchase of La Guerdache, a

large and sumptuous residence in which ten families might have found

accommodation, whilst around it stretched a park and a farm, the whole

forming in fact a large estate. Jérôme was convinced that La Guerdache

would become as it were the patriarchal home of his descendants, all

the bright and loving couples who would assuredly spring from his

wealth as from some blessed soil. For them he prepared a future of

domination based on his dream of subjugating labour and utilising it

for the enjoyment of an _élite_; for was not all the power that he felt

within him definitive and infinite, and would it not even increase

among his children, free from all danger of diminution and exhaustion

during long, long years? But all at once a first misfortune fell upon

this man, who seemed to be as vigorous as an oak-tree. Whilst he was

still young--in his very prime, indeed, only two and fifty years of

age--paralysis deprived him of the use of both his legs, and he had to

surrender the management of the Abyss to Michel, his eldest son.

Michel Qurignon, the third of the line, was then just thirty. He had a

younger brother, Philippe, who, much against his father's wishes, had

married in Paris a wonderfully beautiful but very flighty woman. And

between the two boys there was a girl, Laure, already five-and-twenty

years old, who greatly distressed her parents by the extreme

religiosity into which she had fallen.

Michel for his part had, when very young, married an extremely gentle,

loving, but delicate woman, by whom he had two children, Gustave and

Suzanne, the former being five and the latter three years old when

their father was suddenly obliged to assume the management of the

Abyss. It was understood that he should do so in the name and for the

benefit of the whole family, each member of which was to draw a share

of the profits, according to an agreement which had been arrived at.

Although Michel did not in the same high degree possess his father's

admirable qualities, his power of work, his quick intelligence, and

his methodical habits, he none the less at first proved an excellent

manager, and for ten years succeeded in preventing any decline in the

business, which, indeed, he at one moment increased by replacing the

old plant by new appliances. But sorrows and family losses fell upon

him like premonitory signs of a coming disaster. His mother died, his

father was not only paralysed and wheeled about by a servant, but sank

into absolute dumbness after experiencing a difficulty in uttering

certain words. Then Michel's sister, Laure, her brain quite turned

by mystical notions, took the veil, in spite of all the efforts made

to detain her at La Guerdache amidst the joys of the world. And from

Paris, too, Michel received deplorable tidings of the affairs of his

brother Philippe, whose wife was taking to scandalous adventures,

dragging him, moreover, into a wild life of gambling, extravagance,

and folly. Finally Michel lost his own delicate and gentle wife, which

proved, indeed, his supreme loss, for it threw him off his balance

and cast him into a life of disorder. He had already yielded to his

passions, but in a discreet way, for fear of saddening his wife, who

was always ill. But when death had carried her away, nothing was left

to restrain him, and he took freely to a life of pleasure, which

consumed the best part of his time and his energies.

Then came another period of ten years during which the Abyss declined,

since it was no longer directed by the victorious chief of the days of

conquest, but by a tired and satiated master who squandered all the

booty it yielded. A feverish passion for luxury now possessed Michel,

his existence became all festivity and pleasure, the spending of money

for the merely material joys of life. And the worst was that in

addition to this cause of ruin, in addition, moreover to bad management

and ever-increasing loss of energy, there came a commercial crisis, in

which the whole metallurgie industry of the region nearly perished. It

became impossible to manufacture steel rails and girders cheaply enough

in face of the victorious competition of the works of Northern and

Eastern France, which, thanks to a newly discovered chemical process,

were now able to employ defective ore which formerly it had been

impossible to utilise. Thus, after a struggle of two years' duration,

Michel felt the Abyss crumbling to pieces beneath him, and one day,

when he was already unhinged by having to borrow three hundred thousand

francs to meet some heavy bills then reaching maturity, a horrible

drama drove him to desperation.

He was then nearly fifty-four years old, and was madly in love with a

pretty girl whom he had brought from Paris and concealed in Beauclair.

