CHAPTER I

GERMINAL

BY

ÉMILE ZOLA

Translated and Introduced

By

Havelock Ellis

Translated and Introduced by Havelock Ellis

J. M. DENT & SONS LTD.

Aldine House--Bedford St.--London

1885

Introduction By Havelock Ellis

'GERMINAL' was published in 1885, after occupying Zola during the

previous year. In accordance with his usual custom--but to a greater

extent than with any other of his books except _La Débâcle_--he

accumulated material beforehand. For six months he travelled about

the coal-mining district in northern France and Belgium, especially

the Borinage around Mons, note-book in hand. 'He was inquisitive, was

that gentleman', miner told Sherard who visited the neighbourhood at a

later period and found that the miners in every village knew _Germinal_.

That was a tribute of admiration the book deserved, but it was never

one of Zola's most popular novels; it was neither amusing enough nor

outrageous enough to attract the multitude.

Yet _Germinal_ occupies a place among Zola's works which is constantly

becoming more assured, so that to some critics it even begins to seem

the only book of his that in the end may survive. In his own time, as

we know, the accredited critics of the day could find no condemnation

severe enough for Zola. Brunetière attacked him perpetually with a fury

that seemed inexhaustible; Schérer could not even bear to hear his name

mentioned; Anatole France, though he lived to relent, thought it would

have been better if he had never been born. Even at that time, however,

there were critics who inclined to view _Germinal_ more favourably. Thus

Faguet, who was the recognized academic critic of the end of the last

century, while he held that posterity would be unable to understand how

Zola could ever have been popular, yet recognized him as in _Germinal_

the heroic representative of democracy, incomparable in his power of

describing crowds, and he realized how marvellous is the conclusion of

this book.

To-day, when critics view Zola In the main with indifference rather

than with horror, although he still retains his popular favour, the

distinction of _Germinal_ is yet more clearly recognized. Seillière,

while regarding the capitalistic conditions presented as now of an

ancient and almost extinct type, yet sees _Germinal_ standing out as

'the poem of social mysticism', while André Gide, a completely modern

critic who has left a deep mark on the present generation, observes

somewhere that it may nowadays cause surprise that he should refer with

admiration to _Germinal_, but it is a masterly book that fills him with

astonishment; he can hardly believe that it was written in French and

still less that it should have been written in any other language; it

seems that it should have been created in some international tongue.

The high place thus claimed for _Germinal_ will hardly seem exaggerated.

The book was produced when Zola had at length achieved the full mastery

of his art and before his hand had, as in his latest novels, begun to

lose its firm grasp. The subject lent itself, moreover, to his special

aptitude for presenting in vivid outline great human groups, and to his

special sympathy with the collective emotions and social aspirations of

such groups. We do not, as so often in Zola's work, become painfully

conscious that he is seeking to reproduce aspects of life with which

he is imperfectly acquainted, or fitting them into scientific formulas

which he has imperfectly understood. He shows a masterly grip of each

separate group, and each represents some essential element of the

whole; they are harmoniously balanced, and their mutual action and

reaction leads on inevitably to the splendid tragic dose, with yet its

great promise for the future. I will not here discuss Zola's literary

art (I have done so in my book of _Affirmations_); it is enough to say

that, though he was not a great master of style, Zola never again wrote

so finely as here.

A word may be added to explain how this translation fell to the lot of

one whose work has been in other fields. In 1893 the late A. Texeira de

Mattos was arranging for private issue a series of complete versions of

some of Zola's chief novels and offered to assign _Germinal_ to me. My

time was taken up with preliminary but as yet unfruitful preparation

for what I regarded as my own special task in life, and I felt that I

must not neglect the opportunity of spending my spare time in making

a modest addition to my income. My wife readily fell into the project

and agreed, on the understanding that we shared the proceeds, to act

as my amanuensis. So, in the little Cornish cottage over the sea we

then occupied, the evenings of the early months of 1894 were spent

over _Germinal_, I translating aloud, and she with swift efficient

untiring pen following, now and then bettering my English dialogue

with her pungent wit. In this way I was able to gain a more minute

insight into the details of Zola's work, and a more impressive vision

of the massive structure he here raised, than can easily be acquired

by the mere reader. That joint task has remained an abidingly pleasant

memory. It is, moreover, a satisfaction to me to know that I have

been responsible, however inadequately, for the only complete English

version of this wonderful book, 'a great fresco,' as Zola himself

called it, a great prose epic, as it has seemed to some, worthy to

compare with the great verse epics of old.

PART ONE

CHAPTER I

Over the open plain, beneath a starless sky as dark and thick as ink,

a man walked alone along the highway from Marchiennes to Montsou, a

straight paved road ten kilometres in length, intersecting the beetroot

fields. He could not even see the black soil before him, and only felt

the immense flat horizon by the gusts of March wind, squalls as strong

as on the sea, and frozen from sweeping leagues of marsh and naked

earth. No tree could be seen against the sky, and the road unrolled as

straight as a pier in the midst of the blinding spray of darkness.

The man had set out from Marchiennes about two o'clock. He walked with

long strides, shivering beneath his worn cotton jacket and corduroy

breeches. A small parcel tied in a check handkerchief troubled him

much, and he pressed it against his side, sometimes with one elbow,

sometimes with the other, so that he could slip to the bottom of his

pockets both the benumbed hands that bled beneath the lashes of the

wind. A single idea occupied his head--the empty head of a workman

without work and without lodging--the hope that the cold would be less

keen after sunrise. For an hour he went on thus, when on the left, two

kilometres from Montsou, he saw red flames, three fires burning in the

open air and apparently suspended. At first he hesitated, half afraid.

Then he could not resist the painful need to warm his hands for a

moment.

The steep road led downwards, and everything disappeared. The man saw

on his right a paling, a wall of coarse planks shutting in a line of

rails, while a grassy slope rose on the left surmounted by confused

gables, a vision of a village with low uniform roofs. He went on

some two hundred paces. Suddenly, at a bend in the road, the fires

reappeared close to him, though he could not understand how they

burnt so high in the dead sky, like smoky moons. But on the level

soil another sight had struck him. It was a heavy mass, a low pile

of buildings from which rose the silhouette of a factory chimney;

occasional gleams appeared from dirty windows, five or six melancholy

lanterns were hung outside to frames of blackened wood, which vaguely

outlined the profiles of gigantic stages; and from this fantastic

apparition, drowned in night and smoke, a single voice arose, the

thick, long breathing of a steam escapement that could not be seen.

Then the man recognized a pit. His despair returned. What was the

good? There would be no work. Instead of turning towards the buildings

he decided at last to ascend the pit bank, on which burnt in iron

baskets the three coal fires which gave light and warmth for work. The

labourers in the cutting must have been working late; they were still

throwing out the useless rubbish. Now he heard the landers push the

wagons on the stages. He could distinguish living shadows tipping over

the trams or tubs near each fire.

"Good day," he said, approaching one of the baskets.

Turning his back to the fire, the carman stood upright. He was an old

man, dressed in knitted violet wool with a rabbit-skin cap on his head;

while his horse, a great yellow horse, waited with the immobility of

stone while they emptied the six trains he drew. The workman employed

at the tipping-cradle, a red-haired lean fellow, did not hurry himself;

he pressed on the lever with a sleepy hand. And above, the wind grew

stronger--an icy north wind--and its great, regular breaths passed by

like the strokes of a scythe.

"Good day," replied the old man. There was silence. The man, who felt

that he was being looked at suspiciously, at once told his name.

"I am called Étienne Lantier. I am an engine-man. Any work here?"

The flames lit him up. He might be about twenty-one years of age, a

very dark, handsome man, who looked strong in spite of his thin limbs.

The carman, thus reassured, shook his head.

"Work for an engine-man? No, no! There were two came yesterday. There's

nothing."

A gust cut short their speech. Then Étienne asked, pointing to the

sombre pile of buildings at the foot of the platform:

"A pit, isn't it?"

The old man this time could not reply: he was strangled by a violent

cough. At last he expectorated, and his expectoration left a black

patch on the purple soil.

"Yes, a pit. The Voreux. There! The settlement is quite near."

In his turn, and with extended arm, he pointed out in the night the

village of which the young man had vaguely seen the roofs. But the six

trams were empty, and he followed them without cracking his whip, his

legs stiffened by rheumatism; while the great yellow horse went on of

itself, pulling heavily between the rails beneath a new gust which

bristled its coat.

The Voreux was now emerging from the gloom. Étienne, who forgot himself

before the stove, warming his poor bleeding hands, looked round and

could see each part of the pit: the shed tarred with siftings, the

pit-frame, the vast chamber of the winding machine, the square turret

of the exhaustion pump. This pit, piled up in the bottom of a hollow,

with its squat brick buildings, raising its chimney like a threatening

horn, seemed to him to have the evil air of a gluttonous beast

crouching there to devour the earth. While examining it, he thought of

himself, of his vagabond existence these eight days he had been seeking

work. He saw himself again at his workshop at the railway, delivering

a blow at his foreman, driven from Lille, driven from everywhere. On

Saturday he had arrived at Marchiennes, where they said that work was

to be had at the Forges, and there was nothing, neither at the Forges

nor at Sonneville's. He had been obliged to pass the Sunday hidden

beneath the wood of a cartwright's yard, from which the watchman had

just turned him out at two o'clock in the morning. He had nothing, not

a penny, not even a crust; what should he do, wandering along the roads

without aim, not knowing where to shelter himself from the wind? Yes,

it was certainly a pit; the occasional lanterns lighted up the square;

a door, suddenly opened, had enabled him to catch sight of the furnaces

in a clear light. He could explain even the escapement of the pump,

that thick, long breathing that went on without ceasing, and which

seemed to be the monster's congested respiration.

The workman, expanding his back at the tipping-cradle, had not even

lifted his eyes on Étienne, and the latter was about to pick up his

little bundle, which had fallen to the earth, when a spasm of coughing

announced the carman's return. Slowly he emerged from the darkness,

followed by the yellow horse drawing six more laden trams.

"Are there factories at Montsou?" asked the young man.

The old man expectorated, then replied in the wind:

"Oh, it isn't factories that are lacking. Should have seen it three or

four years ago. Everything was roaring then. There were not men enough;

there never were such wages. And now they are tightening their bellies

again. Nothing but misery in the country; every one is being sent away;

workshops closing one after the other. It is not the Emperor's fault,

perhaps; but why should he go and fight in America? without counting

that the beasts are dying from cholera, like the people."

Then, in short sentences and with broken breath, the two continued to

complain. Étienne narrated his vain wanderings of the past week: must

one, then, die of hunger? Soon the roads would be full of beggars.

"Yes," said the old man, "this will turn out badly, for God does not

allow so many Christians to be thrown on the street."

"We don't have meat every day."

"But if one had bread!"

"True, if one only had bread."

Their voices were lost, gusts of wind carrying away the words in a

melancholy howl.

"Here!" began the carman again very loudly, turning towards the south.

"Montsou is over there."

And stretching out his hand again he pointed out invisible spots in the

darkness as he named them. Below, at Montsou, the Fauvelle sugar works

were still going, but the Hoton sugar works had just been dismissing

hands; there were only the Dutilleul flour mill and the Bleuze rope

walk for mine-cables which kept up. Then, with a large gesture he

indicated the north half of the horizon: the Sonneville workshops had

not received two-thirds of their usual orders; only two of the three

blast furnaces of the Marchiennes Forges were alight; finally, at the

Gagebois glass works a strike was threatening, for there was talk of a

reduction of wages.

"I know, I know," replied the young man at each indication. "I have

been there."

"With us here things are going on at present," added the carman; "but

the pits have lowered their output. And see opposite, at the Victoire,

there are also only two batteries of coke furnaces alight."

He expectorated, and set out behind his sleepy horse, after harnessing

it to the empty trams.

Now Étienne could oversee the entire country. The darkness remained

profound, but the old man's hand had, as it were, filled it with great

miseries, which the young man unconsciously felt at this moment around

him everywhere in the limitless tract. Was it not a cry of famine

that the March wind rolled up across this naked plain? The squalls

were furious: they seemed to bring the death of labour, a famine

which would kill many men. And with wandering eyes he tried to pierce

shades, tormented at once by the desire and by the fear of seeing.

Everything was hidden in the unknown depths of the gloomy night. He

only perceived, very far off, the blast furnaces and the coke ovens.

The latter, with their hundreds of chimneys, planted obliquely, made

lines of red flame; while the two towers, more to the left, burnt blue

against the blank sky, like giant torches. It resembled a melancholy

conflagration. No other stars rose on the threatening horizon except

these nocturnal fires in a land of coal and iron.

"You belong to Belgium, perhaps?" began again the carman, who had

returned behind Étienne.

This time he only brought three trams. Those at least could be tipped

over; an accident which had happened to the cage, a broken screw nut,

would stop work for a good quarter of an hour. At the bottom of the pit

bank there was silence; the landers no longer shook the stages with a

prolonged vibration. One only heard from the pit the distant sound of a

hammer tapping on an iron plate.

"No, I come from the South," replied the young man.

The workman, after having emptied the trams, had seated himself on the

earth, glad of the accident, maintaining his savage silence; he had

simply lifted his large, dim eyes to the carman, as if annoyed by so

many words. The latter, indeed, did not usually talk at such length.

The unknown man's face must have pleased him that he should have been

taken by one of these itchings for confidence which sometimes make old

people talk aloud even when alone.

"I belong to Montsou," he said, "I am called Bonnemort."

"Is it a nickname?" asked Étienne, astonished.

The old man made a grimace of satisfaction and pointed to the Voreux:

"Yes, yes; they have pulled me three times out of that, torn to pieces,

once with all my hair scorched, once with my gizzard full of earth, and

another time with my belly swollen with water, like a frog. And then,

when they saw that nothing would kill me, they called me Bonnemort for

a joke."

His cheerfulness increased, like the creaking of an ill-greased pulley,

and ended by degenerating into a terrible spasm of coughing. The fire

basket now clearly lit up his large head, with its scanty white hair

and flat, livid face, spotted with bluish patches. He was short, with

an enormous neck, projecting calves and heels, and long arms, with

massive hands falling to his knees. For the rest, like his horse, which

stood immovable, without suffering from the wind, he seemed to be

made of stone; he had no appearance of feeling either the cold or the

gusts that whistled at his ears. When he coughed his throat was torn

by a deep rasping; he spat at the foot of the basket and the earth was

blackened.

Étienne looked at him and at the ground which he had thus stained.

"Have you been working long at the mine?"

Bonnemort flung open both arms.

"Long? I should think so. I was not eight when I went down into the

Voreux and I am now fifty-eight. Reckon that up! I have been everything

down there; at first trammer, then putter, when I had the strength to

wheel, then pikeman for eighteen years. Then, because of my cursed

legs, they put me into the earth cutting, to bank up and patch, until

they had to bring me up, because the doctor said I should stay there

for good. Then, after five years of that, they made me carman. Eh?

that's fine--fifty years at the mine, forty-five down below."

While he was speaking, fragments of burning coal, which now and then

fell from the basket, lit up his pale face with their red reflection.

"They tell me to rest," he went on, "but I'm not going to; I'm not such

a fool. I can get on for two years longer, to my sixtieth, so as to get

the pension of one hundred and eighty francs. If I wished them good

evening to-day they would give me a hundred and fifty at once. They are

cunning, the beggars. Besides, I am sound, except my legs. You see,

it's the water which has got under my skin through being always wet in

the cuttings. There are days when I can't move a paw without screaming."

A spasm of coughing interrupted him again.

"And that makes you cough so?" said Étienne.

But he vigorously shook his head. Then, when he could speak:

"No, no! I caught cold a month ago. I never used to cough; now I can't

get rid of it. And the queer thing is that I spit, that I spit----"

The rasping was again heard in his throat, followed by the black

expectoration.

"Is it blood?" asked Étienne, at last venturing to question him.

Bonnemort slowly wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

"It's coal. I've got enough in my carcass to warm me till I die. And

it's five years since I put a foot down below. I stored it up, it

seems, without knowing it; it keeps you alive!"

There was silence. The distant hammer struck regular blows in the

pit, and the wind passed by with its moan, like a cry of hunger and

weariness coming out of the depths of the night. Before the flames

which grew low, the old man went on in lower tones, chewing over again

his old recollections. Ah, certainly: it was not yesterday that he and

his began hammering at the seam. The family had worked for the Montsou

Mining Company since it started, and that was long ago, a hundred and

six years already. His grandfather, Guillaume Maheu, an urchin of

fifteen then, had found the rich coal at Réquillart, the Company's

first pit, an old abandoned pit to-day down below near the Fauvelle

sugar works. All the country knew it, and as a proof, the discovered

seam was called the Guillaume, after his grandfather. He had not known

him--a big fellow, it was said, very strong, who died of old age at

sixty. Then his father, Nicolas Maheu, called Le Rouge, when hardly

forty years of age had died in the pit, which was being excavated at

that time: a landslip, a complete slide, and the rock drank his blood

and swallowed his bones. Two of his uncles and his three brothers,

later on, also left their skins there. He, Vincent Maheu, who had come

out almost whole, except that his legs were rather shaky, was looked

upon as a knowing fellow. But what could one do? One must work; one

worked here from father to son, as one would work at anything else.

His son, Toussaint Maheu, was being worked to death there now, and his

grandsons, and all his people, who lived opposite in the settlement.

A hundred and six years of mining, the youngsters after the old ones,

for the same master. Eh? there were many bourgeois that could not give

their history so well!

"Anyhow, when one has got enough to eat!" murmured Étienne again.

"That is what I say. As long as one has bread to eat one can live."

Bonnemort was silent; and his eyes turned towards the settlement, where

lights were appearing one by one. Four o'clock struck in the Montsou

tower and the cold became keener.

"And is your company rich?" asked Étienne.

The old man shrugged his shoulders, and then let them fall as if

overwhelmed beneath an avalanche of gold.

"Ah, yes! Ah, yes! Not perhaps so rich as its neighbour, the Anzin

Company. But millions and millions all the same. They can't count it.

Nineteen pits, thirteen at work, the Voreux, the Victoire, Crévecoeur,

Mirou, St. Thomas, Madeleine, Feutry-Cantel, and still more, and six

for pumping or ventilation, like Réquillart. Ten thousand workers,

concessions reaching over sixty-seven communes, an output of five

thousand tons a day, a railway joining all the pits, and workshops, and

factories! Ah, yes! ah, yes! there's money there!"

The rolling of trams on the stages made the big yellow horse prick his

ears. The cage was evidently repaired below, and the landers had got to

work again. While he was harnessing his beast to re-descend, the carman

added gently, addressing himself to the horse:

"Won't do to chatter, lazy good-for-nothing! If Monsieur Hennebeau knew

how you waste your time!"

Étienne looked thoughtfully into the night. He asked:

"Then Monsieur Hennebeau owns the mine?"

"No," explained the old man, "Monsieur Hennebeau is only the general

manager; he is paid just the same as us."

With a gesture the young man pointed into the darkness.

"Who does it all belong to, then?"

But Bonnemort was for a moment so suffocated by a new and violent spasm

that he could not get his breath. Then, when he had expectorated and

wiped the black froth from his lips, he replied in the rising wind:

"Eh? all that belong to? Nobody knows. To people."

And with his hand he pointed in the darkness to a vague spot, an

unknown and remote place, inhabited by those people for whom the Maheus

had been hammering at the seam for more than a century. His voice

assumed a tone of religious awe; it was as if he were speaking of an

inaccessible tabernacle containing a sated and crouching god to whom

they had given all their flesh and whom they had never seen.

"At all events, if one can get enough bread to eat," repeated Étienne,

for the third time, without any apparent transition.

"Indeed, yes; if we could always get bread, it would be too good."

The horse had started; the carman, in his turn, disappeared, with the

trailing step of an invalid. Near the tipping-cradle the workman had

not stirred, gathered up in a ball, burying his chin between his knees,

with his great dim eyes fixed on emptiness.

When he had picked up his bundle, Étienne still remained at the same

spot. He felt the gusts freezing his back, while his chest was burning

before the large fire. Perhaps, all the same, it would be as well

to inquire at the pit, the old man might not know. Then he resigned

himself; he would accept any work. Where should he go, and what was to

become of him in this country famished for lack of work? Must he leave

his carcass behind a wall, like a strayed dog? But one doubt troubled

him, a fear of the Voreux in the middle of this flat plain, drowned in

so thick a night. At every gust the wind seemed to rise as if it blew

from an ever-broadening horizon. No dawn whitened the dead sky. The

blast furnaces alone flamed, and the coke ovens, making the darkness

redder without illuminating the unknown. And the Voreux, at the bottom

of its hole, with its posture as of an evil beast, continued to crunch,

breathing with a heavier and slower respiration, troubled by its

painful digestion of human flesh.

CHAPTER II

In the middle of the fields of wheat and beetroot, the

Deux-Cent-Quarante settlement slept beneath the black night. One could

vaguely distinguish four immense blocks of small houses, back to back,

barracks or hospital blocks, geometric and parallel, separated by three

large avenues which were divided into gardens of equal size. And over

the desert plain one heard only the moan of squalls through the broken

trellises of the enclosures.

In the Maheus' house, No. 16 in the second block, nothing was stirring.

The single room that occupied the first floor was drowned in a thick

darkness which seemed to overwhelm with its weight the sleep of the

beings whom one felt to be there in a mass, with open mouths, overcome

by weariness. In spite of the keen cold outside, there was a living

heat in the heavy air, that hot stuffiness of even the best kept

bedrooms, the smell of human cattle.

Four o'clock had struck from the clock in the room on the ground floor,

but nothing yet stirred; one heard the piping of slender respirations,

accompanied by two series of sonorous snores. And suddenly Catherine

got up. In her weariness she had, as usual, counted the four strokes

through the floor without the strength to arouse herself completely.

Then, throwing her legs from under the bedclothes, she felt about, at

last struck a match and lighted the candle. But she remained seated,

her head so heavy that it fell back between her shoulders, seeking to

return to the bolster.

Now the candle lighted up the room, a square room with two windows,

and filled with three beds. There could be seen a cupboard, a table,

and two old walnut chairs, whose smoky tone made hard, dark patches

against the walls, which were painted a light yellow. And nothing else,

only clothes hung to nails, a jug placed on the floor, and a red pan

which served as a basin. In the bed on the left, Zacharie, the eldest,

a youth of one-and-twenty, was asleep with his brother Jeanlin, who

had completed his eleventh year; in the right-hand bed two urchins,

Lénore and Henri, the first six years old, the second four, slept in

each other's arms, while Catherine shared the third bed with her sister

Alzire, so small for her nine years that Catherine would not have felt

her near her if it were not for the little invalid's humpback, which

pressed into her side. The glass door was open; one could perceive the

lobby of a landing, a sort of recess in which the father and the mother

occupied a fourth bed, against which they had been obliged to install

the cradle of the latest comer, Estelle, aged scarcely three months.