At times he indulged in the wild dream of fleeing with her to some

land of the sun, far away from all financial worries. His son Gustave,

who after failing in his studies led an idle life at seven-and-twenty

years of age, resided with him on a footing of friendly equality, well

acquainted with the intrigue, about which indeed he often jested. He

made fun also of the Abyss, refusing to set foot amongst all that

grimy, evil-smelling old iron, for he greatly preferred to ride,

hunt, and shoot, and generally lead the empty life of an amiable

_fin-de-race_ young man, as if he could count several centuries of

illustrious ancestry. And thus it happened that one fine evening,

after 'lifting' out of a _secrétaire_ the single hundred thousand

francs which his father had as yet managed to get together for his

payments, Master Gustave carried off the pretty girl, who had flung her

arms around his neck at the sight of so much money. And on the morrow

Michel, struck both in heart and brain by this collapse of his passion

and his fortune, yielded to the vertigo of horror and shot himself dead

with a revolver.

Three years had already elapsed since that suicide. And the speedy

downfall of one Qurignon had been followed by that of another and

another, as if by way of example to show how great might prove the

severity of destiny. Shortly after Gustave's departure it was learnt

that he had been killed in a carriage accident at Nice, a pair of

runaway horses having carried him over a precipice. Then Michel's

younger brother Philippe likewise disappeared from the scene, being

killed in a duel, the outcome of a dirty affair into which he had been

drawn by his terrible wife, who was said to be now in Russia with a

tenor, whilst the only child born to them, André Qurignon, the last of

the line, had been sent perforce to a private asylum, since he suffered

from an affection of the spine complicated by mental disorder. Apart

from that sufferer and Laure, who still led a cloistral life, so that

she also seemed to be dead, there remained of all the Qurignons only

old Jérôme and Michel's daughter, Suzanne.

She, when twenty years of age--that is, five years before her father's

death--had married Boisgelin, who had met her whilst visiting at a

country house. Although the Abyss was then already in peril, Michel

in his ostentatious way had made arrangements which enabled him to

give his daughter a dowry of a million francs. Boisgelin on his side

was very wealthy, having inherited from his grandfather and father a

fortune of more than six millions, amassed in all sorts of suspicious

affairs, redolent of usury and theft--by which he, however, was not

personally besmirched, since he had lived in perfect idleness ever

since his entry into the world. He was held in great esteem and envy,

and people were always eager to bow to him, for he resided in a superb

mansion near the Parc Monceau in Paris, and led a life of wild display

and extravagance. After seeking distinction by remaining invariably the

last of his class at the Lycée Condorcet,[2] which he had astonished by

his elegance, he had never done anything, but imagined himself to be

a modern-style aristocrat, one who established his claim to nobility

by the magnificence he showed in spending the fortune acquired by

his forerunners without even lowering himself to earn a copper. The

misfortune was that Boisgelin's six millions no longer sufficed at last

to keep his establishment on the high footing which it had reached,

and that he allowed himself to be drawn into financial speculations of

which he understood nothing. The Bourse was just then going mad over

some new gold mines, and he was told that by venturing his fortune

he might treble it in two years' time. All at once, however, came

disaster and downfall, and for a moment he almost thought that he was

absolutely ruined, to such a point indeed as to retain not even a crust

of bread for the morrow. He wept like a child at the thought, and

looked at his hands, which had ever idled, wondering what he would now

be able to do, since he knew not how to work with them. It was then

that Suzanne his wife evinced admirable affection, good sense, and

courage, in such wise as to set him on his feet again. She reminded him

that her own million, her dowry, was intact. And she insisted on having

the situation retrieved by selling the Parc-Monceau mansion, which they

would now be unable to keep up. Another million was found in that way.

But how were they to live, particularly in Paris, on the proceeds of

two millions of francs, when six had not sufficed, for temptation would

assuredly come again at the sight of all the luxury consuming the great

city? A chance encounter at last decided the future.

Boisgelin had a poor cousin, a certain Delaveau, the son of one of his

father's sisters, whose husband, an unlucky inventor, had left her

miserably poor. Delaveau, a petty engineer, occupied a modest post at

a Brias coal-pit at the time when Michel Qurignon committed suicide.

Devoured by a craving to succeed, urged on too by his wife, and very

well acquainted with the situation of the Abyss, which he felt certain

he could restore to prosperity by a new system of organisation, he

went to Paris in search of capitalists, and there, one evening in

the street, he suddenly found himself face to face with his cousin

Boisgelin. Inspiration at once came to him. How was it that he had

not previously thought of that wealthy relative who, as it happened,

had married a Qurignon? On learning what was the present position of

the Boisgelins, now reduced to a couple of millions which they wished

to invest as advantageously as possible, Delaveau extended his plans,

and at several interviews which he had with his cousin displayed so

much assurance, intelligence, and energy, that he ended by convincing

him of success. There was really genius in the plan he had devised.

The Boisgelins must profit by the catastrophe which had fallen on

Michel Qurignon, buy the works for a million francs when they were

worth two millions, and start making steel of superior quality which

would rapidly bring in large profits. Moreover, why should not the

Boisgelins also buy La Guerdache? In the forced liquidation of the

Qurignon fortune they would easily secure it for five hundred thousand

francs, although it had cost eight hundred thousand; and Boisgelin

out of his two millions would then still have half a million left

to serve as working capital for the Abyss. He, Delaveau, absolutely

contracted to increase that capital tenfold and supply the Boisgelins

with a princely income. They would simply have to leave Paris, and live

happily and comfortably at La Guerdache, pending the accumulation of

the large fortune which they would assuredly possess some day, when

they might once more return to Parisian life to enjoy it amidst all the

magnificence they could dream of.

It was Suzanne who at last secured the compliance of her husband, who

felt anxious at the idea of leading a provincial life in which he would

probably be bored to death. She herself was delighted to return to La

Guerdache, where she had spent her childhood and youth. Thus matters

were settled as Delaveau had foreseen. The liquidation of the Qurignon

estate took place; and the fifteen hundred thousand francs which the

Boisgelins paid for the Abyss and La Guerdache proved barely sufficient

to meet the liabilities, in such wise that Suzanne and her husband

became absolute masters of everything, having no further accounts to

render to the other surviving heirs--that is, Aunt Laure the nun, and

André, the infirm and mentally afflicted young fellow who had been sent

to a private asylum. On the other hand Delaveau carried out all his

engagements, reorganised the works, renewed the plant, and proved so

successful in his management that at the end of the first twelve months

the profits were already superb. In three years the Abyss recovered its

position as one of the most prosperous steel works of the region; and

the money earned for Boisgelin by its twelve hundred workpeople enabled

him to instal himself at La Guerdache on a footing of great luxury:

he had six horses in his stables, five carriages in his coach-house,

and organised shooting-parties, dinner-parties, and all sorts of

festivities, to which the local authorities eagerly sought invitations.

Thus he who during the earlier months had gone about idle and dreary,

quite Paris-sick, now seemed to have accustomed himself to provincial

life, having discovered as it were a little empire, where his vanity

found every satisfaction. Moreover there was a secret cause behind

all other things, an element of victorious conceit in the quietly

condescending manner in which he reigned over Beauclair.

Delaveau had installed himself at the Abyss, where he occupied Blaise

Qurignon's former house with his wife Fernande and their little girl

Nise, who at that time was only a few months old. He had then completed

his thirty-seventh year, and his wife was ten years younger. Her

mother, a music teacher, had formerly resided on the same floor as

himself in a dark house of the Rue Saint-Jacques in Paris. Fernande was

of such dazzling, sovereign beauty that for more than a twelvemonth,

whenever Delaveau met her on the stairs, he drew back trembling against

the wall like one who felt ashamed of his ugliness and his poverty.