However, Catherine made a desperate effort. She stretched herself,

she fidgeted her two hands in the red hair which covered her forehead

and neck. Slender for her fifteen years, all that showed of her limbs

outside the narrow sheath of her chemise were her bluish feet, as it

were tattooed with coal, and her slight arms, the milky whiteness of

which contrasted with the sallow tint of her face, already spoilt by

constant washing with black soap. A final yawn opened her rather large

mouth with splendid teeth against the chlorotic pallor of her gums;

while her grey eyes were crying in her fight with sleep, with a look of

painful distress and weariness which seemed to spread over the whole of

her naked body.

But a growl came from the landing, and Maheu's thick voice stammered;

"Devil take it! It's time. Is it you lighting up, Catherine?"

"Yes, father; it has just struck downstairs."

"Quick then, lazy. If you had danced less on Sunday you would have woke

us earlier. A fine lazy life!"

And he went on grumbling, but sleep returned to him also. His

reproaches became confused, and were extinguished in fresh snoring.

The young girl, in her chemise, with her naked feet on the floor, moved

about in the room. As she passed by the bed of Henri and Lénore, she

replaced the coverlet which had slipped down. They did not wake, lost

in the strong sleep of childhood. Alzire, with open eyes, had turned to

take the warm place of her big sister without speaking.

"I say, now, Zacharie--and you, Jeanlin; I say, now!" repeated

Catherine, standing before her two brothers, who were still wallowing

with their noses in the bolster.

She had to seize the elder by the shoulder and shake him; then, while

he was muttering abuse, it came into her head to uncover them by

snatching away the sheet. That seemed funny to her, and she began to

laugh when she saw the two boys struggling with naked legs.

"Stupid, leave me alone," growled Zacharie in ill-temper, sitting up.

"I don't like tricks. Good Lord! Say it's time to get up?"

He was lean and ill-made, with a long face and a chin which showed

signs of a sprouting beard, yellow hair, and the anaemic pallor which

belonged to his whole family.

His shirt had rolled up to his belly, and he lowered it, not from

modesty but because he was not warm.

"It has struck downstairs," repeated Catherine; "come! up! father's

angry."

Jeanlin, who had rolled himself up, closed his eyes, saying: "Go and

hang yourself; I'm going to sleep."

She laughed again, the laugh of a good-natured girl. He was so small,

his limbs so thin, with enormous joints, enlarged by scrofula, that she

took him up in her arms. But he kicked about, his apish face, pale and

wrinkled, with its green eyes and great ears, grew pale with the rage

of weakness. He said nothing, he bit her right breast.

"Beastly fellow!" she murmured, keeping back a cry and putting him on

the floor.

Alzire was silent, with the sheet tucked under her chin, but she had

not gone to sleep again. With her intelligent invalid's eyes she

followed her sister and her two brothers, who were now dressing.

Another quarrel broke out around the pan, the boys hustled the young

girl because she was so long washing herself. Shirts flew about: and,

while still half-asleep, they eased themselves without shame, with

the tranquil satisfaction of a litter of puppies that have grown up

together. Catherine was ready first. She put on her miner's breeches,

then her canvas jacket, and fastened the blue cap on her knotted hair;

in these clean Monday clothes she had the appearance of a little man;

nothing remained to indicate her sex except the slight roll of her hips.

"When the old man comes back," said Zacharie, mischievously, "he'll

like to find the bed unmade. You know I shall tell him it's you."

The old man was the grandfather, Bonnemort, who, as he worked during

the night, slept by day, so that the bed was never cold; there was

always someone snoring there. Without replying, Catherine set herself

to arrange the bed-clothes and tuck them in. But during the last

moments sounds had been heard behind the wall in the next house. These

brick buildings, economically put up by the Company, were so thin that

the least breath could be heard through them. The inmates lived there,

elbow to elbow, from one end to the other; and no fact of family life

remained hidden, even from the youngsters. A heavy step had tramped up

the staircase; then there was a kind of soft fall, followed by a sigh

of satisfaction.

"Good!" said Catherine. "Levaque has gone down, and here is Bouteloup

come to join the Levaque woman."

Jeanlin grinned; even Alzire's eyes shone. Every morning they made fun

of the household of three next door, a pikeman who lodged a worker in

the cutting, an arrangement which gave the woman two men, one by night,

the other by day.

"Philoméne is coughing," began Catherine again, after listening.

She was speaking of the eldest Levaque, a big girl of nineteen, and

the mistress of Zacharie, by whom she had already had two children;

her chest was so delicate that she was only a sifter at the pit, never

having been able to work below.

"Pooh! Philoméne!" replied Zacharie, "she cares a lot, she's asleep.

It's hoggish to sleep till six."

He was putting on his breeches when an idea occurred to him, and he

opened the window. Outside in the darkness the settlement was awaking,

lights were dawning one by one between the laths of the shutters. And

there was another dispute: he leant out to watch if he could not see,

coming out of Pierron's opposite, the captain of the Voreux, who was

accused of sleeping with the Pierron woman, while his sister called to

him that since the day before the husband had taken day duty at the

pit-eye, and that certainly Dansaert could not have slept there that

night. Whilst the air entered in icy whiffs, both of them, becoming

angry, maintained the truth of their own information, until cries and

tears broke out. It was Estelle, in her cradle, vexed by the cold.

Maheu woke up suddenly. What had he got in his bones, then? Here

he was going to sleep again like a good-for-nothing. And he swore

so vigorously that the children became still. Zacharie and Jeanlin

finished washing with slow weariness. Alzire, with her large, open

eyes, continually stared. The two youngsters, Lénore and Henri, in each

other's arms, had not stirred, breathing in the same quiet way in spite

of the noise.

"Catherine, give me the candle," called out Maheu.

She finished buttoning her jacket, and carried the candle into the

closet, leaving her brothers to look for their clothes by what light

came through the door. Her father jumped out of bed. She did not stop,

but went downstairs in her coarse woollen stockings, feeling her way,

and lighted another candle in the parlour, to prepare the coffee. All

the sabots of the family were beneath the sideboard.

"Will you be still, vermin?" began Maheu, again, exasperated by

Estelle's cries which still went on.

He was short, like old Bonnemort, and resembled him, with his strong

head, his flat, livid face, beneath yellow hair cut very short. The

child screamed more than ever, frightened by those great knotted arms

which were held above her.

"Leave her alone; you know that she won't be still," said his wife,

stretching herself in the middle of the bed.

She also had just awakened and was complaining how disgusting it was

never to be able to finish the night. Could they not go away quietly?

Buried in the clothes she only showed her long face with large features

of a heavy beauty, already disfigured at thirty-nine by her life of

wretchedness and the seven children she had borne. With her eyes on

the ceiling she spoke slowly, while her man dressed himself. They

both ceased to hear the little one, who was strangling herself with

screaming.

"Eh? You know I haven't a penny and this is only Monday: still six days

before the fortnight's out. This can't go on. You, all of you, only

bring in nine francs. How do you expect me to go on? We are ten in the

house."

"Oh! nine francs!" exclaimed Maheu. "I and Zacharie three: that makes

six, Catherine and the father, two: that makes four: four and six, ten,

and Jeanlin one, that makes eleven."

"Yes, eleven, but there are Sundays and the off-days. Never more than

nine, you know."

He did not reply, being occupied in looking on the ground for his

leather belt. Then he said, on getting up:

"Mustn't complain. I am sound all the same. There's more than one at

forty-two who are put to the patching."

"Maybe, old man, but that does not give us bread. Where am I to get it

from, eh? Have you got nothing?"

"I've got two coppers."

"Keep them for a half-pint. Good Lord! where am I to get it from? Six

days! it will never end. We owe sixty francs to Maigrat, who turned me

out of doors day before yesterday. That won't prevent me from going to

see him again. But if he goes on refusing----"

And Maheude continued in her melancholy voice, without moving her head,

only closing her eyes now and then beneath the dim light of the candle.

She said the cupboard was empty, the little ones asking for bread and

butter, even the coffee was done, and the water caused colic, and

the long days passed in deceiving hunger with boiled cabbage leaves.

Little by little she had been obliged to raise her voice, for Estelle's

screams drowned her words. These cries became unbearable. Maheu seemed

all at once to hear them, and, in a fury, snatched the little one up

from the cradle and threw it on the mother's bed, stammering with rage:

"Here, take her; I'll do for her! Damn the child! It wants for nothing:

it sucks, and it complains louder than all the rest!"

Estelle began, in fact, to suck. Hidden beneath the clothes and soothed

by the warmth of the bed, her cries subsided into the greedy little

sound of her lips.

"Haven't the Piolaine people told you to go and see them?" asked the

father, after a period of silence.

The mother bit her lip with an air of discouraged doubt.

"Yes, they met me; they were carrying clothes for poor children. Yes,

I'll take Lénore and Henri to them this morning. If they only give me a

few pence!"

There was silence again.

Maheu was ready. He remained a moment motionless, then added, in his

hollow voice:

"What is it that you want? Let things be, and see about the soup. It's

no good talking, better be at work down below."

"True enough," replied Maheude. "Blow out the candle: I don't need to

see the colour of my thoughts."

He blew out the candle. Zacharie and Jeanlin were already going down;

he followed them, and the wooden staircase creaked beneath their heavy

feet, clad in wool. Behind them the closet and the room were again

dark. The children slept; even Alzire's eyelids were closed; but the

mother now remained with her eyes open in the darkness, while, pulling

at her breast, the pendent breast of an exhausted woman, Estelle was

purring like a kitten.

Down below, Catherine had at first occupied herself with the fire,

which was burning in the iron grate, flanked by two ovens. The Company

distributed every month, to each family, eight hectolitres of a hard

slaty coal, gathered in the passages. It burnt slowly, and the young

girl, who piled up the fire every night, only had to stir it in the

morning, adding a few fragments of soft coal, carefully picked out.

Then, after having placed a kettle on the grate, she sat down before

the sideboard.

It was a fairly large room, occupying all the ground floor, painted an

apple green, and of Flemish cleanliness, with its flags well washed and

covered with white sand. Besides the sideboard of varnished deal the

furniture consisted of a table and chairs of the same wood. Stuck on to

the walls were some violently-coloured prints, portraits of the Emperor

and the Empress, given by the Company, of soldiers and of saints

speckled with gold, contrasting crudely with the simple nudity of the

room; and there was no other ornament except a box of rose-coloured

pasteboard on the sideboard, and the clock with its daubed face and

loud tick-tack, which seemed to fill the emptiness of the place. Near

the staircase door another door led to the cellar. In spite of the

cleanliness, an odour of cooked onion, shut up since the night before,

poisoned the hot, heavy air, always laden with an acrid flavour of coal.

Catherine, in front of the sideboard, was reflecting. There only

remained the end of a loaf, cheese in fair abundance, but hardly a

morsel of butter; and she had to provide bread and butter for four. At

last she decided, cut the slices, took one and covered it with cheese,

spread another with butter, and stuck them together; that was the

"brick," the bread-and-butter sandwich taken to the pit every morning.

The four bricks were soon on the table, in a row, cut with severe

justice, from the big one for the father down to the little one for

Jeanlin.

Catherine, who appeared absorbed in her household duties, must,

however, have been thinking of the stories told by Zacharie about the

head captain and the Pierron woman, for she half opened the front door

and glanced outside. The wind was still whistling. There were numerous

spots of light on the low fronts of the settlement, from which arose a

vague tremor of awakening. Already doors were being closed, and black

files of workers passed into the night. It was stupid of her to get

cold, since the porter at the pit-eye was certainly asleep, waiting

to take his duties at six. Yet she remained and looked at the house

on the other side of the gardens. The door opened, and her curiosity

was aroused. But it could only be one of the little Pierrons, Lydie,

setting out for the pit.

The hissing sound of steam made her turn. She shut the door, and

hastened back; the water was boiling over, and putting out the fire.

There was no more coffee. She had to be content to add the water to

last night's dregs; then she sugared the coffee-pot with brown sugar.

At that moment her father and two brothers came downstairs.

"Faith!" exclaimed Zacharie, when he had put his nose into his bowl,

"here's something that won't get into our heads."

Maheu shrugged his shoulders with an air of resignation.

"Bah! It's hot! It's good all the same."

Jeanlin had gathered up the fragments of bread and made a sop of them.

After having drunk, Catherine finished by emptying the coffee-pot into

the tin-jacks. All four, standing up in the smoky light of the candle,

swallowed their meals hastily.

"Are we at the end?" said the father; "one would say we were people of

property."

But a voice came from the staircase, of which they had left the door

open. It was Maheude, who called out:

"Take all the bread: I have some vermicelli for the children."

"Yes, yes," replied Catherine.

She had piled up the fire, wedging the pot that held the remains of the

soup into a corner of the grate, so that the grandfather might find

it warm when he came in at six. Each took his sabots from under the

sideboard, passed the strings of his tin over his shoulder and placed

his brick at his back, between shirt and jacket. And they went out, the

men first, the girl, who came last, blowing out the candle and turning

the key. The house became dark again.

"Ah! we're off together," said a man who was closing the door of the

next house.

It was Levaque, with his son Bébert, an urchin of twelve, a great

friend of Jeanlin's. Catherine, in surprise, stifled a laugh in

Zacharie's ear:

"Why! Bouteloup didn't even wait until the husband had gone!"

Now the lights in the settlement were extinguished, and the last door

banged. All again fell asleep; the women and the little ones resuming

their slumber in the midst of wider beds. And from the extinguished

village to the roaring Voreux a slow filing of shadows took place

beneath the squalls, the departure of the colliers to their work,

bending their shoulders and incommoded by their arms, crossed on their

breasts, while the brick behind formed a hump on each back. Clothed

in their thin jackets they shivered with cold, but without hastening,

straggling along the road with the tramp of a flock.

CHAPTER III

Étienne had at last descended from the platform and entered the

Voreux; he spoke to men whom he met, asking if there was work to be

had, but all shook their heads, telling him to wait for the captain.

They left him free to roam through the ill-lighted buildings, full of

black holes, confusing with their complicated stories and rooms. After

having mounted a dark and half-destroyed staircase, he found himself

on a shaky foot-bridge; then he crossed the screening-shed, which

was plunged in such profound darkness that he walked with his hands

before him for protection. Suddenly two enormous yellow eyes pierced

the darkness in front of him. He was beneath the pit-frame in the

receiving-room, at the very mouth of the shaft.

A captain, Father Richomme, a big man with the face of a good-natured

gendarme, and with a straight grey moustache, was at that moment going

towards the receiver's office.

"Do they want a hand here for any kind of work?" asked Étienne again.

Richomme was about to say no, but he changed his mind and replied like

the others, as he went away:

"Wait for Monsieur Dansaert, the head captain."

Four lanterns were placed there, and the reflectors which threw all

the light on to the shaft vividly illuminated the iron rail, the

levers of the signals and bars, the joists of the guides along which

slid the two cages. The rest of the vast room, like the nave of a

church, was obscure, and peopled by great floating shadows. Only the

lamp-cabin shone at the far end, while in the receiver's office a small

lamp looked like a fading star. Work was about to be resumed, and on

the iron pavement there was a continual thunder, trams of coal being

wheeled without ceasing, while the landers, with their long, bent

backs, could be distinguished amid the movement of all these black and

noisy things, in perpetual agitation.

For a moment Étienne stood motionless, deafened and blinded. He felt

frozen by the currents of air which entered from every side. Then he

moved on a few paces, attracted by the winding engine, of which he

could now see the glistening steel and copper. It was twenty-five

metres beyond the shaft, in a loftier chamber, and placed so solidly on

its brick foundation that though it worked at full speed, with all its

four hundred horse power, the movement of its enormous crank, emerging

and plunging with oily softness, imparted no quiver to the walls.

The engine-man, standing at his post, listened to the ringing of the

signals, and his eye never moved from the indicator where the shaft

was figured, with its different levels, by a vertical groove traversed

by shot hanging to strings, which represented the cages; and at each

departure, when the machine was put in motion, the drums--two immense

wheels, five metres in radius, by means of which the two steel cables

were rolled and unrolled--turned with such rapidity that they became

like grey powder.

"Look out, there!" cried three landers, who were dragging an immense

ladder.

Étienne just escaped being crushed; his eyes were soon more at home,

and he watched the cables moving in the air, more than thirty metres

of steel ribbon, which flew up into the pit-frame where they passed

over pulleys to descend perpendicularly into the shaft, where they

were attached to the cages. An iron frame, like the high scaffolding

of a belfry, supported the pulleys. It was like the gliding of a bird,

noiseless, without a jar, this rapid flight, the continual come and

go of a thread of enormous weight, capable of lifting twelve thousand

kilograms at the rate of ten metres a second.

"Attention there, for God's sake!" cried again the landers, pushing

the ladder to the other side in order to climb to the left-hand rowel.

Slowly Étienne returned to the receiving-room. This giant flight over

his head took away his breath. Shivering in the currents of air, he

watched the movement of the cages, his ears deafened by the rumblings

of the trams. Near the shaft the signal was working, a heavy-levered

hammer drawn by a cord from below and allowed to strike against a

block. One blow to stop, two to go down, three to go up; it was

unceasing, like blows of a club dominating the tumult, accompanied by

the clear sound of the bell; while the lander, directing the work,

increased the noise still more by shouting orders to the engine-man

through a trumpet. The cages in the middle of the clear space appeared

and disappeared, were filled and emptied, without Étienne being at all

able to understand the complicated proceeding.

He only understood one thing well: the shaft swallowed men by mouthfuls

of twenty or thirty, and with so easy a gulp that it seemed to feel

nothing go down. Since four o'clock the descent of the workmen had

been going on. They came to the shed with naked feet and their lamps

in their hands, waiting in little groups until a sufficient number had

arrived. Without a sound, with the soft bound of a nocturnal beast,

the iron cage arose from the night, wedged itself on the bolts with

its four decks, each containing two trams full of coal. Landers on

different platforms took out the trams and replaced them by others,

either empty or already laden with trimmed wooden props; and it was

into the empty trams that the workmen crowded, five at a time, up to

forty. When they filled all the compartments, an order came from the

trumpet--a hollow indistinct roar--while the signal cord was pulled

four times from below, "ringing meat," to give warning of this burden

of human flesh. Then, after a slight leap, the cage plunged silently,

falling like a stone, only leaving behind it the vibrating flight of a

cable.

"Is it deep?" asked Étienne of a miner, who waited near him with a

sleepy air.

"Five hundred and fifty-four metres," replied the man. "But there are

four levels, the first at three hundred and twenty." Both were silent,

with their eyes on the returning cable. Étienne said again:

"And if it breaks?"

"Ah! if it breaks----"

The miner ended with a gesture. His turn had arrived; the cage had

reappeared with its easy, unfatigued movement. He squatted in it with

some comrades; it plunged down, then flew up again in less then four

minutes to swallow down another load of men. For half an hour the shaft

went on devouring in this fashion, with more or less greedy gulps,

according to the depth of the level to which the men went down, but

without stopping, always hungry, with its giant intestines capable

of digesting a nation. It went on filling and still filling, and the

darkness remained dead. The cage mounted from the void with the same

voracious silence.

Étienne was at last seized again by the same depression which he had

experienced on the pit bank. What was the good of persisting? This

head captain would send him off like the others. A vague fear suddenly

decided him: he went away, only stopping before the building of the

engine room. The wide-open door showed seven boilers with two furnaces.

In the midst of the white steam and the whistling of the escapes a

stoker was occupied in piling up one of the furnaces, the heat of

which could be felt as far as the threshold; and the young man was

approaching, glad of the warmth, when he met a new band of colliers who

had just arrived at the pit. It was the Maheu and Levaque set. When he

saw Catherine at the head, with her gentle boyish air, a superstitious

idea caused him to risk another question.

"I say there, mate! do they want a hand here for any kind of work?"

She looked at him surprised, rather frightened at this sudden voice

coming out of the shadow. But Maheu, behind her, had heard and replied,

talking with Étienne for a moment. No, no one was wanted. This poor

devil of a man who had lost his way here interested him. When he left

him he said to the others:

"Eh! one might easily be like that. Mustn't complain: every one hasn't

the chance to work himself to death."

The band entered and went straight to the shed, a vast hall roughly

boarded and surrounded by cupboards shut by padlocks. In the centre an

iron fireplace, a sort of closed stove without a door, glowed red and

was so stuffed with burning coal that fragments flew out and rolled

on to the trodden soil. The hall was only lighted by this stove,

from which sanguine reflections danced along the greasy woodwork up

to the ceiling, stained with black dust. As the Maheus went into the

heat there was a sound of laughter. Some thirty workmen were standing

upright with their backs to the fire, roasting themselves with an air

of enjoyment. Before going down, they all came here to get a little

warmth in their skins, so that they could face the dampness of the

pit. But this morning there was much amusement: they were joking

Mouquette, a putter girl of eighteen, whose enormous breasts and

flanks were bursting through her old jacket and breeches. She lived

at Réquillart with her father old Mouque, a groom, and Mouquet, her

brother, a lander; but their hours of work were not the same; she went

to the pit by herself, and in the middle of the wheatfields in summer,

or against a wall in winter, she took her pleasure with her lover of

the week. All in the mine had their turn; it was a perpetual round of

comrades without further consequences. One day, when reproached about

a Marchiennes nail-maker, she was furiously angry, exclaiming that she

respected herself far too much, that she would cut her arm off if any

one could boast that he had seen her with any one but a collier.

"It isn't that big Chaval now?" said a miner grinning; "did that

little fellow have you? he must have needed a ladder. I saw you behind

Réquillart, a token that he got up on a milestone."

"Well," replied Mouquette, in a good humour, "what's that to do with

you? You were not asked to push."

And this gross good-natured joke increased the laughter of the men, who

expanded their shoulders, half cooked by the stove, while she herself,

shaken by laughter, was displaying in the midst of them the indecency

of her costume, embarrassingly comical, with her masses of flesh

exaggerated almost to disease.

But the gaiety ceased; Mouquette told Maheu that Fleurance, big

Fleurance, would never come again; she had been found the night before

stiff in her bed; some said it was her heart, others that it was a pint

of gin she had drunk too quickly. And Maheu was in despair; another

piece of ill-luck; one of the best of his putters gone without any

chance of replacing her at once. He was working in a set; there were

four pikemen associated in his cutting, himself, Zacharie, Levaque, and

Chaval. If they had Catherine alone to wheel, the work would suffer.

Suddenly he called out:

"I have it! there was that man looking for work!"

At that moment Dansaert passed before the shed. Maheu told him the

story, and asked for his authority to engage the man; he emphasized the

desire of the Company to substitute men for women, as at Anzin. The

head captain smiled at first; for the scheme of excluding women from

the pit was not usually well received by the miners, who were troubled

about placing their daughters, and not much affected by questions of

morality and health. But after some hesitation he gave his permission,

reserving its ratification for Monsieur Négrel, the engineer.

"All very well!" exclaimed Zacharie; "the man must be away by this

time."

"No," said Catherine. "I saw him stop at the boilers."

"After him, then, lazy," cried Maheu.

The young girl ran forward; while a crowd of miners proceeded to the

shaft, yielding the fire to others.

Jeanlin, without waiting for his father, went also to take his lamp,

together with Bébert, a big, stupid boy, and Lydie, a small child of

ten. Mouquette, who was in front of them, called out in the black

passage they were dirty brats, and threatened to box their ears if they

pinched her.