At last, however, salutes were exchanged, and an acquaintance having

sprung up, the girl's mother confided to him that she had lived for

twelve years in Russia as a governess, and that Fernande was her

daughter by a Russian prince by whom she had been deceived. This

prince, who was extremely attached to her, would certainly have dowered

her with a fortune, but one evening at the close of a day's hunt he

was accidentally shot dead, and she then had to return penniless to

Paris with her little girl, and once more give lessons there. Only by

the most desperate hard work did she manage to bring up the child, for

whom, in spite of everything, she dreamt of some prodigious destiny.

Fernande, reared amidst adulation from her cradle, convinced that her

beauty destined her for a throne, encountered in lieu thereof the

blackest wretchedness, unable to throw her worn-out boots aside since

she knew not how to replace them, and being for ever obliged to repair

and refurbish her old gowns and hats. Anger and such a craving for

victory soon took possession of her, that from her tenth year onward

she did not live a day without learning more and more hatred, envy,

and cruelty, in this wise amassing extraordinary force of perversity

and destructiveness. The climax came when, imagining that her beauty

was bound to conquer by virtue of its all-mightiness, she yielded to a

man of wealth and power who, on the morrow, refused to have anything

more to do with her. This adventure, which she sought to bury in the

bitterest depths of her being, taught her the arts of falsehood,

hypocrisy, and craftiness, which she had not previously mastered. She

vowed that she would not stumble in that way again, for she was far too

ambitious to lead a life of open shame. She realised that it was not

sufficient for a woman to be beautiful; that she must find the proper

opportunity to display her beauty, and must meet a man such as she

could bewitch and turn into her obedient slave. And her mother having

died after trudging for a quarter of a century through the mud of

Paris to give lessons which barely yielded enough money to buy bread,

she, Fernande, felt a first opportunity arise on finding herself in

presence of Delaveau, who, whilst neither handsome nor rich, offered

to marry her. She did not care a pin for him, but she perceived that

he was very much in love with her, and she decided to avail herself

of his arm to enter the world of respectable women in which he would

prove a support and a means towards the end that she had in view. He

had to buy her a trousseau, taking her just as he found her, with

all the faith of a devotee for whom she was a goddess. And from that

time forward destiny followed its course even as she, Fernande, had

desired. Within two months of being introduced at La Guerdache by her

husband, she designedly entered upon an intrigue with Boisgelin, who

had become passionately enamoured of her. In that handsome clubman

and horseman she found the ideal lover for whom she had sought, the

lover all vanity, folly and liberality, who was capable of the worst

things in order to retain his beautiful mistress beside him. And it

so happened, moreover, that she thus satisfied all sorts of spite and

rancour, the covert hatred which she bore her husband, whose toilsome

life and quiet blindness humiliated her, and the growing jealousy which

she felt towards the quiet Suzanne, whom she had detested from the very

first day; this, indeed, being one of the reasons why she had listened

to Boisgelin, for she hoped thereby to make Suzanne suffer. And now all

was festivity at La Guerdache: Fernande reigned there like a beautiful

guest, realising her dream of a life of display, in which she helped

Boisgelin to squander the money which Delaveau wrung in perspiration

from the twelve hundred toilers of the Abyss. And, indeed, she even

hoped that she would some fine day be able to return to Paris and

triumph there with all the promised millions.