Étienne was, in fact, in the boiler building, talking with a stoker,

who was charging the furnaces with coal. He felt very cold at the

thought of the night into which he must return. But he was deciding to

set out, when he felt a hand placed on his shoulder.

"Come," said Catherine; "there's something for you."

At first he could not understand. Then he felt a spasm of joy, and

vigorously squeezed the young girl's hands.

"Thanks, mate. Ah! you're a good chap, you are!"

She began to laugh, looking at him in the red light of the furnaces,

which lit them up. It amused her that he should take her for a boy,

still slender, with her knot of hair hidden beneath the cap. He also

was laughing, with satisfaction, and they remained, for a moment, both

laughing in each other's faces with radiant cheeks.

Maheu, squatting down before his box in the shed, was taking off

his sabots and his coarse woollen stockings. When Étienne arrived

everything was settled in three or four words: thirty sous a day,

hard work, but work that he would easily learn. The pikeman advised

him to keep his shoes, and lent him an old cap, a leather hat for the

protection of his skull, a precaution which the father and his children

disdained. The tools were taken out of the chest, where also was found

Fleurance's shovel. Then, when Maheu had shut up their sabots, their

stockings, as well as Étienne's bundle, he suddenly became impatient.

"What is that lazy Chaval up to? Another girl given a tumble on a pile

of stones? We are half an hour late to-day."

Zacharie and Levaque were quietly roasting their shoulders. The former

said at last:

"Is it Chaval you're waiting for? He came before us, and went down at

once."

"What! you knew that, and said nothing? Come, come, look sharp!"

Catherine, who was warming her hands, had to follow the band. Étienne

allowed her to pass, and went behind her. Again he journeyed through

a maze of staircases and obscure corridors in which their naked feet

produced the soft sound of old slippers. But the lamp-cabin was

glittering--a glass house, full of hooks in rows, holding hundreds of

Davy lamps, examined and washed the night before, and lighted like

candles in a mortuary chapel. At the barrier each workman took his own,

stamped with his number; then he examined it and shut it himself, while

the marker, seated at a table, inscribed on the registers the hour of

descent. Maheu had to intervene to obtain a lamp for his new putter,

and there was still another precaution: the workers defiled before an

examiner, who assured himself that all the lamps were properly closed.

"Golly! It's not warm here," murmured Catherine, shivering.

Étienne contented himself with nodding his head. He was in front of

the shaft, in the midst of a vast hall swept by currents of air.

He certainly considered himself brave, but he felt a disagreeable

emotion at his chest amid this thunder of trams, the hollow blows of

the signals, the stifled howling of the trumpet, the continual flight

of those cables, unrolled and rolled at full speed by the drums of

the engine. The cages rose and sank with the gliding movement of a

nocturnal beast, always engulfing men, whom the throat of the hole

seemed to drink. It was his turn now. He felt very cold, and preserved

a nervous silence which made Zacharie and Levaque grin; for both of

them disapproved of the hiring of this unknown man, especially Levaque,

who was offended that he had not been consulted. So Catherine was glad

to hear her father explain things to the young man.

"Look! above the cage there is a parachute with iron grapnels to catch

into the guides in case of breakage. Does it work? Oh, not always. Yes,

the shaft is divided into three compartments, closed by planking from

top to bottom; in the middle the cages, on the left the passage for the

ladders----"

But he interrupted himself to grumble, though taking care not to raise

his voice much.

"What are we stuck here for, blast it? What right have they to freeze

us in this way?"

The captain, Richomme, who was going down himself, with his naked lamp

fixed by a nail into the leather of his cap, heard him.

"Careful! Look out for ears," he murmured paternally, as an old miner

with a affectionate feeling for comrades. "Workmen must do what they

can. Hold on! here we are; get in with your fellows."

The cage, provided with iron bands and a small-meshed lattice work,

was in fact awaiting them on the bars. Maheu, Zacharie, and Catherine

slid into a tram below, and as all five had to enter, Étienne in

his turn went in, but the good places were taken; he had to squeeze

himself near the young girl, whose elbow pressed into his belly. His

lamp embarrassed him; they advised him to fasten it to the button-hole

of his jacket. Not hearing, he awkwardly kept it in his hand. The

embarkation continued, above and below, a confused packing of cattle.

They did not, however, set out. What, then, was happening? It seemed

to him that his impatience lasted for many minutes. At last he felt a

shock, and the light grew dim, everything around him seemed to fly,

while he experienced the dizzy anxiety of a fall contracting his

bowels. This lasted as long as he could see light, through the two

reception stories, in the midst of the whirling by of the scaffolding.

Then, having fallen into the blackness of the pit, he became stunned,

no longer having any clear perception of his sensations.

"Now we are off," said Maheu quietly.

They were all at their ease. He asked himself at times if he was going

up or down. Now and then, when the cage went straight without touching

the guides, there seemed to be no motion, but rough shocks were

afterwards produced, a sort of dancing amid the joists, which made him

fear a catastrophe. For the rest he could not distinguish the walls of

the shaft behind the lattice work, to which he pressed his face. The

lamps feebly lighted the mass of bodies at his feet. Only the captain's

naked light, in the neighbouring tram, shone like a lighthouse.

"This is four metres in diameter," continued Maheu, to instruct him.

"The tubbing wants doing over again, for the water comes in everywhere.

Stop! we are reaching the bottom: do you hear?"

Étienne was, in fact, now asking himself the meaning of this noise of

falling rain. A few large drops had at first sounded on the roof of

the cage, like the beginning of a shower, and now the rain increased,

streaming down, becoming at last a deluge. The roof must be full of

holes, for a thread of water was flowing on to his shoulder and wetting

him to the skin. The cold became icy and they were buried in black

humidity, when they passed through a sudden flash of light, the vision

of a cavern in which men were moving. But already they had fallen back

into darkness.

Maheu said:

"That is the first main level. We are at three hundred and twenty

metres. See the speed."

Raising his lamp he lighted up a joist of the guides which fled by like

a rail beneath a train going at full speed; and beyond, as before,

nothing could be seen. They passed three other levels in flashes of

light. The deafening rain continued to strike through the darkness.

"How deep it is!" murmured Étienne.

This fall seemed to last for hours. He was suffering for the cramped

position he had taken, not daring to move, and especially tortured by

Catherine's elbow. She did not speak a word; he only felt her against

him and it warmed him. When the cage at last stopped at the bottom, at

five hundred and fifty-four metres, he was astonished to learn that

the descent had lasted exactly one minute. But the noise of the bolts

fixing themselves, the sensation of solidity beneath, suddenly cheered

him; and he was joking when he said to Catherine:

"What have you got under your skin to be so warm? I've got your elbow

in my belly, sure enough."

Then she also burst out laughing. Stupid of him, still to take her for

a boy! Were his eyes out?

"It's in your eye that you've got my elbow!" she replied, in the midst

of a storm of laughter which the astonished young man could not account

for.

The cage voided its burden of workers, who crossed the pit-eye hall, a

chamber cut in the rock, vaulted with masonry, and lighted up by three

large lamps. Over the iron flooring the porters were violently rolling

laden trams. A cavernous odour exhaled from the walls, a freshness of

saltpetre in which mingled hot breaths from the neighbouring stable.

The openings of four galleries yawned here.

"This way," said Maheu to Étienne. "You're not there yet. It is still

two kilometres."

The workmen separated, and were lost in groups in the depths of these

black holes. Some fifteen went off into that on the left, and Étienne

walked last, behind Maheu, who was preceded by Catherine, Zacharie,

and Levaque. It was a large gallery for wagons, through a bed of solid

rock, which had only needed walling here and there. In single file they

still went on without a word, by the tiny flame of the lamps. The young

man stumbled at every step, and entangled his feet in the rails. For a

moment a hollow sound disturbed him, the sound of a distant storm, the

violence of which seemed to increase and to come from the bowels of the

earth. Was it the thunder of a landslip bringing on to their heads the

enormous mass which separated them from the light? A gleam pierced the

night, he felt the rock tremble, and when he had placed himself close

to the wall, like his comrades, he saw a large white horse close to his

face, harnessed to a train of wagons. On the first, and holding the

reins, was seated Bébert, while Jeanlin, with his hands leaning on the

edge of the last, was running barefooted behind.

They again began their walk. Farther on they reached crossways, where

two new galleries opened, and the band divided again, the workers

gradually entering all the stalls of the mine.

Now the wagon-gallery was constructed of wood; props of timber

supported the roof, and made for the crumbly rock a screen of

scaffolding, behind which one could see the plates of schist glimmering

with mica, and the coarse masses of dull, rough sandstone. Trains of

tubs, full or empty, continually passed, crossing each other with

their thunder, borne into the shadow by vague beasts trotting by like

phantoms. On the double way of a shunting line a long, black serpent

slept, a train at standstill, with a snorting horse, whose crupper

looked like a block fallen from the roof. Doors for ventilation were

slowly opening and shutting. And as they advanced the gallery became

more narrow and lower, and the roof irregular, forcing them to bend

their backs constantly.

Étienne struck his head hard; without his leather cap he would have

broken his skull. However, he attentively followed the slightest

gestures of Maheu, whose sombre profile was seen against the glimmer of

the lamps. None of the workmen knocked themselves; they evidently knew

each boss, each knot of wood or swelling in the rock. The young man

also suffered from the slippery soil, which became damper and damper.

At times he went through actual puddles, only revealed by the muddy

splash of his feet. But what especially astonished him were the sudden

changes of temperature. At the bottom of the shaft it was very chilly,

and in the wagon-gallery, through which all the air of the mine passed,

an icy breeze was blowing, with the violence of a tempest, between the

narrow walls. Afterwards, as they penetrated more deeply along other

passages which only received a meagre share of air, the wind fell and

the heat increased, a suffocating heat as heavy as lead.

Maheu had not again opened his mouth. He turned down another gallery to

the right, simply saying to Étienne, without looking round:

"The Guillaume seam."

It was the seam which contained their cutting. At the first step,

Étienne hurt his head and elbows. The sloping roof descended so low

that, for twenty or thirty metres at a time, he had to walk bent

double. The water came up to his ankles. After two hundred metres of

this, he saw Levaque, Zacharie, and Catherine disappear, as though they

had flown through a narrow fissure which was open in front of him.

"We must climb," said Maheu. "Fasten your lamp to a button-hole and

hang on to the wood." He himself disappeared, and Étienne had to follow

him. This chimney-passage left in the seam was reserved for miners, and

led to all the secondary passages. It was about the thickness of the

coal-bed, hardly sixty centimetres. Fortunately the young man was thin,

for, as he was still awkward, he hoisted himself up with a useless

expense of muscle, flattening his shoulders and hips, advancing by the

strength of his wrists, clinging to the planks. Fifteen metres higher

they came on the first secondary passage, but they had to continue, as

the cutting of Maheu and his mates was in the sixth passage, in hell,

as they said; every fifteen metres the passages were placed over each

other in never-ending succession through this cleft, which scraped back

and chest. Étienne groaned as if the weight of the rocks had pounded

his limbs; with torn hands and bruised legs, he also suffered from

lack of air, so that he seemed to feel the blood bursting through his

skin. He vaguely saw in one passage two squatting beasts, a big one

and a little one, pushing trams: they were Lydie and Mouquette already

at work. And he had still to climb the height of two cuttings! He was

blinded by sweat, and he despaired of catching up the others, whose

agile limbs he heard brushing against the rock with a long gliding

movement.

"Cheer up! here we are!" said Catherine's voice.

He had, in fact, arrived, and another voice cried from the bottom of

the cutting:

"Well, is this the way to treat people? I have two kilometres to walk

from Montsou and I am here first." It was Chaval, a tall, lean, bony

fellow of twenty-five, with strongly marked features, who was in a

bad humour at having to wait. When he saw Étienne he asked, with

contemptuous surprise:

"What's that?"

And when Maheu had told him the story he added between his teeth:

"These men are eating the bread of girls."

The two men exchanged a look, lighted up by one of those instinctive

hatreds which suddenly flame up. Étienne had felt the insult without

yet understanding it. There was silence, and they got to work. At last

all the seams were gradually filled, and the cuttings were in movement

at every level and at the end of every passage. The devouring shaft

had swallowed its daily ration of men: nearly seven hundred hands, who

were now at work in this giant ant-hill, everywhere making holes in the

earth, drilling it like an old worm-eaten piece of wood. And in the

middle of the heavy silence and crushing weight of the strata one could

hear, by placing one's ear to the rock, the movement of these human

insects at work, from the flight of the cable which moved the cage up

and down, to the biting of the tools cutting out the coal at the end

of the stalls. Étienne, on turning round, found himself again pressed

close to Catherine. But this time he caught a glimpse of the developing

curves of her breast: he suddenly understood the warmth which had

penetrated him.

"You are a girl, then!" he exclaimed, stupefied.

She replied in her cheerful way, without blushing:

"Of course. You've taken your time to find it out!"

CHAPTER IV

The four pikemen had spread themselves one above the other over the

whole face of the cutting. Separated by planks, hooked on to retain the

fallen coal, they each occupied about four metres of the seam, and this

seam was so thin, scarcely more than fifty centimetres thick at this

spot, that they seemed to be flattened between the roof and the wall,

dragging themselves along by their knees and elbows, and unable to turn

without crushing their shoulders. In order to attack the coal, they

had to lie on their sides with their necks twisted and arms raised,

brandishing, in a sloping direction, their short-handled picks.

Below there was, first, Zacharie; Levaque and Chaval were on the

stages above, and at the very top was Maheu. Each worked at the

slaty bed, which he dug out with blows of the pick; then he made

two vertical cuttings in the bed and detached the block by burying

an iron wedge in its upper part. The coal was rich; the block broke

and rolled in fragments along their bellies and thighs. When these

fragments, retained by the plank, had collected round them, the pikemen

disappeared, buried in the narrow cleft.

Maheu suffered most. At the top the temperature rose to thirty-five

degrees, and the air was stagnant, so that in the long run it became

lethal. In order to see, he had been obliged to fix his lamp to a

nail near his head, and this lamp, close to his skull, still further

heated his blood. But his torment was especially aggravated by the

moisture. The rock above him, a few centimetres from his face, streamed

with water, which fell in large continuous rapid drops with a sort

of obstinate rhythm, always at the same spot. It was vain for him to

twist his head or bend back his neck. They fell on his face, dropping

unceasingly. In a quarter of an hour he was soaked, and at the same

time covered with sweat, smoking as with the hot steam of a laundry.

This morning a drop beating upon his eye made him swear. He would not

leave his picking, he dealt great strokes which shook him violently

between the two rocks, like a fly caught between two leaves of a book

and in danger of being completely flattened.

Not a word was exchanged. They all hammered; one only heard these

irregular blows, which seemed veiled and remote. The sounds had a

sonorous hoarseness, without any echo in the dead air. And it seemed

that the darkness was an unknown blackness, thickened by the floating

coal dust, made heavy by the gas which weighed on the eyes. The wicks

of the lamps beneath their caps of metallic tissue only showed as

reddish points. One could distinguish nothing. The cutting opened out

above like a large chimney, flat and oblique, in which the soot of ten

years had amassed a profound night. Spectral figures were moving in it,

the gleams of light enabled one to catch a glimpse of a rounded hip, a

knotty arm, a vigorous head, besmeared as if for a crime. Sometimes,

blocks of coal shone suddenly as they became detached, illuminated by

a crystalline reflection. Then everything fell back into darkness,

pickaxes struck great hollow blows; one only heard panting chests, the

grunting of discomfort and weariness beneath the weight of the air and

the rain of the springs.

Zacharie, with arms weakened by a spree of the night before, soon

left his work on the pretence that more timbering was necessary. This

allowed him to forget himself in quiet whistling, his eyes vaguely

resting in the shade. Behind the pikemen nearly three metres of

the seam were clear, and they had not yet taken the precaution of

supporting the rock, having grown careless of danger and miserly of

their time.

"Here, you swell," cried the young man to Étienne, "hand up some wood."

Étienne, who was learning from Catherine how to manage his shovel, had

to raise the wood in the cutting. A small supply had remained over from

yesterday. It was usually sent down every morning ready cut to fit the

bed.

"Hurry up there, damn it!" shouted Zacharie, seeing the new putter

hoist himself up awkwardly in the midst of the coal, his arms

embarrassed by four pieces of oak.

He made a hole in the roof with his pickaxe, and then another in the

wall, and wedged in the two ends of the wood, which thus supported

the rock. In the afternoon the workers in the earth cutting took the

rubbish left at the bottom of the gallery by the pikemen, and cleared

out the exhausted section of the seam, in which they destroyed the

wood, being only careful about the lower and upper roads for the

haulage.

Maheu ceased to groan. At last he had detached his block, and he wiped

his streaming face on his sleeve. He was worried about what Zacharie

was doing behind him.

"Let it be," he said, "we will see after breakfast. Better go on

hewing, if we want to make up our share of trams."

"It's because it's sinking," replied the young man. "Look, there's a

crack. It may slip."

But the father shrugged his shoulders. Ah! nonsense! Slip! And if it

did, it would not be the first time; they would get out of it all

right. He grew angry at last, and sent his son to the front of the

cutting.

All of them, however, were now stretching themselves. Levaque, resting

on his back, was swearing as he examined his left thumb which had been

grazed by the fall of a piece of sandstone. Chaval had taken off his

shirt in a fury, and was working with bare chest and back for the sake

of coolness. They were already black with coal, soaked in a fine dust

diluted with sweat which ran down in streams and pools. Maheu first

began again to hammer, lower down, with his head level with the rock.

Now the drop struck his forehead so obstinately that he seemed to feel

it piercing a hole in the bone of his skull.

"You mustn't mind," explained Catherine to Étienne, "they are always

howling."

And like a good-natured girl she went on with her lesson. Every laden

tram arrived at the top in the same condition as it left the cutting,

marked with a special metal token so that the receiver might put it to

the reckoning of the stall. It was necessary, therefore, to be very

careful to fill it, and only to take clean coal, otherwise it was

refused at the receiving office.

The young man, whose eyes were now becoming accustomed to the darkness,

looked at her, still white with her chlorotic complexion, and he could

not have told her age; he thought she must be twelve, she seemed to him

so slight. However, he felt she must be older, with her boyish freedom,

a simple audacity which confused him a little; she did not please him:

he thought her too roguish with her pale Pierrot head, framed at the

temples by the cap. But what astonished him was the strength of this

child, a nervous strength which was blended with a good deal of skill.

She filled her tram faster than he could, with quick small regular

strokes of the shovel; she afterwards pushed it to the inclined way

with a single slow push, without a hitch, easily passing under the low

rocks. He tore himself to pieces, got off the rails, and was reduced to

despair.

It was certainly not a convenient road. It was sixty metres from the

cutting to the upbrow, and the passage, which the miners in the earth

cutting had not yet enlarged, was a mere tube with a very irregular

roof swollen by innumerable bosses; at certain spots the laden tram

could only just pass; the putter had to flatten himself, to push on his

knees, in order not to break his head, and besides this the wood was

already bending and yielding. One could see it broken in the middle in

long pale rents like an over-weak crutch. One had to be careful not to

graze oneself in these fractures; and beneath the slow crushing, which

caused the splitting of billets of oak as large as the thigh, one had

to glide almost on one's belly with a secret fear of suddenly hearing

one's back break.

"Again!" said Catherine, laughing.

Étienne's tram had gone off the rails at the most difficult spot. He

could not roll straight on these rails which sank in the damp earth,

and he swore, became angry, and fought furiously with the wheels, which

he could not get back into place in spite of exaggerated efforts.

"Wait a bit," said the young girl. "If you get angry it will never

go." Skilfully she had glided down and thrust her buttocks beneath the

tram, and by putting the weight on her loins she raised it and replaced

it. The weight was seven hundred kilograms. Surprised and ashamed, he

stammered excuses.

She was obliged to show him how to straddle his legs and brace his feet

against the planking on both sides of the gallery, in order to give

himself a more solid fulcrum. The body had to be bent, the arms made

stiff so as to push with all the muscles of the shoulders and hips.

During the journey he followed her and watched her proceed with tense

back, her fists so low that she seemed trotting on all fours, like one

of those dwarf beasts that perform at circuses. She sweated, panted,

her joints cracked, but without a complaint, with the indifference of

custom, as if it were the common wretchedness of all to live thus bent

double. But he could not succeed in doing as much; his shoes troubled

him, his body seemed broken by walking in this way with lowered

head. At the end of a few minutes the position became a torture, an

intolerable anguish, so painful that he got on his knees for a moment

to straighten himself and breathe.

Then at the upbrow there was more labour. She taught him to fill his

tram quickly. At the top and bottom of this inclined plane, which

served all the cuttings from one level to the other, there was a

trammer--the brakesman above, the receiver below. These scamps of

twelve to fifteen years shouted abominable words to each other, and

to warn them it was necessary to yell still more violently. Then, as

soon as there was an empty tram to send back, the receiver gave the

signal and the putter embarked her full tram, the weight of which made

the other ascend when the brakesman loosened his brake. Below, in the

bottom gallery, were formed the trains which the horses drew to the

shaft.

"Here, you confounded rascals," cried Catherine in the inclined way,

which was wood-lined, about a hundred metres long, and resounded like a

gigantic trumpet.

The trammers must have been resting, for neither of them replied. On

all the levels haulage had stopped. A shrill girl's voice said at last:

"One of them must be on Mouquette, sure enough!"

There was a roar of laughter, and the putters of the whole seam held

their sides.

"Who is that?" asked Étienne of Catherine.

The latter named little Lydie, a scamp who knew more than she ought,

and who pushed her tram as stoutly as a woman in spite of her doll's

arms. As to Mouquette, she was quite capable of being with both the

trammers at once.

But the voice of the receiver arose, shouting out to load. Doubtless a

captain was passing beneath. Haulage began again on the nine levels,

and one only heard the regular calls of the trammers, and the snorting

of the putters arriving at the upbrow and steaming like over-laden

mares. It was the element of bestiality which breathed in the pit, the

sudden desire of the male, when a miner met one of these girls on all

fours, with her flanks in the air and her hips bursting through her

boy's breeches.

And on each journey Étienne found again at the bottom the stuffiness

of the cutting, the hollow and broken cadence of the axes, the deep

painful sighs of the pikemen persisting in their work. All four were

naked, mixed up with the coal, soaked with black mud up to the cap.

At one moment it had been necessary to free Maheu, who was gasping,

and to remove the planks so that the coal could fall into the passage.

Zacharie and Levaque became enraged with the seam, which was now

hard, they said, and which would make the condition of their account

disastrous. Chaval turned, lying for a moment on his back, abusing

Étienne, whose presence decidedly exasperated him.

"A sort of worm; hasn't the strength of a girl! Are you going to fill

your tub? It's to spare your arms, eh? Damned if I don't keep back the

ten sous if you get us one refused!"

The young man avoided replying, too happy at present to have found

this convict's labour and accepting the brutal rule of the worker by

master worker. But he could no longer walk, his feet were bleeding, his

limbs torn by horrible cramps, his body confined in an iron girdle.

Fortunately it was ten o'clock, and the stall decided to have breakfast.

Maheu had a watch, but he did not even look at it. At the bottom of

this starless night he was never five minutes out. All put on their

shirts and jackets. Then, descending from the cutting they squatted

down, their elbows to their sides, their buttocks on their heels, in

that posture so habitual with miners that they keep it even when out

of the mine, without feeling the need of a stone or a beam to sit

on. And each, having taken out his brick, bit seriously at the thick

slice, uttering occasional words on the morning's work. Catherine,

who remained standing, at last joined Étienne, who had stretched

himself out farther along, across the rails, with his back against the

planking. There was a place there almost dry.

"You don't eat?" she said to him, with her mouth full and her brick in

her hand.

Then she remembered that this youth, wandering about at night without a

sou, perhaps had not a bit of bread.

"Will you share with me?"

And as he refused, declaring that he was not hungry, while his voice

trembled with the gnawing in his stomach, she went on cheerfully:

"Ah! if you are fastidious! But here, I've only bitten on that side.

I'll give you this."

She had already broken the bread and butter into two pieces. The young

man, taking his half, restrained himself from devouring it all at once,

and placed his arms on his thighs, so that she should not see how he

trembled. With her quiet air of good comradeship she lay beside him, at

full length on her stomach, with her chin in one hand, slowly eating

with the other. Their lamps, placed between them, lit up their faces.

Catherine looked at him a moment in silence. She must have found him

handsome, with his delicate face and black moustache. She vaguely

smiled with pleasure.

"Then you are an engine-driver, and they sent you away from your

railway. Why?"

"Because I struck my chief."

She remained stupefied, overwhelmed, with her hereditary ideas of

subordination and passive obedience.

"I ought to say that I had been drinking," he went on, and when I drink

I get mad--I could devour myself, and I could devour other people. Yes;

I can't swallow two small glasses without wanting to kill someone. Then

I am ill for two days."

"You mustn't drink," she said, seriously.

"Ah, don't be afraid. I know myself."

And he shook his head. He hated brandy with the hatred of the last

child of a race of drunkards, who suffered in his flesh from all those

ancestors, soaked and driven mad by alcohol to such a point that the

least drop had become poison to him.

"It is because of mother that I didn't like being turned into the

street," he said, after having swallowed a mouthful. "Mother is not

happy, and I used to send her a five-franc piece now and then."

"Where is she, then, your mother?"

"At Paris. Laundress, Rue de la Goutte-d'or."

There was silence. When he thought of these things a tremor dimmed his

dark eyes, the sudden anguish of the injury he brooded over in his fine

youthful strength. For a moment he remained with his looks buried in

the darkness of the mine; and at that depth, beneath the weight and

suffocation of the earth, he saw his childhood again, his mother still

beautiful and strong, forsaken by his father, then taken up again after

having married another man, living with the two men who ruined her,

rolling with them in the gutter in drink and ordure. It was down there,

he recalled the street, the details came back to him; the dirty linen

in the middle of the shop, the drunken carousals that made the house

stink, and the jaw-breaking blows.

"Now," he began again, in a slow voice, "I haven't even thirty sous to

make her presents with. She will die of misery, sure enough."

He shrugged his shoulders with despair, and again bit at his bread and

butter.

"Will you drink?" asked Catherine, uncorking her tin. "Oh, it's coffee,

it won't hurt you. One gets dry when one eats like that."

But he refused; it was quite enough to have taken half her bread.

However, she insisted good-naturedly, and said at last:

"Well, I will drink before you since you are so polite. Only you can't

refuse now, it would be rude."

She held out her tin to him. She had got on to her knees and he saw

her quite close to him, lit up by the two lamps. Why had he found her

ugly? Now that she was black, her face powdered with fine charcoal,

she seemed to him singularly charming. In this face surrounded by

shadow, the teeth in the broad mouth shone with whiteness, while the

eyes looked large and gleamed with a greenish reflection, like a cat's

eyes. A lock of red hair which had escaped from her cap tickled her ear

and made her laugh. She no longer seemed so young, she might be quite

fourteen.

"To please you," he said, drinking and giving her back the tin.

She swallowed a second mouthful and forced him to take one too, wishing

to share, she said; and that little tin that went from one mouth to

the other amused them. He suddenly asked himself if he should not take

her in his arms and kiss her lips. She had large lips of a pale rose

colour, made vivid by the coal, which tormented him with increasing

desire. But he did not dare, intimidated before her, only having known

girls on the streets at Lille of the lowest order, and not realizing

how one ought to behave with a work-girl still living with her family.

"You must be about fourteen then?" he asked, after having gone back to

his bread. She was astonished, almost angry.

"What? fourteen! But I am fifteen! It's true I'm not big. Girls don't

grow quick with us."

He went on questioning her and she told everything without boldness

or shame. For the rest she was not ignorant concerning man and woman,

although he felt that her body was virginal, with the virginity of a

child delayed in her sexual maturity by the environment of bad air and

weariness in which she lived. When he spoke of Mouquette, in order to

embarrass her, she told some horrible stories in a quiet voice, with

much amusement. Ah! she did some fine things! And as he asked if she

herself had no lovers, she replied jokingly that she did not wish to

vex her mother, but that it must happen some day. Her shoulders were

bent. She shivered a little from the coldness of her garments soaked in

sweat, with a gentle resigned air, ready to submit to things and men.

"People can find lovers when they all live together, can't they?"

"Sure enough!"

"And then it doesn't hurt any one. One doesn't tell the priest."

"Oh! the priest! I don't care for him! But there is the Black Man."

"What do you mean, the Black Man?"

"The old miner who comes back into the pit and wrings naughty girls'

necks."

He looked at her, afraid that she was making fun of him.

"You believe in those stupid things? Then you don't know anything."

"Yes, I do. I can read and write. That is useful among us; in father

and mother's time they learnt nothing."

She was certainly very charming. When she had finished her bread and

butter, he would take her and kiss her on her large rosy lips. It

was the resolution of timidity, a thought of violence which choked

his voice. These boy's clothes--this jacket and these breeches--on

the girl's flesh excited and troubled him. He had swallowed his last

mouthful. He drank from the tin and gave it back for her to empty. Now

the moment for action had come, and he cast a restless glance at the

miners farther on. But a shadow blocked the gallery.

For a moment Chaval stood and looked at them from afar. He came

forward, having assured himself that Maheu could not see him; and as

Catherine was seated on the earth he seized her by the shoulders, drew

her head back, and tranquilly crushed her mouth beneath a brutal kiss,

affecting not to notice Étienne. There was in that kiss an act of

possession, a sort of jealous resolution.

However, the young girl was offended.

"Let me go, do you hear?"

He kept hold of her head and looked into her eyes. His moustache and

small red beard flamed in his black face with its large eagle nose. He

let her go at last, and went away without speaking a word.

A shudder had frozen Étienne. It was stupid to have waited. He could

certainly not kiss her now, for she would, perhaps, think that he

wished to behave like the other. In his wounded vanity he experienced

real despair.

"Why did you lie?" he said, in a low voice. "He's your lover."

"But no, I swear," she cried. "There is not that between us. Sometimes

he likes a joke; he doesn't even belong here; it's six months since he

came from the Pas-de-Calais."

Both rose; work was about to be resumed. When she saw him so cold she

seemed annoyed. Doubtless she found him handsomer than the other; she

would have preferred him perhaps. The idea of some amiable, consoling

relationship disturbed her; and when the young man saw with surprise

that his lamp was burning blue with a large pale ring, she tried at

least to amuse him.

"Come, I will show you something," she said, in a friendly way.

When she had led him to the bottom of the cutting, she pointed out to

him a crevice in the coal. A slight bubbling escaped from it, a little

noise like the warbling of a bird.

"Put your hand there; you'll feel the wind. It's fire-damp."

He was surprised. Was that all? Was that the terrible thing which blew

everything up? She laughed, she said there was a good deal of it to-day

to make the flame of the lamps so blue.

"Now, if you've done chattering, lazy louts!" cried Maheu's rough voice.

Catherine and Étienne hastened to fill their trams, and pushed them

to the upbrow with stiffened back, crawling beneath the bossy roof of

the passage. Even after the second journey, the sweat ran off them and

their joints began to crack.

The pikemen had resumed work in the cutting. The men often shortened

their breakfast to avoid getting cold; and their bricks, eaten in this

way, far from the sun, with silent voracity, loaded their stomachs

with lead. Stretched on their sides they hammered more loudly, with

the one fixed idea of filling a large number of trams. Every thought

disappeared in this rage for gain which was so hard to earn. They no

longer felt the water which streamed on them and swelled their limbs,

the cramps of forced attitudes, the suffocation of the darkness in

which they grew pale, like plants put in a cellar. Yet, as the day

advanced, the air became more poisoned and heated with the smoke of

the lamps, with the pestilence of their breaths, with the asphyxia of

the fire-damp--blinding to the eyes like spiders' webs--which only

the aeration of the night could sweep away. At the bottom of their

mole-hill, beneath the weight of the earth, with no more breath in

their inflamed lungs, they went on hammering.

CHAPTER V

Maheu, without looking at his watch which he had left in his jacket,

stopped and said:

"One o'clock directly. Zacharie, is it done?"

The young man had just been at the planking. In the midst of his labour

he had been lying on his back, with dreamy eyes, thinking over a game

of hockey of the night before. He woke up and replied:

"Yes, it will do; we shall see to-morrow."

And he came back to take his place at the cutting. Levaque and Chaval

had also dropped their picks. They were all resting. They wiped their

faces on their naked arms and looked at the roof, in which slaty masses

were cracking. They only spoke about their work.

"Another chance," murmured Chaval, "of getting into loose earth. They

didn't take account of that in the bargain."

"Rascals!" growled Levaque. "They only want to bury us in it."

Zacharie began to laugh. He cared little for the work and the rest,

but it amused him to hear the Company abused. In his placid way Maheu

explained that the nature of the soil changed every twenty metres. One

must be just; they could not foresee everything. Then, when the two

others went on talking against the masters, he became restless, and

looked around him.

"Hush! that's enough."

"You're right," said Levaque, also lowering his voice; "it isn't

wholesome."

A morbid dread of spies haunted them, even at this depth, as if the

shareholders' coal, while still in the seam, might have ears.

"That won't prevent me," added Chaval loudly, in a defiant manner,

"from lodging a brick in the belly of that damned Dansaert, if he talks

to me as he did the other day. I won't prevent him, I won't, from

buying pretty girls with a white skin."

This time Zacharie burst out laughing. The head captain's love for

Pierronne was a constant joke in the pit. Even Catherine rested on her

shovel at the bottom of the cutting, holding her sides, and in a few

words told Étienne the joke; while Maheu became angry, seized by a fear

which he could not conceal.

"Will you hold your tongue, eh? Wait till you're alone if you want to

get into trouble."

He was still speaking when the sound of steps was heard in the upper

gallery. Almost immediately the engineer of the mine, little Négrel,

as the workmen called him among themselves, appeared at the top of the

cutting, accompanied by Dansaert, the head captain.

"Didn't I say so?" muttered Maheu. "There's always someone there,

rising out of the ground."

Paul Négrel, M. Hennebeau's nephew, was a young man of twenty-six,

refined and handsome, with curly hair and brown moustache. His pointed

nose and sparkling eyes gave him the air of an amiable ferret of

sceptical intelligence, which changed into an abrupt authoritative

manner in his relations with the workmen. He was dressed like them, and

like them smeared with coal; to make them respect him he exhibited a

dare-devil courage, passing through the most difficult spots and always

first when landslips or fire-damp explosions occurred.

"Here we are, are we not, Dansaert?" he asked.

The head captain, a coarse-faced Belgian, with a large sensual nose,

replied with exaggerated politeness:

"Yes, Monsieur Négrel. Here is the man who was taken on this morning."

Both of them had slid down into the middle of the cutting. They made

Étienne come up. The engineer raised his lamp and looked at him without

asking any questions.

"Good," he said at last. "But I don't like unknown men to be picked up

from the road. Don't do it again."

He did not listen to the explanations given to him, the necessities of

work, the desire to replace women by men for the haulage. He had begun

to examine the roof while the pikemen had taken up their picks again.

Suddenly he called out:

"I say there, Maheu; have you no care for life? By heavens! you will

all be buried here!"

"Oh! it's solid," replied the workman tranquilly.

"What! solid! but the rock is giving already, and you are planting

props at more than two metres, as if you grudged it! Ah! you are all

alike. You will let your skull be flattened rather than leave the seam

to give the necessary time to the timbering! I must ask you to prop

that immediately. Double the timbering--do you understand?"

And in face of the unwillingness of the miners who disputed the point,

saying that they were good judges of their safety, he became angry.

"Go along! when your heads are smashed, is it you who will have to bear

the consequences? Not at all! it will be the Company which will have to

pay you pensions, you or your wives. I tell you again that we know you;

in order to get two extra trams by evening you would sell your skins."

Maheu, in spite of the anger which was gradually mastering him, still

answered steadily:

"If they paid us enough we should prop it better."

The engineer shrugged his shoulders without replying. He had descended

the cutting, and only said in conclusion, from below:

"You have an hour. Set to work, all of you; and I give you notice that

the stall is fined three francs."

A low growl from the pikemen greeted these words. The force of the

system alone restrained them, that military system which, from the

trammer to the head captain, ground one beneath the other. Chaval

and Levaque, however, made a furious gesture, while Maheu restrained

them by a glance, and Zacharie shrugged his shoulders chaffingly. But

Étienne was, perhaps, most affected. Since he had found himself at the

bottom of this hell a slow rebellion was rising within him. He looked

at the resigned Catherine, with her lowered back. Was it possible to

kill oneself at this hard toil, in this deadly darkness, and not even

to gain the few pence to buy one's daily bread?

However, Négrel went off with Dansaert, who was content to approve by

a continual movement of his head. And their voices again rose; they

had just stopped once more, and were examining the timbering in the

gallery, which the pikemen were obliged to look after for a length of

ten metres behind the cutting.

"Didn't I tell you that they care nothing?" cried the engineer. "And

you! why, in the devil's name, don't you watch them?"

"But I do--I do," stammered the head captain. "One gets tired of

repeating things."

Négrel called loudly:

"Maheu! Maheu!"

They all came down. He went on:

"Do you see that? Will that hold? It's a twopenny-halfpenny

construction! Here is a beam which the posts don't carry already, it

was done so hastily. By Jove! I understand how it is that the mending

costs us so much. It'll do, won't it? if it lasts as long as you have

the care of it; and then it may go smash, and the Company is obliged to

have an army of repairers. Look at it down there; it is mere botching!"

Chaval wished to speak, but he silenced him.

"No! I know what you are going to say. Let them pay you more, eh? Very

well! I warn you that you will force the managers to do something: they

will pay you the planking separately, and proportionately reduce the

price of the trams. We shall see if you will gain that way! Meanwhile,

prop that over again, at once; I shall pass to-morrow."

Amid the dismay caused by this threat he went away. Dansaert, who had

been so humble, remained behind a few moments, to say brutally to the

men:

"You get me into a row, you here. I'll give you something more than

three francs fine, I will. Look out!"

Then, when he had gone, Maheu broke out in his turn:

"By God! what's fair is fair! I like people to be calm, because that's

the only way of getting along, but at last they make you mad. Did you

hear? The tram lowered, and the planking separately! Another way of

paying us less. By God it is!"

He looked for someone upon whom to vent his anger, and saw Catherine

and Étienne swinging their arms.

"Will you just fetch me some wood! What does it matter to you? I'll put

my foot into you somewhere!"

Étienne went to carry it without rancour for this rough speech, so

furious himself against the masters that he thought the miners too

good-natured. As for the others, Levaque and Chaval had found relief in

strong language. All of them, even Zacharie, were timbering furiously.

For nearly half an hour one only heard the creaking of wood wedged in

by blows of the hammer.

They no longer spoke, they snorted, became enraged with the rock, which

they would have hustled and driven back by the force of their shoulders

if they had been able.

"That's enough," said Maheu at last, worn out with anger and fatigue.

"An hour and a half! A fine day's work! We shan't get fifty sous! I'm

off. This disgusts me."

Though there was still half an hour of work left he dressed himself.

The others imitated him. The mere sight of the cutting enraged them. As

the putter had gone back to the haulage they called her, irritated at

her zeal: let the coal take care of itself. And the six, their tools

under their arms, set out to walk the two kilometres back, returning to

the shaft by the road of the morning.

At the chimney Catherine and Étienne were delayed while the pikemen

slid down. They met little Lydie, who stopped in a gallery to let them

pass, and told them of the disappearance of Mouquette, whose nose had

been bleeding so much that she had been away an hour, bathing her face

somewhere, no one knew where. Then, when they left her, the child began

again to push her tram, weary and muddy, stiffening her insect-like

arms and legs like a lean black ant struggling with a load that was too

heavy for it. They let themselves down on their backs, flattening their

shoulders for fear of scratching the skin on their foreheads, and they

walked so close to the polished rock at the back of the stalls that

they were obliged from time to time to hold on to the woodwork, so that

their backsides should not catch fire, as they said jokingly.

Below they found themselves alone. Red stars disappeared afar at a

bend in the passage. Their cheerfulness fell, they began to walk with

the heavy step of fatigue, she in front, he behind. Their lamps were

blackened. He could scarcely see her, drowned in a sort of smoky mist;

and the idea that she was a girl disturbed him because he felt that it

was stupid not to embrace her, and yet the recollection of the other

man prevented him. Certainly she had lied to him: the other was her

lover, they lay together on all those heaps of slaty coal, for she had

a loose woman's gait. He sulked without reason, as if she had deceived

him. She, however, every moment turned round, warned him of obstacles,

and seemed to invite him to be affectionate. They were so lost here,

it would have been so easy to laugh together like good friends! At

last they entered the large haulage gallery; it was a relief to the

indecision from which he was suffering; while she once more had a

saddened look, the regret for a happiness which they would not find

again.

Now the subterranean life rumbled around them with a continual passing

of captains, the come and go of the trams drawn by trotting horses.

Lamps starred the night everywhere. They had to efface themselves

against the rock to leave the path free to shadowy men and beasts,

whose breath came against their faces. Jeanlin, running barefooted

behind his tram, cried out some naughtiness to them which they could

not hear amid the thunder of the wheels. They still went on, she now

silent, he not recognizing the turnings and roads of the morning, and

fancying that she was leading him deeper and deeper into the earth; and

what specially troubled him was the cold, an increasing cold which he

had felt on emerging from the cutting, and which caused him to shiver

the more the nearer they approached the shaft. Between the narrow walls

the column of air now blew like a tempest. He despaired of ever coming

to the end, when suddenly they found themselves in the pit-eye hall.

Chaval cast a sidelong glance at them, his mouth drawn with suspicion.

The others were there, covered with sweat in the icy current, silent

like himself, swallowing their grunts of rage. They had arrived

too soon and could not be taken to the top for half an hour, more

especially since some complicated manoeuvres were going on for

lowering a horse. The porters were still rolling the trams with the

deafening sound of old iron in movement, and the cages were flying up,

disappearing in the rain which fell from the black hole. Below, the

sump, a cesspool ten metres deep, filled with this streaming water,

also exhaled its muddy moisture. Men were constantly moving around the

shaft, pulling the signal cords, pressing on the arms of levers, in the

midst of this spray in which their garments were soaked. The reddish

light of three open lamps cut out great moving shadows and gave to this

subterranean hall the air of a villainous cavern, some bandits' forge

near a torrent.

Maheu made one last effort. He approached Pierron, who had gone on duty

at six o'clock.

"Here! you might as well let us go up."

But the porter, a handsome fellow with strong limbs and a gentle face,

refused with a frightened gesture.

"Impossible: ask the captain. They would fine me."

Fresh growls were stifled. Catherine bent forward and said in Étienne's

ear:

"Come and see the stable, then. That's a comfortable place!"

And they had to escape without being seen, for it was forbidden to go

there. It was on the left, at the end of a short gallery. Twenty-five

metres in length and nearly four high, cut in the rock and vaulted with

bricks, it could contain twenty horses. It was, in fact, comfortable

there. There was a pleasant warmth of living beasts, the good odour of

fresh and well-kept litter. The only lamp threw out the calm rays of a

night-light. There were horses there, at rest, who turned their heads,

with their large infantine eyes, then went back to their hay, without

haste, like fat well-kept workers, loved by everybody.

But as Catherine was reading aloud their names, written on zinc plates

over the mangers, she uttered a slight cry, seeing something suddenly

rise before her. It was Mouquette, who emerged in fright from a pile of

straw in which she was sleeping. On Monday, when she was overtired with

her Sunday's spree, she gave herself a violent blow on the nose, and

left her cutting under the pretence of seeking water, to bury herself

here with the horses in the warm litter. Her father, being weak with

her, allowed it, at the risk of getting into trouble.

Just then, Mouque, the father, entered, a short, bald, worn-out looking

man, but still stout, which is rare in an old miner of fifty. Since he

had been made a groom, he chewed to such a degree that his gums bled in

his black mouth. On seeing the two with his daughter, he became angry.

"What are you up to there, all of you? Come! up! The jades, bringing

a man here! It's a fine thing to come and do your dirty tricks in my

straw."

Mouquette thought it funny, and held her sides. But Étienne, feeling

awkward, moved away, while Catherine smiled at him. As all three

returned to the pit-eye, Bébert and Jeanlin arrived there also with a

train of tubs. There was a stoppage for the manoeuvring of the cages,

and the young girl approached their horse, caressed it with her hand,

and talked about it to her companion. It was Bataille, the _doyen_

of the mine, a white horse who had lived below for ten years. These

ten years he had lived in this hole, occupying the same corner of the

stable, doing the same task along the black galleries without ever

seeing daylight. Very fat, with shining coat and a good-natured air,

he seemed to lead the existence of a sage, sheltered from the evils of

the world above. In this darkness, too, he had become very cunning.

The passage in which he worked had grown so familiar to him that he

could open the ventilation doors with his head, and he lowered himself

to avoid knocks at the narrow spots. Without doubt, also, he counted

his turns, for when he had made the regulation number of journeys he

refused to do any more, and had to be led back to his manger. Now

that old age was coming on, his cat's eyes were sometimes dimmed with

melancholy. Perhaps he vaguely saw again, in the depths of his obscure

dreams, the mill at which he was born, near Marchiennes, a mill placed

on the edge of the Scarpe, surrounded by large fields over which the

wind always blew. Something burnt in the air--an enormous lamp, the

exact appearance of which escaped his beast's memory--and he stood with

lowered head, trembling on his old feet, making useless efforts to

recall the sun.

Meanwhile, the manoeuvres went on in the shaft, the signal hammer had

struck four blows, and the horse was being lowered; there was always

excitement at such a time, for it sometimes happened that the beast

was seized by such terror that it was landed dead. When put into a net

at the top it struggled fiercely; then, when it felt the ground no

longer beneath it, it remained as if petrified and disappeared without

a quiver of the skin, with enlarged and fixed eyes. This animal being

too big to pass between the guides, it had been necessary, when hooking

it beneath the cage, to pull down the head and attach it to the flanks.