Such were the stories which occupied Luc's thoughts as, sauntering

along, he repaired to La Guerdache in accordance with Suzanne's

invitation. If he did not know everything as yet, he at least already

suspected certain matters, which the near future was to enable him

to fathom completely. At last, as he raised his head, he perceived

that he was only a hundred yards or so from the fine park whose great

trees spread their greenery over a large expanse. Then he paused,

whilst before his mind's eye there arose above all other figures that

of Monsieur Jérôme, the second Qurignon, the founder of the family

fortune, the infirm paralysed man whom only the day before he had met

in his bath-chair, pushed along by a servant near the very entrance of

the Abyss. He pictured him with his lifeless, stricken legs, his silent

lips, and his clear eyes which for a quarter of a century had been

gazing at the disasters that overwhelmed his race. There was his son

Michel, hungering for pleasure and luxury, imperilling the works, and

killing himself as the result of a frightful family drama. There was

his grandson Gustave, carrying off his father's mistress and dashing

his brains out in the depths of a precipice, as beneath the vengeful

pursuit of the Furies. There was his daughter Laure, in a convent, cut

off from the world; and there was his younger son Philippe, marrying

an unworthy woman, gliding with her into the mire, and losing his

life in a duel after the most disgraceful adventures; and there was

his other grandson André, the last of the name, a cripple, shut up

amongst the insane. And yet even now the disaster was continuing; the

annihilation of the family was being completed by an evil ferment,

that Fernande who had appeared among them as if to consummate their

ruin with those terrible, sharp, white teeth of hers. Amidst his long

silence Jérôme had witnessed and was witnessing all those things. But

did he remark them, did he judge them? It was said that his mind had

become weak, and yet how deep and limpid were his eyes! And if he

could think, what thoughts were those that filled his long hours of

immobility? All his hopes had crumbled; the victorious strength amassed

through a long ancestry of toilers, the energy which he thought he was

bound to bequeath to a long line of descendants whose fortune would

ever and ever increase, had now blazed away like a heap of straw in

the fire of worldly enjoyment! In three generations the reserve of

creative power which had required so many centuries of wretchedness

and effort to accumulate had been gluttonously consumed. Amidst the

eager satisfaction of material cravings, the nerves of the race had

become unstrung, refinement had led to destructive degeneracy. Gorged

too quickly, unhinged by possession, the race had collapsed amidst all

the folly born of wealth. And that royal domain La Guerdache, which he

Jérôme had purchased, dreaming of some day peopling it with numerous

descendants, happy couples who would diffuse the blessed glory of his

name, how sad he must feel at seeing half its rooms empty, what anger

he must experience at seeing it virtually handed over to that strange

woman, who brought the final poisonous ferment in the folds of her

skirts! He himself lived there in solitude, keeping up an affectionate

intercourse solely with his granddaughter Suzanne, who was the only

person still admitted to the large room which he occupied on the ground

floor. She, when only ten years old, had already helped to nurse him

there, like a loving little girl touched by her poor grandpapa's

misfortune. And when she had returned to the spot, a married woman,

after the purchase of the family property, she had insisted on her

grandfather remaining there, although nothing belonged to him, for he

had divided his whole property among his children at the time when

paralysis had fallen on him like a thunderbolt.

Suzanne was not without scruples in this matter. It seemed to her

that in following Delaveau's advice she and her husband had despoiled

the two remaining members of the family, Aunt Laure and André, the

cripple. As a matter of fact they were provided for; and thus it was on

grandfather Jérôme that she lavished her affection, watching over him

like a good angel. But although a smile would appear in the depths of

his clear eyes when he fixed them upon her, there remained as it were

but two cavities seemingly full of spring water in his frigid, deeply

marked countenance, directly the wild life of La Guerdache flitted past

him. Was he conscious of it, and did he think about it, and if so were

not his thoughts compounded of despair?

Luc found himself at last before the monumental iron gate opening into

the Formerie highway at a point whence started a road leading to the

neighbouring village of Les Combettes, and he simply had to push a

little side gate open in order to reach the royal avenue of elm-trees.

Beyond them one saw the château, a huge seventeenth-century pile, quite

imposing in its simplicity, with its two upper stories each showing a

line of twelve windows, and its raised ground floor, which was reached

by a double flight of steps, decorated with some handsome vases. The

park, which was of great extent, all copses and lawns, was traversed

by the Mionne, which fed a large piece of ornamental water where swans

swam to and fro.

Luc was already going towards the steps when a light welcoming

laugh made him turn his head. Under an oak-tree, near a stone table

surrounded by some rustic chairs, he then perceived Suzanne, who sat

there with her son Paul playing near her.