The descent lasted nearly three minutes, the engine being slowed as

a precaution. Below, the excitement was increasing. What then? Was

he going to be left on the road, hanging in the blackness? At last

he appeared in his stony immobility, his eye fixed and dilated with

terror. It was a bay horse hardly three years of age, called Trompette.

"Attention!" cried Father Mouque, whose duty it was to receive it.

"Bring him here, don't undo him yet."

Trompette was soon placed on the metal floor in a mass. Still he did

not move: he seemed in a nightmare in this obscure infinite hole, this

deep hall echoing with tumult. They were beginning to unfasten him

when Bataille, who had just been unharnessed, approached and stretched

out his neck to smell this companion who lay on the earth. The workmen

jokingly enlarged the circle. Well! what pleasant odour did he find in

him? But Bataille, deaf to mockery, became animated. He probably found

in him the good odour of the open air, the forgotten odour of the sun

on the grass. And he suddenly broke out into a sonorous neigh, full of

musical gladness, in which there seemed to be the emotion of a sob. It

was a greeting, the joy of those ancient things of which a gust had

reached him, the melancholy of one more prisoner who would not ascend

again until death.

"Ah! that animal Bataille!" shouted the workmen, amused at the antics

of their favourite, "he's talking with his mate."

Trompette was unbound, but still did not move. He remained on his

flank, as if he still felt the net restraining him, garrotted by fear.

At last they got him up with a lash of the whip, dazed and his limbs

quivering. And Father Mouque led away the two beasts, fraternizing

together.

"Here! Is it ready yet?" asked Maheu.

It was necessary to clear the cages, and besides it was yet ten

minutes before the hour for ascending. Little by little the stalls

emptied, and the miners returned from all the galleries. There were

already some fifty men there, damp and shivering, their inflamed

chests panting on every side. Pierron, in spite of his mawkish face,

struck his daughter Lydie, because she had left the cutting before

time. Zacharie slyly pinched Mouquette, with a joke about warming

himself. But the discontent increased; Chaval and Levaque narrated the

engineer's threat, the tram to be lowered in price, and the planking

paid separately. And exclamations greeted this scheme, a rebellion was

germinating in this little corner, nearly six hundred metres beneath

the earth. Soon they could not restrain their voices; these men, soiled

by coal, and frozen by the delay, accused the Company of killing half

their workers at the bottom, and starving the other half to death.

Étienne listened, trembling.

"Quick, quick!" repeated the captain, Richomme, to the porters.

He hastened the preparations for the ascent, not wishing to be hard,

pretending not to hear. However, the murmurs became so loud that he

was obliged to notice them. They were calling out behind him that this

would not last always, and that one fine day the whole affair would be

smashed up.

"You're sensible," he said to Maheu; "make them hold their tongues.

When one hasn't got power one must have sense."

But Maheu, who was getting calm, and had at last become anxious, did

not interfere. Suddenly the voices fell; Négrel and Dansaert, returning

from their inspection, entered from a gallery, both of them sweating.

The habit of discipline made the men stand in rows while the engineer

passed through the group without a word. He got into one tram, and the

head captain into another, the signal was sounded five times, ringing

for the butcher's meat, as they said for the masters; and the cage flew

up in the air in the midst of a gloomy silence.

CHAPTER VI

As he ascended in the cage heaped up with four others, Étienne resolved

to continue his famished course along the roads. One might as well

die at once as go down to the bottom of that hell, where it was not

even possible to earn one's bread. Catherine, in the tram above him,

was no longer at his side with her pleasant enervating warmth; and he

preferred to avoid foolish thoughts and to go away, for with his wider

education he felt nothing of the resignation of this flock; he would

end by strangling one of the masters.

Suddenly he was blinded. The ascent had been so rapid that he was

stunned by the daylight, and his eyelids quivered in the brightness to

which he had already grown unaccustomed. It was none the less a relief

to him to feel the cage settle on to the bars. A lander opened the

door, and a flood of workmen leapt out of the trams.

"I say, Mouquet," whispered Zacharie in the lander's ear, "are we off

to the Volcan to-night?"

The Volcan was a café-concert at Montsou. Mouquet winked his left eye

with a silent laugh which made his jaws gape. Short and stout like his

father, he had the impudent face of a fellow who devours everything

without care for the morrow. Just then Mouquette came out in her turn,

and he gave her a formidable smack on the flank by way of fraternal

tenderness.

Étienne hardly recognized the lofty nave of the receiving-hall, which

had before looked imposing in the ambiguous light of the lanterns.

It was simply bare and dirty; a dull light entered through the dusty

windows. The engine alone shone at the end with its copper; the

well-greased steel cables moved like ribbons soaked in ink, and the

pulleys above, the enormous scaffold which supported them, the cages,

the trams, all this prodigality of metal made the hall look sombre with

their hard grey tones of old iron. Without ceasing, the rumbling of the

wheels shook the metal floor; while from the coal thus put in motion

there arose a fine charcoal powder which powdered black the soil, the

walls, even the joists of the steeple.

But Chaval, after glancing at the table of counters in the receiver's

little glass office, came back furious. He had discovered that two

of their trams had been rejected, one because it did not contain the

regulation amount, the other because the coal was not clean.

"This finishes the day," he cried. "Twenty sous less again! This is

because we take on lazy rascals who use their arms as a pig does his

tail!"

And his sidelong look at Étienne completed his thought.

The latter was tempted to reply by a blow. Then he asked himself what

would be the use since he was going away. This decided him absolutely.

"It's not possible to do it right the first day," said Maheu, to

restore peace; "he'll do better to-morrow."

They were all none the less soured, and disturbed by the need to

quarrel. As they passed to the lamp cabin to give up their lamps,

Levaque began to abuse the lamp-man, whom he accused of not properly

cleaning his lamp. They only slackened down a little in the shed where

the fire was still burning. It had even been too heavily piled up, for

the stove was red and the vast room, without a window, seemed to be

in flames, to such a degree did the reflection make bloody the walls.

And there were grunts of joy, all the backs were roasted at a distance

till they smoked like soup. When their flanks were burning they cooked

their bellies. Mouquette had tranquilly let down her breeches to dry

her chemise. Some lads were making fun of her; they burst out laughing

because she suddenly showed them her posterior, a gesture which in her

was the extreme expression of contempt.

"I'm off," said Chaval, who had shut up his tools in his box.

No one moved. Only Mouquette hastened, and went out behind him on the

pretext that they were both going back to Montsou. But the others went

on joking; they knew that he would have no more to do with her.

Catherine, however, who seemed preoccupied, was speaking in a low voice

to her father. The latter was surprised; then he agreed with a nod; and

calling Étienne to give him back his bundle:

"Listen," he said: "you haven't a sou; you will have time to starve

before the fortnight's out. Shall I try and get you credit somewhere?"

The young man stood for a moment confused. He had been just about to

claim his thirty sous and go. But shame restrained him before the

young girl. She looked at him fixedly; perhaps she would think he was

shirking the work.

"You know I can promise you nothing," Maheu went on. "They can but

refuse us."

Then Étienne consented. They would refuse. Besides, it would bind him

to nothing, he could still go away after having eaten something. Then

he was dissatisfied at not having refused, seeing Catherine's joy, a

pretty laugh, a look of friendship, happy at having been useful to him.

What was the good of it all?

When they had put on their sabots and shut their boxes, the Maheus left

the shed, following their comrades, who were leaving one by one after

they had warmed themselves. Étienne went behind. Levaque and his urchin

joined the band. But as they crossed the screening place a scene of

violence stopped them.

It was in a vast shed, with beams blackened by the powder, and large

shutters, through which blew a constant current of air. The coal trams

arrived straight from the receiving-room, and were then overturned by

the tipping-cradles on to hoppers, long iron slides; and to right and

to left of these the screeners, mounted on steps and armed with shovels

and rakes, separated the stone and swept together the clean coal, which

afterwards fell through funnels into the railway wagons beneath the

shed.

Philoméne Levaque was there, thin and pale, with the sheep-like face of

a girl who spat blood. With head protected by a fragment of blue wool,

and hands and arms black to the elbows, she was screening beneath an

old witch, the mother of Pierronne, the Brulé, as she was called, with

terrible owl's eyes, and a mouth drawn in like a miser's purse. They

were abusing each other, the young one accusing the elder of raking her

stones so that she could not get a basketful in ten minutes. They were

paid by the basket, and these quarrels were constantly arising. Hair

was flying, and hands were making black marks on red faces.

"Give it her bloody well!" cried Zacharie, from above, to his mistress.

All the screeners laughed. But the Brulé turned snappishly on the young

man.

"Now, then, dirty beast! You'd better to own the two kids you have

filled her with. Fancy that, a slip of eighteen, who can't stand

straight!"

Maheu had to prevent his son from descending to see, as he said, the

colour of this carcass's skin.

A foreman came up and the rakes again began to move the coal. One could

only see, all along the hoppers, the round backs of women squabbling

incessantly over the stones.

Outside, the wind had suddenly quieted; a moist cold was falling from a

grey sky. The colliers thrust out their shoulders, folded their arms,

and set forth irregularly, with a rolling gait which made their large

bones stand out beneath their thin garments. In the daylight they

looked like a band of Negroes thrown into the mud. Some of them had not

finished their bricks; and the remains of the bread carried between the

shirt and the jacket made them humpbacked.

"Hallo! there's Bouteloup." said Zacharie, grinning.

Levaque without stopping exchanged two sentences with his lodger, a big

dark fellow of thirty-five with a placid, honest air:

"Is the soup ready, Louis?"

"I believe it is."

"Then the wife is good-humoured to-day."

"Yes, I believe she is."

Other miners bound for the earth-cutting came up, new bands which one

by one were engulfed in the pit. It was the three o'clock descent, more

men for the pit to devour, the gangs who would replace the sets of the

pikemen at the bottom of the passages. The mine never rested; day and

night human insects were digging out the rock six hundred metres below

the beetroot fields.

However, the youngsters went ahead. Jeanlin confided to Bébert a

complicated plan for getting four sous' worth of tobacco on credit,

while Lydie followed respectfully at a distance. Catherine came with

Zacharie and Étienne. None of them spoke. And it was only in front of

the Avantage inn that Maheu and Levaque rejoined them.

"Here we are," said the former to Étienne; "will you come in?"

They separated. Catherine had stood a moment motionless, gazing once

more at the young man with her large eyes full of greenish limpidity

like spring water, the crystal deepened the more by her black face. She

smiled and disappeared with the others on the road that led up to the

settlement.

The inn was situated between the village and the mine, at the crossing

of two roads. It was a two-storied brick house, whitewashed from top

to bottom, enlivened around the windows by a broad pale-blue border.

On a square sign-board nailed above the door, one read in yellow

letters: _A l'Avantage, licensed to Rasseneur._ Behind stretched

a skittle-ground enclosed by a hedge. The Company, who had done

everything to buy up the property placed within its vast territory, was

in despair over this inn in the open fields, at the very entrance of

the Voreux.

"Go in," said Maheu to Étienne.

The little parlour was quite bare with its white walls, its three

tables and its dozen chairs, its deal counter about the size of a

kitchen dresser. There were a dozen glasses at most, three bottles of

liqueur, a decanter, a small zinc tank with a pewter tap to hold the

beer; and nothing else--not a figure, not a little table, not a game.

In the metal fireplace, which was bright and polished, a coal fire was

burning quietly. On the flags a thin layer of white sand drank up the

constant moisture of this water-soaked land.

"A glass," ordered Maheu of a big fair girl, a neighbour's daughter who

sometimes took charge of the place. "Is Rasseneur in?"

The girl turned the tap, replying that the master would soon return.

In a long, slow gulp, the miner emptied half his glass to sweep away

the dust which filled his throat. He offered nothing to his companion.

One other customer, a damp and besmeared miner, was seated before the

table, drinking his beer in silence, with an air of deep meditation. A

third entered, was served in response to a gesture, paid and went away

without uttering a word.

But a stout man of thirty-eight, with a round shaven face and a

good-natured smile, now appeared. It was Rasseneur, a former pikeman

whom the Company had dismissed three years ago, after a strike. A very

good workman, he could speak well, put himself at the head of every

opposition, and had at last become the chief of the discontented. His

wife already held a license, like many miners' wives; and when he was

thrown on to the street he became an innkeeper himself; having found

the money, he placed his inn in front of the Voreux as a provocation

to the Company. Now his house had prospered; it had become a centre,

and he was enriched by the animosity he had gradually fostered in the

hearts of his old comrades.

"This is a lad I hired this morning," said Maheu at once. "Have you

got one of your two rooms free, and will you give him credit for a

fortnight?"

Rasseneur's broad face suddenly expressed great suspicion. He examined

Étienne with a glance, and replied, without giving himself the trouble

to express any regret:

"My two rooms are taken. Can't do it."

The young man expected this refusal; but it hurt him nevertheless,

and he was surprised at the sudden grief he experienced in going. No

matter; he would go when he had received his thirty sous. The miner

who was drinking at a table had left. Others, one by one, continued to

come in to clear their throats, then went on their road with the same

slouching gait. It was a simple swilling without joy or passion, the

silent satisfaction of a need.

"Then, there's no news?" Rasseneur asked in a peculiar tone of Maheu,

who was finishing his beer in small gulps.

The latter turned his head, and saw that only Étienne was near.

"There's been more squabbling. Yes, about the timbering." He told the

story. The innkeeper's face reddened, swelling with emotion, which

flamed in his skin and eyes. At last he broke out:

"Well, well! if they decide to lower the price they are done for."

Étienne constrained him. However he went on, throwing sidelong glances

in his direction. And there were reticences, and implications; he was

talking of the manager, M. Hennebeau, of his wife, of his nephew, the

little Négrel, without naming them, repeating that this could not go

on, that things were bound to smash up one of these fine days. The

misery was too great; and he spoke of the workshops that were closing,

the workers who were going away. During the last month he had given

more than six pounds of bread a day. He had heard the day before, that

M. Deneulin, the owner of a neighbouring pit, could scarcely keep

going. He had also received a letter from Lille full of disturbing

details.

"You know," he whispered, "it comes from that person you saw here one

evening."

But he was interrupted. His wife entered in her turn, a tall woman,

lean and keen, with a long nose and violet cheeks. She was a much more

radical politician than her husband.

"Pluchart's letter," she said. "Ah! if that fellow was master things

would soon go better."

Étienne had been listening for a moment; he understood and became

excited over these ideas of misery and revenge. This name, suddenly

uttered, caused him to start. He said aloud, as if in spite of himself:

"I know him--Pluchart."

They looked at him. He had to add:

"Yes, I am an engine-man: he was my foreman at Lille. A capable man. I

have often talked with him."

Rasseneur examined him afresh; and there was a rapid change on his

face, a sudden sympathy. At last he said to his wife:

"It's Maheu who brings me this gentleman, one of his putters, to see if

there is a room for him upstairs, and if we can give him credit for a

fortnight."

Then the matter was settled in four words. There was a room; the

lodger had left that morning. And the innkeeper, who was very excited,

talked more freely, repeating that he only asked possibilities from

the masters, without demanding, like so many others, things that were

too hard to get. His wife shrugged her shoulders and demanded justice,

absolutely.

"Good evening," interrupted Maheu. "All that won't prevent men from

going down, and as long as they go there will be people working

themselves to death. Look how fresh you are, these three years that

you've been out of it."

"Yes, I'm very much better," declared Rasseneur, complacently.

Étienne went as far as the door, thanking the miner, who was leaving;

but the latter nodded his head without adding a word, and the young

man watched him painfully climb up the road to the settlement. Madame

Rasseneur, occupied with serving customers, asked him to wait a minute,

when she would show him his room, where he could clean himself. Should

he remain? He again felt hesitation, a discomfort which made him regret

the freedom of the open road, the hunger beneath the sun, endured with

the joy of being one's own master. It seemed to him that he had lived

years from his arrival on the pit-bank, in the midst of squalls, to

those hours passed under the earth on his belly in the black passages.

And he shrank from beginning again; it was unjust and too hard. His

man's pride revolted at the idea of becoming a crushed and blinded

beast.

While Étienne was thus debating with himself, his eyes, wandering over

the immense plain, gradually began to see it clearly. He was surprised;

he had not imagined the horizon was like this, when old Bonnemort had

pointed it out to him in the darkness. Before him he plainly saw the

Voreux in a fold of the earth, with its wood and brick buildings, the

tarred screening-shed, the slate-covered steeple, the engine-room

and the tall, pale red chimney, all massed together with that evil

air. But around these buildings the space extended, and he had not

imagined it so large, changed into an inky sea by the ascending waves

of coal soot, bristling with high trestles which carried the rails of

the foot-bridges, encumbered in one corner with the timber supply,

which looked like the harvest of a mown forest. Towards the right the

pit-bank hid the view, colossal as a barricade of giants, already

covered with grass in its older part, consumed at the other end by an

interior fire which had been burning for a year with a thick smoke,

leaving at the surface in the midst of the pale grey of the slates and

sandstones long trails of bleeding rust. Then the fields unrolled, the

endless fields of wheat and beetroot, naked at this season of the year,

marshes with scanty vegetation, cut by a few stunted willows, distant

meadows separated by slender rows of poplars. Very far away little

pale patches indicated towns, Marchiennes to the north, Montsou to the

south; while the forest of Vandame to the east bordered the horizon

with the violet line of its leafless trees. And beneath the livid sky,

in the faint daylight of this winter afternoon, it seemed as if all the

blackness of the Voreux, and all its flying coal dust, had fallen upon

the plain, powdering the trees, sanding the roads, sowing the earth.

Étienne looked, and what especially surprised him was a canal, the

canalized stream of the Scarpe, which he had not seen in the night.

From the Voreux to Marchiennes this canal ran straight, like a dull

silver ribbon two leagues long, an avenue lined by large trees, raised

above the low earth, threading into space with the perspective of its

green banks, its pale water into which glided the vermilion of the

boats. Near one pit there was a wharf with moored vessels which were

laden directly from the trams at the foot-bridges. Afterwards the canal

made a curve, sloping by the marshes; and the whole soul of that smooth

plain appeared to lie in this geometrical stream, which traversed it

like a great road, carting coal and iron.

Étienne's glance went up from the canal to the settlement built on the

height, of which he could only distinguish the red tiles. Then his eyes

rested again at the bottom of the clay slope, towards the Voreux, on

two enormous masses of bricks made and burnt on the spot. A branch of

the Company's railroad passed behind a paling, for the use of the pit.

They must be sending down the last miners to the earth-cutting. Only

one shrill note came from a truck pushed by men. One felt no longer the

unknown darkness, the inexplicable thunder, the flaming of mysterious

stars. Afar, the blast furnaces and the coke kilns had paled with the

dawn. There only remained, unceasingly, the escapement of the pump,

always breathing with the same thick, long breath, the ogre's breath of

which he could now see the grey steam, and which nothing could satiate.

Then Étienne suddenly made up his mind. Perhaps he seemed to see again

Catherine's clear eyes, up there, at the entrance to the settlement.

Perhaps, rather, it was the wind of revolt which came from the Voreux.

He did not know, but he wished to go down again to the mine, to suffer

and to fight. And he thought fiercely of those people Bonnemort had

talked of, the crouching and sated god, to whom ten thousand starving

men gave their flesh without knowing it.

PART TWO

CHAPTER I

The Grégoires' property, Piolaine, was situated two kilometres to the

east of Montsou, on the Joiselle road. The house was a large square

building, without style, dating from the beginning of the last century.

Of all the land that once belonged to it there only remained some

thirty hectares, enclosed by walls, and easy to keep up. The orchard

and kitchen garden especially were everywhere spoken of, being famous

for the finest fruit and vegetables in the country. For the rest, there

was no park, only a small wood. The avenue of old limes, a vault of

foliage three hundred metres long, reaching from the gate to the porch,

was one of the curiosities of this bare plain, on which one could count

the large trees between Marchiennes and Beaugnies.

On that morning the Grégoires got up at eight o'clock. Usually they

never stirred until an hour later, being heavy sleepers; but last

night's tempest had disturbed them. And while her husband had gone

at once to see if the wind had made any havoc, Madame Grégoire went

down to the kitchen in her slippers and flannel dressing-gown. She was

short and stout, about fifty-eight years of age, and retained a broad,

surprised, dollish face beneath the dazzling whiteness of her hair.

"Mélanie," she said to the cook, "suppose you were to make the brioche

this morning, since the dough is ready. Mademoiselle will not get up

for half an hour yet, and she can eat it with her chocolate. Eh? It

will be a surprise."

The cook, a lean old woman who had served them for thirty years,

laughed.

"That's true! it will be a famous surprise. My stove is alight, and the

oven must be hot; and then Honorine can help me a bit."

Honorine, a girl of some twenty years, who had been taken in as a

child and brought up in the house, now acted as housemaid. Besides

these two women, the only other servant was the coachman, Francis, who

undertook the heavy work. A gardener and his wife were occupied with

the vegetables, the fruit, the flowers, and the poultry-yard. And as

service here was patriarchal, this little world lived together, like

one large family, on very good terms.

Madame Grégoire, who had planned this surprise of the brioche in bed,

waited to see the dough put in the oven. The kitchen was very large,

and one guessed it was the most important room in the house by its

extreme cleanliness and by the arsenal of saucepans, utensils, and pots

which filled it. It gave an impression of good feeding. Provisions

abounded, hanging from hooks or in cupboards.

"And let it be well glazed, won't you?" Madame Grégoire said as she

passed into the dining-room.

In spite of the hot-air stove which warmed the whole house, a coal fire

enlivened this room. In other respects it exhibited no luxury; a large

table, chairs, a mahogany sideboard; only two deep easy-chairs betrayed

a love of comfort, long happy hours of digestion. They never went into

the drawing-room, they remained here in a family circle.

Just then M. Grégoire came back dressed in a thick fustian jacket; he

also was ruddy for his sixty years, with large, good-natured, honest

features beneath the snow of his curly hair. He had seen the coachman

and the gardener; there had been no damage of importance, nothing but

a fallen chimney-pot. Every morning he liked to give a glance round

Piolaine, which was not large enough to cause him anxiety, and from

which he derived all the happiness of ownership.

"And Cécile?" he asked, "isn't she up yet then?"

"I can't make it out," replied his wife. "I thought I heard her moving."

The table was set; there were three cups on the white cloth. They sent

Honorine to see what had become of mademoiselle. But she came back

immediately, restraining her laughter, stifling her voice, as if she

were still upstairs in the bedroom.

"Oh! if monsieur and madame could see mademoiselle! She sleeps; oh! she

sleeps like an angel. One can't imagine it! It's a pleasure to look at

her."

The father and mother exchanged tender looks. He said, smiling:

"Will you come and see?"

"The poor little darling!" she murmured. "I'll come."

And they went up together. The room was the only luxurious one in the

house. It was draped in blue silk, and the furniture was lacquered

white, with blue tracery--a spoilt child's whim, which her parents had

gratified. In the vague whiteness of the bed, beneath the half-light

which came through a curtain that was drawn back, the young girl was

sleeping with her cheek resting on her naked arm. She was not pretty,

too healthy, in too vigorous condition, fully developed at eighteen;

but she had superb flesh, the freshness of milk, with her chestnut

hair, her round face, and little willful nose lost between her cheeks.

The coverlet had slipped down, and she was breathing so softly that her

respiration did not even lift her already well-developed bosom.

"That horrible wind must have prevented her from closing her eyes,"

said the mother softly.

The father imposed silence with a gesture. Both of them leant down

and gazed with adoration on this girl, in her virgin nakedness, whom

they had desired so long, and who had come so late, when they had no

longer hoped for her. They found her perfect, not at all too fat, and

could never feed her sufficiently. And she went on sleeping, without

feeling them near her, with their faces against hers. However, a slight

movement disturbed her motionless face. They feared that they would

wake her, and went out on tiptoe.

"Hush!" said M. Grégoire, at the door. "If she has not slept we must

leave her sleeping."

"As long as she likes, the darling!" agreed Madame Grégoire. "We will

wait."

They went down and seated themselves in the easy-chairs in the

dining-room; while the servants, laughing at mademoiselle's sound

sleep, kept the chocolate on the stove without grumbling. He took up a

newspaper; she knitted at a large woollen quilt. It was very hot, and

not a sound was heard in the silent house.

The Grégoires' fortune, about forty thousand francs a year, was

entirely invested in a share of the Montsou mines. They would

complacently narrate its origin, which dated from the very formation of

the Company.

Towards the beginning of the last century, there had been a mad search

for coal between Lille and Valenciennes. The success of those who held

the concession, which was afterwards to become the Anzin Company, had

turned all heads. In every commune the ground was tested; and societies

were formed and concessions grew up in a night. But among all the

obstinate seekers of that epoch, Baron Desrumaux had certainly left

the reputation for the most heroic intelligence. For forty years he

had struggled without yielding, in the midst of continual obstacles:

early searches unsuccessful, new pits abandoned at the end of long

months of work, landslips which filled up borings, sudden inundations

which drowned the workmen, hundreds of thousands of francs thrown

into the earth; then the squabbles of the management, the panics of

the shareholders, the struggle with the lords of the soil, who were

resolved not to recognize royal concessions if no treaty was first made

with themselves. He had at last founded the association of Desrumaux,

Fauquenoix and Co. to exploit the Montsou concession, and the pits

began to yield a small profit when two neighbouring concessions, that

of Cougny, belonging to the Comte de Cougny, and that of Joiselle,

belonging to the Cornille and Jenard Company, had nearly overwhelmed

him beneath the terrible assault of their competition. Happily, on the

25th August 1760, a treaty was made between the three concessions,

uniting them into a single one. The Montsou Mining Company was created,

such as it still exists to-day. In the distribution they had divided

the total property, according to the standard of the money of the

time, into twenty-four sous, of which each was subdivided into twelve

deniers, which made two hundred and eighty-eight deniers; and as the

denier was worth ten thousand francs the capital represented a sum of

nearly three millions. Desrumaux, dying but triumphant, received in

this division six sous and three deniers.

In those days the baron possessed Piolaine, which had three hundred

hectares belonging to it, and he had in his service as steward Honoré

Grégoire, a Picardy lad, the great-grandfather of Léon Grégoire,

Cécile's father. When the Montsou treaty was made, Honoré, who had

laid up savings to the amount of some fifty thousand francs, yielded

tremblingly to his master's unshakable faith. He took out ten thousand

francs in fine crowns, and took a denier, though with the fear of

robbing his children of that sum. His son Eugéne, in fact, received

very small dividends; and as he had become a bourgeois and had been

foolish enough to throw away the other forty thousand francs of the

paternal inheritance in a company that came to grief, he lived meanly

enough. But the interest of the denier gradually increased. The fortune

began with Félicien, who was able to realize a dream with which his

grandfather, the old steward, had nursed his childhood--the purchase

of dismembered Piolaine, which he acquired as national property for

a ludicrous sum. However, bad years followed. It was necessary to

await the conclusion of the revolutionary catastrophes, and afterwards

Napoleon's bloody fall; and it was Léon Grégoire who profited at a

stupefying rate of progress by the timid and uneasy investment of his

great-grandfather. Those poor ten thousand francs grew and multiplied

with the Company's prosperity. From 1820 they had brought in one

hundred per cent, ten thousand francs. In 1844 they had produced twenty

thousand; in 1850, forty. During two years the dividend had reached the

prodigious figure of fifty thousand francs; the value of the denier,

quoted at the Lille bourse at a million, had centupled in a century.

M. Grégoire, who had been advised to sell out when this figure of a

million was reached, had refused with his smiling paternal air. Six

months later an industrial crisis broke out; the denier fell to six

hundred thousand francs. But he still smiled; he regretted nothing, for

the Grégoires had maintained an obstinate faith in their mine. It would

rise again: God Himself was not so solid. Then with his religious faith

was mixed profound gratitude towards an investment which for a century

had supported the family in doing nothing. It was like a divinity of

their own, whom their egoism surrounded with a kind of worship, the

benefactor of the hearth, lulling them in their great bed of idleness,

fattening them at their gluttonous table. From father to son it had

gone on. Why risk displeasing fate by doubting it? And at the bottom

of their fidelity there was a superstitious terror, a fear lest the

million of the denier might suddenly melt away if they were to realize

it and to put it in a drawer. It seemed to them more sheltered in the

earth, from which a race of miners, generations of starving people,

extracted it for them, a little every day, as they needed it.

For the rest, happiness rained on this house. M. Grégoire, when very

young, had married the daughter of a Marchiennes druggist, a plain,

penniless girl, whom he adored, and who repaid him with happiness. She

shut herself up in her household, and worshipped her husband, having

no other will but his. No difference of tastes separated them, their

desires were mingled in one idea of comfort; and they had thus lived

for forty years, in affection and little mutual services. It was a

well-regulated existence; the forty thousand francs were spent quietly,

and the savings expended on Cécile, whose tardy birth had for a moment

disturbed the budget. They still satisfied all her whims--a second

horse, two more carriages, toilets sent from Paris. But they tasted in

this one more joy; they thought nothing too good for their daughter,

although they had such a horror of display that they had preserved the

fashions of their youth. Every unprofitable expense seemed foolish to

them.

Suddenly the door opened, and a loud voice called out:

"Hallo! What now? Having breakfast without me!"

It was Cécile, just come from her bed, her eyes heavy with sleep. She

had simply put up her hair and flung on a white woollen dressing-gown.

"No, no!" said the mother; "you see we are all waiting. Eh? has the

wind prevented you from sleeping, poor darling?"

The young girl looked at her in great surprise.

"Has it been windy? I didn't know anything about it. I haven't moved

all night."

Then they thought this funny, and all three began to laugh; the

servants who were bringing in the breakfast also broke out laughing,

so amused was the household at the idea that mademoiselle had been

sleeping for twelve hours right off. The sight of the brioche completed

the expansion of their faces.

"What! Is it cooked, then?" said Cécile; "that must be a surprise for

me! That'll be good now, hot, with the chocolate!"

They sat down to table at last with the smoking chocolate in their

cups, and for a long time talked of nothing but the brioche. Mélanie

and Honorine remained to give details about the cooking and watched

them stuffing themselves with greasy lips, saying that it was a

pleasure to make a cake when one saw the masters enjoying it so much.

But the dogs began to bark loudly; perhaps they announced the music

mistress, who came from Marchiennes on Mondays and Fridays. A professor

of literature also came. All the young girl's education was thus

carried on at Piolaine in happy ignorance, with her childish whims,

throwing the book out of the window as soon as anything wearied her.

"It is M. Deneulin," said Honorine, returning.

Behind her, Deneulin, a cousin of M. Grégoire's, appeared without

ceremony; with his loud voice, his quick gestures, he had the

appearance of an old cavalry officer. Although over fifty, his short

hair and thick moustache were as black as ink.

"Yes! It is I. Good day! Don't disturb yourselves."

He had sat down amid the family's exclamations. They turned back at

last to their chocolate.

"Have you anything to tell me?" asked M. Grégoire.

"No! nothing at all," Deneulin hastened to reply. "I came out on

horseback to rub off the rust a bit, and as I passed your door I

thought I would just look in."

Cécile questioned him about Jeanne and Lucie, his daughters. They

were perfectly well, the first was always at her painting, while the

other, the elder, was training her voice at the piano from morning till

night. And there was a slight quiver in his voice, a disquiet which he

concealed beneath bursts of gaiety.

M. Grégoire began again:

"And everything goes well at the pit?"

"Well, I am upset over this dirty crisis. Ah! we are paying for the

prosperous years! They have built too many workshops, put down too many

railways, invested too much capital with a view to a large return, and

today the money is asleep. They can't get any more to make the whole

thing work. Luckily things are not desperate; I shall get out of it

somehow."

Like his cousin he had inherited a denier in the Montsou mines. But

being an enterprising engineer, tormented by the desire for a royal

fortune, he had hastened to sell out when the denier had reached a

million. For some months he had been maturing a scheme. His wife

possessed, through an uncle, the little concession of Vandame, where

only two pits were open--Jean-Bart and Gaston-Marie--in an abandoned

state, and with such defective material that the output hardly covered

the cost. Now he was meditating the repair of Jean-Bart, the renewal

of the engine, and the enlargement of the shaft so as to facilitate

the descent, keeping Gaston-Marie only for exhaustion purposes. They

ought to be able to shovel up gold there, he said. The idea was sound.

Only the million had been spent over it, and this damnable industrial

crisis broke out at the moment when large profits would have shown that

he was right. Besides, he was a bad manager, with a rough kindness

towards his workmen, and since his wife's death he allowed himself to

be pillaged, and also gave the rein to his daughters, the elder of whom

talked of going on the stage, while the younger had already had three

landscapes refused at the Salon, both of them joyous amid the downfall,

and exhibiting in poverty their capacity for good household management.

"You see, Léon," he went on, in a hesitating voice, "you were wrong not

to sell out at the same time as I did; now everything is going down.

You run risk, and if you had confided your money to me you would have

seen what we should have done at Vandame in our mine!"

M. Grégoire finished his chocolate without haste. He replied peacefully:

"Never! You know that I don't want to speculate. I live quietly, and it

would be too foolish to worry my head over business affairs. And as for

Montsou, it may continue to go down, we shall always get our living out

of it. It doesn't do to be so diabolically greedy! Then, listen, it is

you who will bite your fingers one day, for Montsou will rise again and

Cécile's grandchildren will still get their white bread out of it."

Deneulin listened with a constrained smile.

"Then," he murmured, "if I were to ask you to put a hundred thousand

francs in my affair you would refuse?"

But seeing the Grégoires' disturbed faces he regretted having gone so

far; he put off his idea of a loan, reserving it until the case was

desperate.

"Oh! I have not got to that! it is a joke. Good heavens! Perhaps you

are right; the money that other people earn for you is the best to

fatten on."

They changed the conversation. Cécile spoke again of her cousins, whose

tastes interested, while at the same time they shocked her. Madame

Grégoire promised to take her daughter to see those dear little ones on

the first fine day. M. Grégoire, however, with a distracted air, did

not follow the conversation. He added aloud:

"If I were in your place I wouldn't persist any more; I would treat

with Montsou. They want it, and you will get your money back."

He alluded to an old hatred which existed between the concession

of Montsou and that of Vandame. In spite of the latter's slight

importance, its powerful neighbour was enraged at seeing, enclosed

within its own sixty-seven communes, this square league which did not

belong to it, and after having vainly tried to kill it had plotted to

buy it at a low price when in a failing condition. The war continued

without truce. Each party stopped its galleries at two hundred metres

from the other; it was a duel to the last drop of blood, although the

managers and engineers maintained polite relations with each other.

Deneulin's eyes had flamed up.

"Never!" he cried, in his turn. "Montsou shall never have Vandame as

long as I am alive. I dined on Thursday at Hennebeau's, and I saw

him fluttering around me. Last autumn, when the big men came to the

administration building, they made me all sorts of advances. Yes, yes,

I know them--those marquises, and dukes, and generals, and ministers!

Brigands who would take away even your shirt at the corner of a wood."

He could not cease. Besides, M. Grégoire did not defend the

administration of Montsou--the six stewards established by the treaty

of 1760, who governed the Company despotically, and the five survivors

of whom on every death chose the new member among the powerful and rich

shareholders. The opinion of the owner of Piolaine, with his reasonable

ideas, was that these gentlemen were sometimes rather immoderate in

their exaggerated love of money.

Mélanie had come to clear away the table. Outside the dogs were again

barking, and Honorine was going to the door, when Cécile, who was

stifled by heat and food, left the table.

"No, never mind! it must be for my lesson."

Deneulin had also risen. He watched the young girl go out, and asked,

smiling:

"Well! and the marriage with little Négrel?"

"Nothing has been settled," said Madame Grégoire; "it is only an idea.

We must reflect."

"No doubt!" he went on, with a gay laugh. "I believe that the nephew

and the aunt-- What baffles me is that Madame Hennebeau should throw

herself so on Cécile's neck."

But M. Grégoire was indignant. So distinguished a lady, and fourteen

years older than the young man! It was monstrous; he did not like

joking on such subjects. Deneulin, still laughing, shook hands with him

and left.

"Not yet," said Cécile, coming back. "It is that woman with the two

children. You know, mamma, the miner's wife whom we met. Are they to

come in here?"

They hesitated. Were they very dirty? No, not very; and they would

leave their sabots in the porch. Already the father and mother had

stretched themselves out in the depths of their large easy-chairs. They

were digesting there. The fear of change of air decided them.

"Let them come in, Honorine."

Then Maheude and her little ones entered, frozen and hungry, seized

by fright on finding themselves in this room, which was so warm and

smelled so nicely of the brioche.

CHAPTER II

The room remained shut up and the shutters had allowed gradual streaks

of daylight to form a fan on the ceiling. The confined air stupefied

them so that they continued their night's slumber: Lénore and Henri in

each other's arms, Alzire with her head back, lying on her hump; while

Father Bonnemort, having the bed of Zacharie and Jeanlin to himself,

snored with open mouth. No sound came from the closet where Maheude had

gone to sleep again while suckling Estelle, her breast hanging to one

side, the child lying across her belly, stuffed with milk, overcome

also and stifling in the soft flesh of the bosom.

The clock below struck six. Along the front of the settlement one heard

the sound of doors, then the clatter of sabots along the pavements; the

screening women were going to the pit. And silence again fell until

seven o'clock. Then shutters were drawn back, yawns and coughs were

heard through the walls. For a long time a coffee-mill scraped, but no

one awoke in the room.

Suddenly a sound of blows and shouts, far away, made Alzire sit up. She

was conscious of the time, and ran barefooted to shake her mother.

"Mother, mother, it is late! you have to go out. Take care, you are

crushing Estelle."

And she saved the child, half-stifled beneath the enormous mass of the

breasts.

"Good gracious!" stammered Maheude, rubbing her eyes, "I'm so knocked

up I could sleep all day. Dress Lénore and Henri, I'll take them with

me; and you can take care of Estelle; I don't want to drag her along

for fear of hurting her, this dog's weather."

She hastily washed herself and put on an old blue skirt, her cleanest,

and a loose jacket of grey wool in which she had made two patches the

evening before.

"And the soup! Good gracious!" she muttered again.

When her mother had gone down, upsetting everything, Alzire went back

into the room taking with her Estelle, who had begun screaming. But

she was used to the little one's rages; at eight she had all a woman's

tender cunning in soothing and amusing her. She gently placed her in

her still warm bed, and put her to sleep again, giving her a finger

to suck. It was time, for now another disturbance broke out, and she

had to make peace between Lénore and Henri, who at last awoke. These

children could never get on together; it was only when they were asleep

that they put their arms round one another's necks. The girl, who was

six years old, as soon as she was awake set on the boy, her junior

by two years, who received her blows without returning them. Both of

them had the same kind of head, which was too large for them, as if

blown out, with disorderly yellow hair. Alzire had to pull her sister

by the legs, threatening to take the skin off her bottom. Then there

was stamping over the washing, and over every garment that she put

on to them. The shutters remained closed so as not to disturb Father

Bonnemort's sleep. He went on snoring amid the children's frightful

clatter.

"It's ready. Are you coming, up there?" shouted Maheude.

She had put back the blinds, and stirred up the fire, adding some coal

to it. Her hope was that the old man had not swallowed all the soup.

But she found the saucepan dry, and cooked a handful of vermicelli

which she had been keeping for three days in reserve. They could

swallow it with water, without butter, as there could not be any

remaining from the day before, and she was surprised to find that

Catherine in preparing the bricks had performed the miracle of leaving

a piece as large as a nut. But this time the cupboard was indeed empty:

nothing, not a crust, not an odd fragment, not a bone to gnaw. What was

to become of them if Maigrat persisted in cutting short their credit,

and if the Piolaine people would not give them the five francs? When

the men and the girl returned from the pit they would want to eat, for

unfortunately it had not yet been found out how to live without eating.

"Come down, will you?" she cried out, getting angry. "I ought to be

gone by this!"

When Alzire and the children were there she divided the vermicelli in

three small portions. She herself was not hungry, she said. Although

Catherine had already poured water on the coffee-dregs of the day

before, she did so over again, and swallowed two large glasses of

coffee so weak that it looked like rusty water. That would keep her up

all the same.

"Listen!" she repeated to Alzire. "You must let your grandfather sleep;

you must watch that Estelle does not knock her head; and if she wakes,

or if she howls too much, here! take this bit of sugar and melt it and

give it her in spoonfuls. I know that you are sensible and won't eat it

yourself."

"And school, mother?"

"School! well, that must be left for another day: I want you."

"And the soup? would you like me to make it if you come back late?"

"Soup, soup: no, wait till I come."

Alzire, with the precocious intelligence of a little invalid girl,

could make soup very well. She must have understood, for she did not

insist. Now the whole settlement was awake, bands of children were

going to school, and one heard the trailing noise of their clogs. Eight

o'clock struck, and a growing murmur of chatter arose on the left,

among the Levaque people. The women were commencing their day around

the coffee-pots, with their fists on their hips, their tongues turning

without ceasing, like millstones. A faded head, with thick lips and

flattened nose, was pressed against a window-pane, calling out:

"Got some news. Stop a bit."

"No, no! later on," replied Maheude. "I have to go out."

And for fear of giving way to the offer of a glass of hot coffee she

pushed Lénore and Henri, and set out with them. Up above, Father

Bonnemort was still snoring with a rhythmic snore which rocked the

house.

Outside, Maheude was surprised to find that the wind was no longer

blowing. There had been a sudden thaw; the sky was earth-coloured,

the walls were sticky with greenish moisture, and the roads were

covered with pitch-like mud, a special kind of mud peculiar to the

coal country, as black as diluted soot, thick and tenacious enough

to pull off her sabots. Suddenly she boxed Lénore's ears, because

the little one amused herself by piling the mud on her clogs as on

the end of a shovel. On leaving the settlement she had gone along by

the pit-bank and followed the road of the canal, making a short cut

through broken-up paths, across rough country shut in by mossy palings.

Sheds succeeded one another, long workshop buildings, tall chimneys

spitting out soot, and soiling this ravaged suburb of an industrial

district. Behind a clump of poplars the old Réquillart pit exhibited

its crumbling steeple, of which the large skeleton alone stood upright.

And turning to the right, Maheude found herself on the high road.

"Stop, stop, dirty pig! I'll teach you to make mincemeat."

Now it was Henri, who had taken a handful of mud and was moulding it.

The two children had their ears impartially boxed, and were brought

into good order, looking out of the corner of their eyes at the mud

pies they had made. They draggled along, already exhausted by their

efforts to unstick their shoes at every step.

On the Marchiennes side the road unrolled its two leagues of pavement,

which stretched straight as a ribbon soaked in cart grease between

the reddish fields. But on the other side it went winding down

through Montsou, which was built on the slope of a large undulation

in the plain. These roads in the Nord, drawn like a string between

manufacturing towns, with their slight curves, their slow ascents,

gradually get lined with houses and tend to make the department one

laborious city. The little brick houses, daubed over to enliven the

climate, some yellow, others blue, others black--the last, no doubt,

in order to reach at once their final shade--went serpentining down to

right and to left to the bottom of the slope. A few large two-storied

villas, the dwellings of the heads of the workshops, made gaps in the

serried line of narrow facades. A church, also of brick, looked like a

new model of a large furnace, with its square tower already stained by

the floating coal dust. And amid the sugar works, the rope works, and

the flour mills, there stood out ballrooms, restaurants, and beershops,

which were so numerous that to every thousand houses there were more

than five hundred inns.

As she approached the Company's Yards, a vast series of storehouses and

workshops, Maheude decided to take Henri and Lénore by the hand, one on

the right, the other on the left. Beyond was situated the house of the

director, M. Hennebeau, a sort of vast chalet, separated from the road

by a grating, and then a garden in which some lean trees vegetated.

Just then, a carriage had stopped before the door and a gentleman

with decorations and a lady in a fur cloak alighted: visitors just

arrived from Paris at the Marchiennes station, for Madame Hennebeau,

who appeared in the shadow of the porch, was uttering exclamations of

surprise and joy.

"Come along, then, dawdlers!" growled Maheude, pulling the two little

ones, who were standing in the mud.

When she arrived at Maigrat's, she was quite excited. Maigrat lived

close to the manager; only a wall separated the latter's ground from

his own small house, and he had there a warehouse, a long building

which opened on to the road as a shop without a front. He kept

everything there, grocery, cooked meats, fruit, and sold bread, beer,

and saucepans. Formerly an overseer at the Voreux, he had started with

a small canteen; then, thanks to the protection of his superiors, his

business had enlarged, gradually killing the Montsou retail trade. He

centralized merchandise, and the considerable custom of the settlements

enabled him to sell more cheaply and to give longer credit. Besides, he

had remained in the Company's hands, and they had built his small house

and his shop.

"Here I am again, Monsieur Maigrat," said Maheude humbly, finding him

standing in front of his door.

He looked at her without replying. He was a stout, cold, polite man,

and he prided himself on never changing his mind.

"Now you won't send me away again, like yesterday. We must have bread

from now to Saturday. Sure enough, we owe you sixty francs these two

years."

She explained in short, painful phrases. It was an old debt contracted

during the last strike. Twenty times over they had promised to settle

it, but they had not been able; they could not even give him forty sous

a fortnight. And then a misfortune had happened two days before; she

had been obliged to pay twenty francs to a shoemaker who threatened to

seize their things. And that was why they were without a sou. Otherwise

they would have been able to go on until Saturday, like the others.

Maigrat, with protruded belly and folded arms, shook his head at every

supplication.

"Only two loaves, Monsieur Maigrat. I am reasonable, I don't ask for

coffee. Only two three-pound loaves a day."

"No," he shouted at last, at the top of his voice.

His wife had appeared, a pitiful creature who passed all her days

over a ledger, without even daring to lift her head. She moved away,

frightened at seeing this unfortunate woman turning her ardent,

beseeching eyes towards her. It was said that she yielded the conjugal

bed to the putters among the customers. It was a known fact that when

a miner wished to prolong his credit, he had only to send his daughter

or his wife, plain or pretty, it mattered not, provided they were

complaisant.