'Why, yes, my friend!' said she, 'I have come down to await my guests,

like a countrywoman who is not afraid of the open air. How kind of you

to accept my abrupt invitation!'

She smiled at him while offering her hand. She was not pretty, but she

was charming, very fair and small, with a delicate round head, curly

hair, and eyes of a soft blue. Her husband had always considered her

to be somewhat insignificant, never suspecting, it seemed, all the

delightful kindness of heart and sterling good sense which lurked

beneath her great simplicity.

Luc had taken her hand, and retained it for a moment between both his

own.

'It was you who were kind to think of me! I am very, very pleased to

meet you again,' he said.

She was three years his elder, and had first met him in a wretched

house in the Rue de Bercy, where he had resided when beginning life

as an assistant engineer at some adjacent works. Very discreet, and

practising charity in person and by stealth, she had been in the habit

of calling at this house to see a mason who had been left a widower

with six children, two of them little girls. And the young man being

in the garret, with these little girls on his knees, one evening when

she had brought some food and linen, they had become acquainted. Luc

had afterwards had occasion to visit her at the mansion near the Parc

Monceau in connection with other charitable undertakings in which they

were both interested. A feeling of great sympathy had then gradually

drawn them together, and he had become her assistant and messenger in

matters known to them alone. Thus he had ended by visiting the mansion

regularly, being invited to most of the entertainments there during

two successive winters. And it was there too that he had first met the

Jordans.

'If you only knew how people regret you, how your departure was

lamented!' he added by way of allusion to their former benevolent

alliance.

Suzanne made a little gesture of emotion, and replied in a low, voice:

'Whenever I think of you, I am distressed that you are not here, for

there is so much to be done.'

Luc, however, had just noticed Paul, who ran up with some wild flowers

in his hand; and the young man burst into exclamations at seeing how

much the boy had grown. Very fair and slim, he had a gentle, smiling

face, and greatly resembled his mother.

'Well,' said the latter gaily, 'he will now soon be seven years old. He

is already a little man.'

Seated and talking together like brother and sister in the warm

radiance of that September day, Luc and Suzanne became so absorbed in

their happy recollections that they did not even perceive Boisgelin

descend the steps and advance towards them. Smart of mien, wearing

a well-cut country jacket, and a single eye-glass, the master of La

Guerdache was a brawny coxcomb with grey eyes, a large nose, and waxed

moustaches. He brought his dark brown hair in curls over his narrow

brow, which was already being denuded by baldness.

'Good day, my dear Froment,' he exclaimed, with a lisp which he

exaggerated so as to be the more in the fashion. 'A thousand thanks for

consenting to make one of us.'

Then, without more ado, after a vigorous hand-shake _à l'Anglaise_, he

turned to his wife: 'I say, my dear, I hope orders were given to send

the victoria to Delaveau's.'

There was no occasion for Suzanne to reply, for just then the victoria

came up the avenue of elms, and the Delaveaus alighted before the

stone table. Delaveau was a short, broad-shouldered man, possessing a

bull-dog's head, massive, low, and with projecting jaw-bones. With his

snub nose, big goggle eyes, and fresh-coloured cheeks half hidden by

a thick black beard, he carried himself in a military, authoritative

manner. A delightful contrast was presented by his wife Fernande, a

tall and supple brunette with blue eyes and superb shoulders. Never

had more sumptuous or blacker hair crowned a more pure or whiter

countenance, with large azure eyes of glowing tenderness, and a small

fresh mouth whose little teeth seemed to be of unchangeable brilliancy,

and strong enough to break pebbles. She herself, however, was proudest

of her delicately shaped feet, in which she found an incontestable

proof of her princely origin.

She immediately apologised to Suzanne, whilst making a maid alight with

her daughter Nise, who was now three years of age and as fair as her

mother was dark, having a curly tumbled head, eyes blue like the sky,

and a pink mouth which was ever laughing, dimpling the while both her

cheeks and her chin.

'You must excuse me, my dear,' said Fernande, 'but I profited by your

authorisation to bring Nise.'

'Oh, you have done quite right,' Suzanne responded; 'I told you there

would be a little table.'

The two women appeared to be on friendly terms. One could scarcely

detect a slight fluttering of Suzanne's eyelids when she saw Boisgelin

hasten to Fernande, who, however, must have been sulking with him,

for she received him in the icy manner which she was wont to assume

whenever he tried to escape one of her caprices. Looking somewhat

anxious, he came back to Luc and Delaveau, who had made one another's

acquaintance during the previous spring, and were now shaking hands

together. Nevertheless, the young man's presence at Beauclair seemed

somewhat to upset the manager of the Abyss.

'What! you arrived here yesterday? Of course then you did not find

Jordan at home, since he was so suddenly called to Cannes. Yes, yes, I

was aware of that, but I did not know that he had sent for you. He has

some trouble in hand with respect to his blast-furnace.'

Luc was surprised at the other's keen emotion, and divined that he

was about to ask him why Jordan had summoned him to La Crêcherie. He

did not understand the reason of such sudden disquietude, and so he

answered chancewise: 'Trouble, do you think so? Everything seems to be

going on all right.'

However, Delaveau prudently changed the subject, and gave Boisgelin

some good news. China, said he, had just purchased a stock of defective

shells which he had intended to recast. And a diversion came when Luc,

who was extremely fond of children, made merry on seeing Paul give his

flowers to Nise, who was his very particular friend. 'What a pretty

little girl!' exclaimed the young man, 'she is so golden that she looks

like a little sun. How is it possible when her papa and mamma are so

dark?'

Fernande, who had bowed to Luc, while giving him a keen glance to

ascertain if he were likely to prove a friend or an enemy, was fond of

having such questions put to her; for, putting on a glorious air, she

invariably replied by some allusions to the child's grandfather, the

famous Russian prince.

'Oh! a superbly built man, very fair and fresh-coloured. I am sure that

Nise will be the very image of him.'

By this time Boisgelin had apparently come to the conclusion that it

was not the correct thing to await one's guests under an oak tree--only

commonplace _bourgeois_ after retiring from business into the country

could venture to do so--and accordingly he led the whole party towards

the drawing-room. At that moment Monsieur Jérôme made his appearance,

in his little conveyance propelled by a servant. The old man had

insisted on living quite apart from the other inmates of La Guerdache;

he had his own hours for rising, going to bed, and going out; and he

invariably took his meals by himself. He would not let the others

occupy themselves with him, and indeed it was an established rule in

the house that he should not even be spoken to. Thus, when he suddenly

appeared before them they contented themselves with bowing in silence,

Suzanne alone smiling and giving him a long and affectionate glance.

On his side Monsieur Jérôme, who was starting on one of those long

promenades which at times kept him out of doors the whole afternoon,

gazed at the others fixedly like some forgotten onlooker who has

ceased to belong to the world and no longer responds to salutations.

And beneath the cold keenness of the old man's stare Luc felt his

uneasiness, his torturing doubts return.

The drawing-room was a rich and extremely large apartment, hung with

red brocatelle and furnished sumptuously in the Louis-Quatorze style.

The party had scarcely entered it when some other guests arrived,

Sub-Prefect Châtelard, followed by Mayor Gourier, the latter's wife

Léonore, and their son Achille. Châtelard, who at forty could still

claim to be a good-looking man, was bald, with an aquiline nose, a

discreet mouth, and large eyes which shone keenly behind the glasses

he wore. He was a piece of Parisian wreckage, who, after losing his

hair and his digestion in the capital, had secured the sub-prefecture

of Beauclair as an asylum, thanks to an intimate friend who had been

pitchforked into office as a minister of state. Deficient in ambition,

suffering from a liver complaint, and realising the necessity of rest,

he had fallen upon pleasant lines there through making the acquaintance

of the beautiful Madame Gourier, with whom he carried on an unclouded

_liaison_, which was favourably viewed by those he governed, and even

accepted, it was said, by the lady's husband, the latter's thoughts

being given elsewhere. Léonore was still a fine-looking woman at

eight-and-thirty, fair, with large regular features, and she outwardly

displayed extreme piety, prudishness, and coldness; though according

to some accounts an everlasting brazier of passions blazed within her.