Maheude, still imploring Maigrat with her look, felt herself

uncomfortable under the pale keenness of his small eyes, which seemed

to undress her. It made her angry; she would have understood before she

had had seven children, when she was young. And she went off, violently

dragging Lénore and Henri who were occupied in picking up nut-shells

from the gutter where they were making investigations.

"This won't bring you luck, Monsieur Maigrat, remember!"

Now there only remained the Piolaine people. If these would not throw

her a five-franc piece she might as well lie down and die. She had

taken the Joiselle road on the left. The administration building was

there at the corner of the road, a veritable brick palace, where

the great people from Paris, princes and generals and members of

the Government, came every autumn to give large dinners. As she

walked she was already spending the five francs, first bread, then

coffee, afterwards a quarter of butter, a bushel of potatoes for the

morning soup and the evening stew; finally, perhaps, a bit of pig's

chitterlings, for the father needed meat.

The Curé of Montsou, Abbé Joire, was passing, holding up his cassock,

with the delicate air of a fat, well-nourished cat afraid of wetting

its fur. He was a mild man who pretended not to interest himself in

anything, so as not to vex either the workers or the masters.

"Good day, Monsieur le Curé."

Without stopping he smiled at the children, and left her planted in

the middle of the road. She was not religious, but she had suddenly

imagined that this priest would give her something.

And the journey began again through the black, sticky mud. There were

still two kilometres to walk, and the little ones dragged behind more

than ever, for they were frightened, and no longer amused themselves.

To right and to left of the path the same vague landscape unrolled,

enclosed within mossy palings, the same factory buildings, dirty with

smoke, bristling with tall chimneys. Then the flat land was spread

out in immense open fields, like an ocean of brown clods, without a

tree-trunk, as far as the purplish line of the forest of Vandame.

"Carry me, mother."

She carried them one after the other. Puddles made holes in the

pathway, and she pulled up her clothes, fearful of arriving too dirty.

Three times she nearly fell, so sticky was that confounded pavement.

And as they at last arrived before the porch, two enormous dogs threw

themselves upon them, barking so loudly that the little ones yelled

with terror. The coachman was obliged to take a whip to them.

"Leave your sabots, and come in," repeated Honorine. In the dining-room

the mother and children stood motionless, dazed by the sudden heat, and

very constrained beneath the gaze of this old lady and gentleman, who

were stretched out in their easy-chairs.

"Cécile," said the old lady, "fulfil your little duties."

The Grégoires charged Cécile with their charities. It was part of their

idea of a good education. One must be charitable. They said themselves

that their house was the house of God. Besides, they flattered

themselves that they performed their charity with intelligence, and

they were exercised by a constant fear lest they should be deceived,

and so encourage vice. So they never gave money, never! Not ten sous,

not two sous, for it is a well-known fact that as soon as a poor man

gets two sous he drinks them. Their alms were, therefore, always in

kind, especially in warm clothing, distributed during the winter to

needy children.

"Oh! the poor dears!" exclaimed Cécile, '"how pale they are from the

cold! Honorine, go and look for the parcel in the cupboard."

The servants were also gazing at these miserable creatures with the

pity and vague uneasiness of girls who are in no difficulty about their

own dinners. While the housemaid went upstairs, the cook forgot her

duties, leaving the rest of the brioche on the table, and stood there

swinging her empty hands.

"I still have two woollen dresses and some comforters," Cécile went on;

"you will see how warm they will be, the poor dears!"

Then Maheude found her tongue, and stammered:

"Thank you so much, mademoiselle. You are all too good."

Tears had filled her eyes, she thought herself sure of the five francs,

and was only preoccupied by the way in which she would ask for them if

they were not offered to her. The housemaid did not reappear, and there

was a moment of embarrassed silence. From their mother's skirts the

little ones opened their eyes wide and gazed at the brioche.

"You only have these two?" asked Madame Grégoire, in order to break the

silence.

"Oh, madame! I have seven."

M. Grégoire, who had gone back to his newspaper, sat up indignantly.

"Seven children! But why? good God!"

"It is imprudent," murmured the old lady.

Maheude made a vague gesture of apology. What would you have? One

doesn't think about it at all, they come quite naturally. And then,

when they grow up they bring something in, and that makes the household

go. Take their case, they could get on, if it was not for the

grandfather who was getting quite stiff, and if it was not that among

the lot only two of her sons and her eldest daughter were old enough

to go down into the pit. It was necessary, all the same, to feed the

little ones who brought nothing in.

"Then," said Madame Grégoire, "you have worked for a long time at the

mines?"

A silent laugh lit up Maheude's pale face.

"Ah, yes! ah, yes! I went down till I was twenty. The doctor said that

I should stay down for good after I had been confined the second time,

because it seems that made something go wrong in my inside. Besides,

then I got married, and I had enough to do in the house. But on my

husband's side, you see, they have been down there for ages. It goes

up from grandfather to grandfather, one doesn't know how far back,

quite to the beginning when they first took the pick down there at

Réquillart."

M. Grégoire thoughtfully contemplated this woman and these pitiful

children, with their waxy flesh, their discoloured hair, the

degeneration which stunted them, gnawed by anaemia, and with the

melancholy ugliness of starvelings. There was silence again, and one

only heard the burning coal as it gave out a jet of gas. The moist

room had that heavy air of comfort in which our middle-class nooks of

happiness slumber.

"What is she doing, then?" exclaimed Cécile impatiently. "Mélanie, go

up and tell her that the parcel is at the bottom of the cupboard, on

the left."

In the meanwhile, M. Grégoire repeated aloud the reflections inspired

by the sight of these starving ones.

"There is evil in this world, it is quite true; but, my good woman,

it must also be said that workpeople are never prudent. Thus, instead

of putting aside a few sous like our peasants, miners drink, get into

debt, and end by not having enough to support their families."

"Monsieur is right," replied Maheude sturdily. "They don't always keep

to the right path. That's what I'm always saying to the ne'er-do-wells

when they complain. Now, I have been lucky; my husband doesn't drink.

All the same, on feast Sundays he sometimes takes a drop too much; but

it never goes farther. It is all the nicer of him, since before our

marriage he drank like a hog, begging your pardon. And yet, you know,

it doesn't help us much that he is so sensible. There are days like

to-day when you might turn out all the drawers in the house and not

find a farthing."

She wished to suggest to them the idea of the five-franc piece, and

went on in her low voice, explaining the fatal debt, small at first,

then large and overwhelming. They paid regularly for many fortnights.

But one day they got behind, and then it was all up. They could never

catch up again. The gulf widened, and the men became disgusted with

work which did not even allow them to pay their way. Do what they

could, there was nothing but difficulties until death. Besides, it must

be understood that a collier needed a glass to wash away the dust.

It began there, and then he was always in the inn when worries came.

Without complaining of any one it might be that the workmen did not

earn as much as they ought to.

"I thought," said Madame Grégoire, "that the Company gave you lodging

and firing?"

Maheude glanced sideways at the flaming coal in the fireplace.

"Yes, yes, they give us coal, not very grand, but it burns. As to

lodging, it only costs six francs a month; that sounds like nothing,

but it is often pretty hard to pay. To-day they might cut me up into

bits without getting two sous out of me. Where there's nothing, there's

nothing."

The lady and gentleman were silent, softly stretched out, and gradually

wearied and disquieted by the exhibition of this wretchedness. She

feared she had wounded them, and added, with the stolid and just air of

a practical woman:

"Oh! I didn't want to complain. Things are like this, and one has to

put up with them; all the more that it's no good struggling, perhaps

we shouldn't change anything. The best is, is it not, to try and live

honestly in the place in which the good God has put us?"

M. Grégoire approved this emphatically.

"With such sentiments, my good woman, one is above misfortune."

Honorine and Mélanie at last brought the parcel.

Cécile unfastened it and took out the two dresses. She added

comforters, even stockings and mittens. They would all fit beautifully;

she hastened and made the servants wrap up the chosen garments; for her

music mistress had just arrived; and she pushed the mother and children

towards the door.

"We are very short," stammered Maheude; "if we only had a five-franc

piece--"

The phrase was stifled, for the Maheus were proud and never begged.

Cécile looked uneasily at her father; but the latter refused

decisively, with an air of duty.

"No, it is not our custom. We cannot do it."

Then the young girl, moved by the mother's overwhelmed face, wished to

do all she could for the children. They were still looking fixedly at

the brioche; she cut it in two and gave it to them.

"Here! this is for you."

Then, taking the pieces back, she asked for an old newspaper:

"Wait, you must share with your brothers and sisters."

And beneath the tender gaze of her parents she finally pushed them out

of the room. The poor starving urchins went off, holding the brioche

respectfully in their benumbed little hands.

Maheude dragged her children along the road, seeing neither the desert

fields, nor the black mud, nor the great livid sky. As she passed

through Montsou she resolutely entered Maigrat's shop, and begged so

persistently that at last she carried away two loaves, coffee, butter,

and even her five-franc piece, for the man also lent money by the week.

It was not her that he wanted, it was Catherine; she understood that

when he advised her to send her daughter for provisions. They would see

about that. Catherine would box his ears if he came too close under her

nose.

CHAPTER III

Eleven o'clock struck at the little church in the Deux-Cent-Quarante

settlement, a brick chapel to which Abbé Joire came to say mass

on Sundays. In the school beside it, also of brick, one heard the

faltering voices of the children, in spite of windows closed against

the outside cold. The wide passages, divided into little gardens,

back to back, between the four large blocks of uniform houses, were

deserted; and these gardens, devastated by the winter, exhibited

the destitution of their marly soil, lumped and spotted by the last

vegetables. They were making soup, chimneys were smoking, a woman

appeared at distant intervals along the fronts, opened a door and

disappeared. From one end to the other, on the pavement, the pipes

dripped into tubs, although it was no longer raining, so charged was

this grey sky with moistness. And the village, built altogether in the

midst of the vast plain, and edged by its black roads as by a mourning

border, had no touch of joyousness about it save the regular bands of

its red tiles, constantly washed by showers.

When Maheude returned, she went out of her way to buy potatoes from

an overseer's wife whose crop was not yet exhausted. Behind a curtain

of sickly poplars, the only trees in these flat regions, was a group

of isolated buildings, houses placed four together, and surrounded

by their gardens. As the Company reserved this new experiment for

the captains, the workpeople called this corner of the hamlet the

settlement of the Bas-de-Soie, just as they called their own settlement

Paie-tes-Dettes, in good-humoured irony of their wretchedness.

"Eh! Here we are," said Maheude, laden with parcels, pushing in Lénore

and Henri, covered with mud and quite tired out.

In front of the fire Estelle was screaming, cradled in Alzire's arms.

The latter, having no more sugar and not knowing how to soothe her, had

decided to pretend to give her the breast. This ruse often succeeded.

But this time it was in vain for her to open her dress, and to press

the mouth against the lean breast of an eight-year-old invalid; the

child was enraged at biting the skin and drawing nothing.

"Pass her to me," cried the mother as soon as she found herself free;

"she won't let us say a word."

When she had taken from her bodice a breast as heavy as a leather

bottle, to the neck of which the brawler hung, suddenly silent, they

were at last able to talk. Otherwise everything was going on well; the

little housekeeper had kept up the fire and had swept and arranged the

room. And in the silence they heard upstairs the grandfather's snoring,

the same rhythmic snoring which had not stopped for a moment.

"What a lot of things!" murmured Alzire, smiling at the provisions. "If

you like, mother, I'll make the soup."

The table was encumbered: a parcel of clothes, two loaves, potatoes,

butter, coffee, chicory, and half a pound of pig's chitterlings.

"Oh! the soup!" said Maheude with an air of fatigue. "We must gather

some sorrel and pull up some leeks. No! I will make some for the men

afterwards. Put some potatoes on to boil; we'll eat them with a little

butter and some coffee, eh? Don't forget the coffee!"

But suddenly she thought of the brioche. She looked at the empty hands

of Lénore and Henri who were fighting on the floor, already rested and

lively. These gluttons had slyly eaten the brioche on the road. She

boxed their ears, while Alzire, who was putting the saucepan on the

fire, tried to appease her.

"Let them be, mother. If the brioche was for me, you know I don't mind

a bit. They were hungry, walking so far."

Midday struck; they heard the clogs of the children coming out of

school. The potatoes were cooked, and the coffee, thickened by a good

half of chicory, was passing through the percolator with a singing

noise of large drops. One corner of the table was free; but the mother

only was eating there. The three children were satisfied with their

knees; and all the time the little boy with silent voracity looked,

without saying anything, at the chitterlings, excited by the greasy

paper.

Maheude was drinking her coffee in little sips, with her hands round

the glass to warm them, when Father Bonnemort came down. Usually

he rose late, and his breakfast waited for him on the fire. But

to-day he began to grumble because there was no soup. Then, when his

daughter-in-law said to him that one cannot always do what one likes,

he ate his potatoes in silence. From time to time he got up to spit in

the ashes for cleanliness, and, settled in his chair, he rolled his

food round in his mouth, with lowered head and dull eyes.

"Ah! I forgot, mother," said Alzire. "The neighbour came--"

Her mother interrupted her.

"She bothers me!"

There was a deep rancour against the Levaque woman, who had pleaded

poverty the day before to avoid lending her anything; while she knew

that she was just then in comfort, since her lodger, Bouteloup, had

paid his fortnight in advance. In the settlement they did not usually

lend from household to household.

"Here! you remind me," said Maheude. "Wrap up a millful of coffee. I

will take it to Pierronne; I owe it her from the day before yesterday."

And when her daughter had prepared the packet she added that she

would come back immediately to put the men's soup on the fire. Then

she went out with Estelle in her arms, leaving old Bonnemort to chew

his potatoes leisurely, while Lénore and Henri fought for the fallen

parings.

Instead of going round, Maheude went straight across through the

gardens, for fear lest Levaque's wife should call her. Her garden was

just next to that of the Pierrons, and in the dilapidated trellis-work

which separated them there was a hole through which they fraternized.

The common well was there, serving four households. Beside it, behind

a clump of feeble lilacs, was situated the shed, a low building full

of old tools, in which were brought up the rabbits which were eaten on

feast days. One o'clock struck; it was the hour for coffee, and not a

soul was to be seen at the doors or windows. Only a workman belonging

to the earth-cutting, waiting the hour for descent, was digging up his

patch of vegetable ground without raising his head. But as Maheude

arrived opposite the other block of buildings, she was surprised to see

a gentleman and two ladies in front of the church. She stopped a moment

and recognized them; it was Madame Hennebeau bringing her guests,

the decorated gentleman and the lady in the fur mantle, to see the

settlement.

"Oh! why did you take this trouble?" exclaimed Pierronne, when Maheude

had returned the coffee. "There was no hurry."

She was twenty-eight, and was considered the beauty of the settlement,

dark, with a low forehead, large eyes, straight mouth, and coquettish

as well; with the neatness of a cat, and with a good figure, for she

had had no children. Her mother, Brulé, the widow of a pikeman who

died in the mine, after having sent her daughter to work in a factory,

swearing that she should never marry a collier, had never ceased to be

angry since she had married, somewhat late, Pierron, a widower with a

girl of eight. However, the household lived very happily, in the midst

of chatter, of scandals which circulated concerning the husband's

complaisance and the wife's lovers. No debts, meat twice a week, a

house kept so clean that one could see oneself in the saucepans. As an

additional piece of luck, thanks to favours, the Company had authorized

her to sell bon-bons and biscuits, jars of which she exhibited, on two

boards, behind the window-panes. This was six or seven sous profit a

day, and sometimes twelve on Sundays. The only drawback to all this

happiness was Mother Brulé, who screamed with all the rage of an old

revolutionary, having to avenge the death of her man on the masters,

and little Lydie, who pocketed, in the shape of frequent blows, the

passions of the family.

"How big she is already!" said Pierronne, simpering at Estelle.

"Oh! the trouble that it gives! Don't talk of it!" said Maheude. "You

are lucky not to have any. At least you can keep clean."

Although everything was in order in her house, and she scrubbed every

Saturday, she glanced with a jealous housekeeper's eye over this clean

room, in which there was even a certain coquetry, gilt vases on the

sideboard, a mirror, three framed prints.

Pierronne was about to drink her coffee alone, all her people being at

the pit.

"You'll have a glass with me?" she said.

"No, thanks; I've just swallowed mine."

"What does that matter?"

In fact, it mattered nothing. And both began drinking slowly. Between

the jars of biscuits and bon-bons their eyes rested on the opposite

houses, of which the little curtains in the windows formed a row,

revealing by their greater or less whiteness the virtues of the

housekeepers. Those of the Levaques were very dirty, veritable kitchen

clouts, which seemed to have wiped the bottoms of the saucepans.

"How can they live in such dirt?" murmured Pierronne.

Then Maheude began and did not stop. Ah! if she had had a lodger like

that Bouteloup she would have made the household go. When one knew how

to do it, a lodger was an excellent thing. Only one ought not to sleep

with him. And then the husband had taken to drink, beat his wife, and

ran after the singers at the Montsou café-concerts.

Pierronne assumed an air of profound disgust. These singers gave all

sort of diseases. There was one at Joiselle who had infected a whole

pit.

"What surprises me is that you let your son go with their girl."

"Ah, yes! but just stop it then! Their garden is next to ours. Zacharie

was always there in summer with Philoméne behind the lilacs, and they

didn't put themselves out on the shed; one couldn't draw water at the

well without surprising them."

It was the usual history of the promiscuities of the settlement; boys

and girls became corrupted together, throwing themselves on their

backsides, as they said, on the low, sloping roof of the shed when

twilight came on. All the putters got their first child there when they

did not take the trouble to go to Réquillart or into the cornfields. It

was of no consequence; they married afterwards, only the mothers were

angry when their lads began too soon, for a lad who married no longer

brought anything into the family.

"In your place I would have done with it," said Pierronne, sensibly.

"Your Zacharie has already filled her twice, and they will go on and

get spliced. Anyhow, the money is gone."

Maheude was furious and raised her hands.

"Listen to this: I will curse them if they get spliced. Doesn't

Zacharie owe us any respect? He has cost us something, hasn't he? Very

well. He must return it before getting a wife to hang on him. What will

become of us, eh, if our children begin at once to work for others?

Might as well die!"

However, she grew calm.

"I'm speaking in a general way; we shall see later. It is fine and

strong, your coffee; you make it proper."

And after a quarter of an hour spent over other stories, she ran off,

exclaiming that the men's soup was not yet made. Outside, the children

were going back to school; a few women were showing themselves at

their doors, looking at Madame Hennebeau, who, with lifted finger, was

explaining the settlement to her guests. This visit began to stir up

the village. The earth-cutting man stopped digging for a moment, and

two disturbed fowls took fright in the gardens.

As Maheude returned, she ran against the Levaque woman who had come out

to stop Dr. Vanderhaghen, a doctor of the Company, a small hurried man,

overwhelmed by work, who gave his advice as he walked.

"Sir," she said, "I can't sleep; I feel ill everywhere. I must tell you

about it."

He spoke to them all familiarly, and replied without stopping:

"Just leave me alone; you drink too much coffee."

"And my husband, sir," said Maheude in her turn, "you must come and see

him. He always has those pains in his legs."

"It is you who take too much out of him. Just leave me alone!"

The two women were left to gaze at the doctor's retreating back.

"Come in, then," said the Levaque woman, when she had exchanged a

despairing shrug with her neighbour. "You know, there is something new.

And you will take a little coffee. It is quite fresh."

Maheude refused, but without energy. Well! a drop, at all events, not

to disoblige. And she entered.

The room was black with dirt, the floor and the walls spotted with

grease, the sideboard and the table sticky with filth; and the stink

of a badly kept house took you by the throat. Near the fire, with his

elbows on the table and his nose in his plate, Bouteloup, a broad stout

placid man, still young for thirty-five, was finishing the remains

of his boiled beef, while standing in front of him, little Achille,

Philoméne's first-born, who was already in his third year, was looking

at him in the silent, supplicating way of a gluttonous animal. The

lodger, very kind behind his big brown beard, from time to time stuffed

a piece of meat into his mouth.

"Wait till I sugar it," said the Levaque woman, putting some brown

sugar beforehand into the coffee-pot.

Six years older than he was, she was hideous and worn out, with her

bosom hanging on her belly, and her belly on her thighs, with a

flattened muzzle, and greyish hair always uncombed. He had taken her

naturally, without choosing, the same as he did his soup in which he

found hairs, or his bed of which the sheets lasted for three months.

She was part of the lodging; the husband liked repeating that good

reckonings make good friends.

"I was going to tell you," she went on, "that Pierronne was seen

yesterday prowling about on the Bas-de-Soie side. The gentleman you

know of was waiting for her behind Rasseneur's, and they went off

together along the canal. Eh! that's nice, isn't it? A married woman!"

"Gracious!" said Maheude; "Pierron, before marrying her, used to give

the captain rabbits; now it costs him less to lend his wife."

Bouteloup began to laugh enormously, and threw a fragment of sauced

bread into Achille's mouth. The two women went on relieving themselves

with regard to Pierronne--a flirt, no prettier than any one else, but

always occupied in looking after every freckle of her skin, in washing

herself, and putting on pomade. Anyhow, it was the husband's affair,

if he liked that sort of thing. There were men so ambitious that they

would wipe the masters' behinds to hear them say thank you. And they

were only interrupted by the arrival of a neighbour bringing in a

little urchin of nine months, Désirée, Philoméne's youngest; Philoméne,

taking her breakfast at the screening-shed, had arranged that they

should bring her little one down there, where she suckled it, seated

for a moment in the coal.

"I can't leave mine for a moment, she screams directly," said Maheude,

looking at Estelle, who was asleep in her arms.

But she did not succeed in avoiding the domestic affair which she had

read in the other's eyes.

"I say, now we ought to get that settled."

At first the two mothers, without need for talking about it, had agreed

not to conclude the marriage. If Zacharie's mother wished to get her

son's wages as long as possible, Philoméne's mother was enraged at the

idea of abandoning her daughter's wages. There was no hurry; the second

mother had even preferred to keep the little one, as long as there was

only one; but when it began to grow and eat and another one came, she

found that she was losing, and furiously pushed on the marriage, like a

woman who does not care to throw away her money.

"Zacharie has drawn his lot," she went on, "and there's nothing in the

way. When shall it be?"

"Wait till the fine weather," replied Maheude, constrainedly. "They

are a nuisance, these affairs! As if they couldn't wait to be married

before going together! My word! I would strangle Catherine if I knew

that she had done that."

The other woman shrugged her shoulders.

"Let be! she'll do like the others."

Bouteloup, with the tranquillity of a man who is at home, searched

about on the dresser for bread. Vegetables for Levaque's soup, potatoes

and leeks, lay about on a corner of the table, half-peeled, taken up

and dropped a dozen times in the midst of continual gossiping. The

woman was about to go on with them again when she dropped them anew and

planted herself before the window.

"What's that there? Why, there's Madame Hennebeau with some people.

They are going into Pierronne's."