Gourier, a fat, common-looking man, ruddy, with a swollen neck and a

moon-like face, spoke of his wife with an indulgent smile. He paid far

more attention to the girls of his boot factory, which he had inherited

from his father, and in which he had personally made a fortune. The

only remaining tie between his wife and himself was their son Achille,

a youth of eighteen, who, although he was very dark, had his mother's

regular features and fine eyes, and evinced an amount of intelligence

and independence which confounded and annoyed both his parents. On

whatever terms they themselves lived together, they at all events

showed perfect agreement in the presence of strangers; and, indeed,

since Châtelard had made their acquaintance the happiness of their

household was cited as an example. Moreover, the administration of the

town was greatly facilitated by the close intercourse that prevailed

between the sub-prefect and the mayor.

But other guests were now arriving; for instance, Judge Gaume,

accompanied by his daughter Lucile, and followed by the latter's

betrothed, Jollivet, a captain on the retired list. Gaume, a man with a

long head, a lofty brow, and a fleshy chin, was barely five-and-forty,

but seemed desirous of remaining forgotten in that out-of-the-way nook

Beauclair on account of the terrible tragedy which had wrecked his

life. His wife, forsaken by a lover, had one evening killed herself

before him, after confessing her fault. And however frigid and severe

the judge might seem to be, he had really remained inconsolable,

tortured by that terrible catastrophe, and at the present time full

of fears for the future of his daughter, to whom he was extremely

attached, and who, as she grew up, had become more and more like her

mother. Short, and slight, and refined, and of an amorous disposition,

with melting eyes set in a bright face crowned with hair of a

golden-chestnut hue, Lucile ever reminded her father of her mother's

transgression, and for fear lest something similar should happen

to her, he had betrothed her as soon as she was twenty to Captain

Jollivet, though he realised in doing so that it would be painful for

him to part with her and that he would afterwards sink into bitter

solitude.

Captain Jollivet, though he looked rather worn for a man only

five-and-thirty years old, was none the less a handsome fellow with a

stubborn brow and victorious moustaches. Fever contracted in Madagascar

had compelled him to send in his papers; and having just then inherited

an income of twelve thousand francs a year, he had decided to establish

himself at Beauclair, his native place, and marry Lucile, whose cooing

turtle-dove ways had quite upset him. Gaume, who had no fortune of

his own, and lived poorly on his pay as a presiding judge, could not

decline the proposals of such a suitor. Yet his secret despair seemed

to increase, for never had he evinced more severity in applying the

law, rigorously following the strict, stern wording of the Code. People

said, however, that implacable as he might seem to be, he was really a

disheartened man, a disconsolate pessimist who doubted everything, and

particularly human justice. If that were true, what must have been his

sufferings, the sufferings of a judge who, while asking himself if he

has any right to do so, passes sentences on unhappy wretches who are

really the victims of everybody's crime?

Soon after the Gaumes came the Mazelles with their daughter Louise, a

child three years of age, another guest for the little table. These

Mazelles were a perfectly happy couple, two stout folks of the same

age--that is, little more than forty--and they had grown so much

alike in course of time that each now had the same rosy smiling face,

the same gentle parental way as the other. They had spent a hundred

thousand francs to install themselves in true _bourgeois_ fashion in

a fine substantial house surrounded by a fairly large garden near the

sub-prefecture; and they lived therein on an income of some fifteen

thousand francs a year derived from investments in Rentes, which to

their fancy alone seemed safe. Their happiness, the beatitude of their

life, which was now spent in doing nothing, had become proverbial.

Often were people heard to say: 'Ah! if one could only be like Monsieur

Mazelle who does nothing! He's lucky and no mistake!'