At once both of them started again on the subject of Pierronne. Oh!

whenever the Company brought any visitors to the settlement they never

failed to go straight to her place, because it was clean. No doubt

they never told them stories about the head captain. One can afford to

be clean when one has lovers who earn three thousand francs, and are

lodged and warmed, without counting presents. If it was clean above it

was not clean underneath. And all the time that the visitors remained

opposite, they went on chattering.

"There, they are coming out," said the Levaque woman at last. "They are

going all around. Why, look, my dear--I believe they are going into

your place."

Maheude was seized with fear. Who knows whether Alzire had sponged over

the table? And her soup, also, which was not yet ready! She stammered a

good-day, and ran off home without a single glance aside.

But everything was bright. Alzire, very seriously, with a cloth in

front of her, had set about making the soup, seeing that her mother did

not return. She had pulled up the last leeks from the garden, gathered

the sorrel, and was just then cleaning the vegetables, while a large

kettle on the fire was heating the water for the men's baths when they

should return. Henri and Lénore were good for once, being absorbed in

tearing up an old almanac. Father Bonnemort was smoking his pipe in

silence. As Maheude was getting her breath Madame Hennebeau knocked.

"You will allow me, will you not, my good woman?"

Tall and fair, a little heavy in her superb maturity of forty

years, she smiled with an effort of affability, without showing too

prominently her fear of soiling her bronze silk dress and black velvet

mantle.

"Come in, come in," she said to her guests. "We are not disturbing

any one. Now, isn't this clean again! And this good woman has seven

children! All our households are like this. I ought to explain to you

that the Company rents them the house at six francs a month. A large

room on the ground floor, two rooms above, a cellar, and a garden."

The decorated gentleman and the lady in the fur cloak, arrived that

morning by train from Paris, opened their eyes vaguely, exhibiting on

their faces their astonishment at all these new things which took them

out of their element.

"And a garden!" repeated the lady. "One could live here! It is

charming!"

"We give them more coal than they can burn," went on Madame Hennebeau.

"A doctor visits them twice a week; and when they are old they receive

pensions, although nothing is held back from their wages."

"A Thebaid! a real land of milk and honey!" murmured the gentleman in

delight.

Maheude had hastened to offer chairs. The ladies refused. Madame

Hennebeau was already getting tired, happy for a moment to amuse

herself in the weariness of her exile by playing the part of exhibiting

the beasts, but immediately disgusted by the sickly odour of

wretchedness, in spite of the special cleanliness of the houses into

which she ventured. Besides, she was only repeating odd phrases which

she had overheard, without ever troubling herself further about this

race of workpeople who were labouring and suffering beside her.

"What beautiful children!" murmured the lady, who thought them hideous,

with their large heads beneath their bushy, straw-coloured hair.

And Maheude had to tell their ages; they also asked her questions about

Estelle, out of politeness. Father Bonnemort respectfully took his pipe

out of his mouth; but he was not the less a subject of uneasiness, so

worn out by his forty years underground, with his stiff limbs, deformed

body, and earthy face; and as a violent spasm of coughing took him

he preferred to go and spit outside, with the idea that his black

expectoration would make people uncomfortable.

Alzire received all the compliments. What an excellent little

housekeeper, with her cloth! They congratulated the mother on having a

little daughter so sensible for her age. And none spoke of the hump,

though looks of uneasy compassion were constantly turned towards the

poor little invalid.

"Now!" concluded Madame Hennebeau, "if they ask you about our

settlements at Paris you will know what to reply. Never more noise than

this, patriarchal manners, all happy and well off as you see, a place

where you might come to recruit a little, on account of the good air

and the tranquillity."

"It is marvellous, marvellous!" exclaimed the gentleman, in a final

outburst of enthusiasm.

They left with that enchanted air with which people leave a booth in

a fair, and Maheude, who accompanied them, remained on the threshold

while they went away slowly, talking very loudly. The streets were

full of people, and they had to pass through several groups of women,

attracted by the news of their visit, which was hawked from house to

house.

Just then, Levaque, in front of her door, had stopped Pierronne, who

was drawn by curiosity. Both of them affected a painful surprise. What

now? Were these people going to bed at the Maheus'? But it was not so

very delightful a place.

"Always without a sou, with all that they earn! Lord! when people have

vices!"

"I have just heard that she went this morning to beg at Piolaine, and

Maigrat, who had refused them bread, has given them something. We know

how Maigrat pays himself!"

"On her? Oh, no! that would need some courage. It's Catherine that he's

after."

"Why, didn't she have the cheek to say just now that she would strangle

Catherine if she were to come to that? As if big Chaval for ever so

long had not put her backside on the shed!"

"Hush! here they are!"

Then Levaque and Pierronne, with a peaceful air and without impolite

curiosity, contented themselves with watching the visitors out of the

corners of their eyes. Then by a gesture they quickly called Maheude,

who was still carrying Estelle in her arms. And all three, motionless,

watched the well-clad backs of Madame Hennebeau and her guests slowly

disappear. When they were some thirty paces off, the gossiping

recommenced with redoubled vigour.

"They carry plenty of money on their skins; worth more than themselves,

perhaps."

"Ah, sure! I don't know the other, but the one that belongs here, I

wouldn't give four sous for her, big as she is. They do tell stories--"

"Eh? What stories?"

"Why, she has men! First, the engineer."

"That lean, little creature! Oh, he's too small! She would lose him in

the sheets."

"What does that matter, if it amuses her? I don't trust a woman who

puts on such proud airs and never seems to be pleased where she is.

Just look how she wags her rump, as if she felt contempt for us all. Is

that nice?"

The visitors went along at the same slow pace, still talking, when a

carriage stopped in the road, before the church. A gentleman of about

forty-eight got out of it, dressed in a black frock-coat, and with a

very dark complexion and an authoritative, correct expression.

"The husband," murmured Levaque, lowering her voice, as if he could

hear her, seized by that hierarchical fear which the manager inspired

in his ten thousand workpeople. "It's true, though, that he has a

cuckold's head, that man."

Now the whole settlement was out of doors. The curiosity of the women

increased. The groups approached each other, and were melted into one

crowd; while bands of urchins, with unwiped noses and gaping mouths,

dawdled along the pavements. For a moment the schoolmaster's pale head

was also seen behind the school-house hedge. Among the gardens, the

man who was digging stood with one foot on his spade, and with rounded

eyes. And the murmur of gossiping gradually increased, with a sound of

rattles, like a gust of wind among dry leaves.

It was especially before the Levaques' door that the crowd was

thickest. Two women had come forward, then ten, then twenty. Pierronne

was prudently silent now that there were too many ears about. Maheude,

one of the more reasonable, also contented herself with looking on;

and to calm Estelle, who was awake and screaming, she had tranquilly

drawn out her suckling animal's breast, which hung swaying as if pulled

down by the continual running of its milk. When M. Hennebeau had

seated the ladies in the carriage, which went off in the direction of

Marchiennes, there was a final explosion of clattering voices, all the

women gesticulating and talking in each other's faces in the midst of a

tumult as of an ant-hill in revolution.

But three o'clock struck. The workers of the earth-cutting, Bouteloup

and the others, had set out. Suddenly around the church appeared

the first colliers returning from the pit with black faces and damp

garments, folding their arms and expanding their backs. Then there was

confusion among the women: they all began to run home with the terror

of housekeepers who had been led astray by too much coffee and too much

tattle, and one heard nothing more than this restless cry, pregnant

with quarrels:

"Good Lord, and my soup! and my soup which isn't ready!"

CHAPTER IV

When Maheu came in after having left Étienne at Rasseneur's, he found

Catherine, Zacharie, and Jeanlin seated at the table finishing their

soup. On returning from the pit they were always so hungry that they

ate in their damp clothes, without even cleaning themselves; and no one

was waited for, the table was laid from morning to night; there was

always someone there swallowing his portion, according to the chances

of work.

As he entered the door Maheu saw the provisions. He said nothing,

but his uneasy face lighted up. All the morning the emptiness of the

cupboard, the thought of the house without coffee and without butter,

had been troubling him; the recollection came to him painfully while he

was hammering at the seam, stifled at the bottom of the cutting. What

would his wife do, and what would become of them if she were to return

with empty hands? And now, here was everything! She would tell him

about it later on. He laughed with satisfaction.

Catherine and Jeanlin had risen, and were taking their coffee standing;

while Zacharie, not filled with the soup, cut himself a large slice of

bread and covered it with butter. Although he saw the chitterlings on

a plate he did not touch them, for meat was for the father, when there

was only enough for one. All of them had washed down their soup with a

big bumper of fresh water, the good, clear drink of the fortnight's end.

"I have no beer," said Maheude, when the father had seated himself in

his turn. "I wanted to keep a little money. But if you would like some

the little one can go and fetch a pint."

He looked at her in astonishment. What! she had money, too!

"No, no," he said, "I've had a glass, it's all right."

And Maheu began to swallow by slow spoonfuls the paste of bread,

potatoes, leeks, and sorrel piled up in the bowl which served him as a

plate. Maheude, without putting Estelle down, helped Alzire to give him

all that he required, pushed near him the butter and the meat, and put

his coffee on the fire to keep it quite hot.

In the meanwhile, beside the fire, they began to wash themselves in

the half of a barrel transformed into a tub. Catherine, whose turn

came first, had filled it with warm water; and she undressed herself

tranquilly, took off her cap, her jacket, her breeches, and even her

chemise, habituated to this since the age of eight, having grown up

without seeing any harm in it. She only turned with her stomach to the

fire, then rubbed herself vigorously with black soap. No one looked

at her, even Lénore and Henri were no longer inquisitive to see how

she was made. When she was clean she went up the stairs quite naked,

leaving her damp chemise and other garments in a heap on the floor. But

a quarrel broke out between the two brothers: Jeanlin had hastened to

jump into the tub under the pretence that Zacharie was still eating;

and the latter hustled him, claiming his turn, and calling out that he

was polite enough to allow Catherine to wash herself first, but he did

not wish to have the rinsings of the young urchins, all the less since,

when Jeanlin had been in, it would do to fill the school ink-pots. They

ended by washing themselves together, also turning towards the fire,

and they even helped each other, rubbing one another's backs. Then,

like their sister, they disappeared up the staircase naked.

"What a slop they do make!" murmured Maheude, taking up their garments

from the floor to put them to dry. "Alzire, just sponge up a bit."

But a disturbance on the other side of the wall cut short her speech.

One heard a man's oaths, a woman's crying, a whole stampede of battle,

with hollow blows that sounded like the shock of an empty gourd.

"Levaque's wife is catching it," Maheu peacefully stated as he scraped

the bottom of his bowl with the spoon. "It's queer; Bouteloup made out

that the soup was ready."

"Ah, yes! ready," said Maheude. "I saw the vegetables on the table, not

even cleaned."

The cries redoubled, and there was a terrible push which shook the

wall, followed by complete silence. Then the miner, swallowing the last

spoonful, concluded, with an air of calm justice:

"If the soup is not ready, one can understand."

And after having drunk a glassful of water, he attacked the

chitterlings. He cut square pieces, stuck the point of his knife into

them and ate them on his bread without a fork. There was no talking

when the father was eating. He himself was hungry in silence; he did

not recognize the usual taste of Maigrat's provisions; this must come

from somewhere else; however, he put no question to his wife. He only

asked if the old man was still sleeping upstairs. No, the grandfather

had gone out for his usual walk. And there was silence again.

But the odour of the meat made Lénore and Henri lift up their heads

from the floor, where they were amusing themselves with making rivulets

with the spilt water. Both of them came and planted themselves near

their father, the little one in front. Their eyes followed each

morsel, full of hope when it set out from the plate and with an air of

consternation when it was engulfed in the mouth. At last the father

noticed the gluttonous desire which made their faces pale and their

lips moist.

"Have the children had any of it?" he asked.

And as his wife hesitated:

"You know I don't like injustice. It takes away my appetite when I see

them there, begging for bits."

"But they've had some of it," she exclaimed, angrily. "If you were to

listen to them you might give them your share and the others', too;

they would fill themselves till they burst. Isn't it true, Alzire, that

we have all had some?"

"Sure enough, mother," replied the little humpback, who under such

circumstances could tell lies with the self-possession of a grown-up

person.

Lénore and Henri stood motionless, shocked and rebellious at such

lying, when they themselves were whipped if they did not tell the

truth. Their little hearts began to swell, and they longed to protest,

and to say that they, at all events, were not there when the others had

some.

"Get along with you," said the mother, driving them to the other end

of the room. "You ought to be ashamed of being always in your father's

plate; and even if he was the only one to have any, doesn't he work,

while all you, a lot of good-for-nothings, can't do anything but spend!

Yes, and the more the bigger you are."

Maheu called them back. He seated Lénore on his left thigh, Henri on

the right; then he finished the chitterlings by playing at dinner

with them. He cut small pieces, and each had his share. The children

devoured with delight.

When he had finished, he said to his wife:

"No, don't give me my coffee. I'm going to wash first; and just give me

a hand to throw away this dirty water."

They took hold of the handles of the tub and emptied it into the gutter

before the door, when Jeanlin came down in dry garments, breeches and

a woollen blouse, too large for him, which were weary of fading on his

brother's back. Seeing him slinking out through the open door, his

mother stopped him.

"Where are you off to?"

"Over there."

"Over where? Listen to me. You go and gather a dandelion salad for this

evening. Eh, do you hear? If you don't bring a salad back you'll have

to deal with me."

"All right!"

Jeanlin set out with hands in his pockets, trailing his sabots and

slouching along, with his slender loins of a ten-year-old urchin, like

an old miner. In his turn, Zacharie came down, more carefully dressed,

his body covered by a black woollen knitted jacket with blue stripes.

His father called out to him not to return late; and he left, nodding

his head with his pipe between his teeth, without replying. Again the

tub was filled with warm water. Maheu was already slowly taking off his

jacket. At a look, Alzire led Lénore and Henri outside to play. The

father did not like washing _en famille_, as was practised in many

houses in the settlement. He blamed no one, however; he simply said

that it was good for the children to dabble together.

"What are you doing up there?" cried Maheude, up the staircase.

"I'm mending my dress that I tore yesterday," replied Catherine.

"All right. Don't come down, your father is washing."

Then Maheu and Maheude were left alone. The latter decided to place

Estelle on a chair, and by a miracle, finding herself near the fire the

child did not scream, but turned towards her parents the vague eyes of

a little creature without intelligence. He was crouching before the tub

quite naked, having first plunged his head into it, well rubbed with

that black soap the constant use of which discoloured and made yellow

the hair of the race. Afterwards he got into the water, lathered his

chest, belly, arms, and thighs, scraping them energetically with both

fists. His wife, standing by, watched him.

"Well, then," she began, "I saw your eyes when you came in. You were

bothered, eh? and it eased you, those provisions. Fancy! those Piolaine

people didn't give me a sou! Oh! they are kind enough; they have

dressed the little ones and I was ashamed to ask them, for it crosses

me to ask for things."

She interrupted herself a moment to wedge Estelle into the chair lest

she should tip over. The father continued to work away at his skin,

without hastening by a question this story which interested him,

patiently waiting for light.

"I must tell you that Maigrat had refused me, oh! straight! like one

kicks a dog out of doors. Guess if I was on a spree! They keep you

warm, woollen garments, but they don't put anything into your stomach,

eh!"

He lifted his head, still silent. Nothing at Piolaine, nothing at

Maigrat's: then where? But, as usual, she was pulling up her sleeves to

wash his back and those parts which he could not himself easily reach.

Besides, he liked her to soap him, to rub him everywhere till she

almost broke her wrists. She took soap and worked away at his shoulders

while he held himself stiff so as to resist the shock.

"Then I returned to Maigrat's, and said to him, ah, I said something to

him! And that it didn't do to have no heart, and that evil would happen

to him if there were any justice. That bothered him; he turned his eyes

and would like to have got away."

From the back she had got down to the buttocks and was pushing into the

folds, not leaving any part of the body without passing over it, making

him shine like her three saucepans on Saturdays after a big clean.

Only she began to sweat with this tremendous exertion of her arms, so

exhausted and out of breath that her words were choked.

"At last he called me an old nuisance. We shall have bread until

Saturday, and the best is that he has lent me five francs. I have got

butter, coffee, and chicory from him. I was even going to get the meat

and potatoes there, only I saw that he was grumbling. Seven sous for

the chitterlings, eighteen for the potatoes, and I've got three francs

seventy-five left for a ragout and a meat soup. Eh, I don't think I've

wasted my morning!"

Now she began to wipe him, plugging with a towel the parts that would

not dry. Feeling happy and without thinking of the future debt, he

burst out laughing and took her in his arms.

"Leave me alone, stupid! You are damp, and wetting me. Only I'm afraid

Maigrat has ideas----"

She was about to speak of Catherine, but she stopped. What was the good

of disturbing him? It would only lead to endless discussion.

"What ideas?" he asked.

"Why, ideas of robbing us. Catherine will have to examine the bill

carefully."

He took her in his arms again, and this time did not let her go.

The bath always finished in this way: she enlivened him by the hard

rubbing, and then by the towels which tickled the hairs of his arms

and chest. Besides, among all his mates of the settlement it was the

hour for stupidities, when more children were planted than were wanted.

At night all the family were about. He pushed her towards the table,

jesting like a worthy man who was enjoying the only good moment of the

day, calling that taking his dessert, and a dessert which cost him

nothing. She, with her loose figure and breast, struggled a little for

fun.

"You are stupid! My Lord! you are stupid! And there's Estelle looking

at us. Wait till I turn her head."

"Oh, bosh! at three months; as if she understood!"

When he got up Maheu simply put on a dry pair of breeches. He liked,

when he was clean and had taken his pleasure with his wife, to remain

naked for a while. On his white skin, the whiteness of an anaemic girl,

the scratches and gashes of the coal left tattoo-marks, grafts as the

miners called them; and he was proud of them, and exhibited his big

arms and broad chest shining like veined marble. In summer all the

miners could be seen in this condition at their doors. He even went

there for a moment now, in spite of the wet weather, and shouted out a

rough joke to a comrade, whose breast was also naked, on the other side

of the gardens. Others also appeared. And the children, trailing along

the pathways, raised their heads and also laughed with delight at all

this weary flesh of workers displayed in the open air.

While drinking his coffee, without yet putting on a shirt, Maheu

told his wife about the engineer's anger over the planking. He was

calm and unbent, and listened with a nod of approval to the sensible

advice of Maheude, who showed much common sense in such affairs. She

always repeated to him that nothing was gained by struggling against

the Company. She afterwards told him about Madame Hennebeau's visit.

Without saying so, both of them were proud of this.

"Can I come down yet?" asked Catherine, from the top of the staircase.

"Yes, yes; your father is drying himself."

The young girl had put on her Sunday dress, an old frock of rough blue

poplin, already faded and worn in the folds. She had on a very simple

bonnet of black tulle.

"Hallo! you're dressed. Where are you going to?"

"I'm going to Montsou to buy a ribbon for my bonnet. I've taken off the

old one; it was too dirty."

"Have you got money, then?"

"No! but Mouquette promised to lend me half a franc."

The mother let her go. But at the door she called her back.

"Here! don't go and buy that ribbon at Maigrat's. He will rob you, and

he will think that we are rolling in wealth."

The father, who was crouching down before the fire to dry his neck and

shoulders more quickly, contented himself with adding:

"Try not to dawdle about at night on the road."

In the afternoon, Maheu worked in his garden. Already he had sown

potatoes, beans, and peas; and he now set about replanting cabbage and

lettuce plants, which he had kept fresh from the night before. This bit

of garden furnished them with vegetables, except potatoes of which they

never had enough. He understood gardening very well, and could even

grow artichokes, which was treated as sheer display by the neighbours.

As he was preparing the bed, Levaque just then came out to smoke a

pipe in his own square, looking at the cos lettuces which Bouteloup

had planted in the morning; for without the lodger's energy in digging

nothing would have grown there but nettles. And a conversation arose

over the trellis. Levaque, refreshed and excited by thrashing his wife,

vainly tried to take Maheu off to Rasseneur's. Why, was he afraid of

a glass? They could have a game at skittles, lounge about for a while

with the mates, and then come back to dinner. That was the way of life

after leaving the pit. No doubt there was no harm in that, but Maheu

was obstinate; if he did not replant his lettuces they would be faded

by to-morrow. In reality he refused out of good sense, not wishing to

ask a farthing from his wife out of the change of the five-franc piece.

Five o'clock was striking when Pierronne came to know if it was with

Jeanlin that her Lydie had gone off. Levaque replied that it must be

something of that sort, for Bébert had also disappeared, and those

rascals always went prowling about together. When Maheu had quieted

them by speaking of the dandelion salad, he and his comrade set about

joking the young woman with the coarseness of good-natured devils.

She was angry, but did not go away, in reality tickled by the strong

words which made her scream with her hands to her sides. A lean woman

came to her aid, stammering with anger like a clucking hen. Others

in the distance on their doorsteps confided their alarms. Now the

school was closed; and all the children were running about, there was

a swarm of little creatures shouting and tumbling and fighting; while

those fathers who were not at the public-house were resting in groups

of three or four, crouching on their heels as they did in the mine,

smoking their pipes with an occasional word in the shelter of a wall.

Pierronne went off in a fury when Levaque wanted to feel if her thighs

were firm; and he himself decided to go alone to Rasseneur's, since

Maheu was still planting.

Twilight suddenly came on; Maheude lit the lamp, irritated because

neither her daughter nor the boys had come back. She could have guessed

as much; they never succeeded in taking together the only meal of the

day at which it was possible for them to be all round the table. Then

she was waiting for the dandelion salad. What could he be gathering

at this hour, in this blackness of an oven, that nuisance of a child!

A salad would go so well with the stew which was simmering on the

fire--potatoes, leeks, sorrel, fricasseed with fried onion. The whole

house smelt of that fried onion, that good odour which gets rank so

soon, and which penetrates the bricks of the settlements with such

infection that one perceives it far off in the country, the violent

flavour of the poor man's kitchen.

Maheu, when he left the garden at nightfall, at once fell into a chair

with his head against the wall. As soon as he sat down in the evening

he went to sleep. The clock struck seven; Henri and Lénore had just

broken a plate in persisting in helping Alzire, who was laying the

table, when Father Bonnemort came in first, in a hurry to dine and go

back to the pit. Then Maheude woke up Maheu.

"Come and eat! So much the worse! They are big enough to find the

house. The nuisance is the salad!"

CHAPTER V

At Rasseneur's, after having eaten his soup, Étienne went back into

the small chamber beneath the roof and facing the Voreux, which he was

to occupy, and fell on to his bed dressed as he was, overcome with

fatigue. In two days he had not slept four hours. When he awoke in the

twilight he was dazed for a moment, not recognizing his surroundings;

and he felt such uneasiness and his head was so heavy that he rose,

painfully, with the idea of getting some fresh air before having his

dinner and going to bed for the night.

Outside, the weather was becoming milder: the sooty sky was growing

copper-coloured, laden with one of those warm rains of the Nord, the

approach of which one feels by the moist warmth of the air, and the

night was coming on in great mists which drowned the distant landscape

of the plain. Over this immense sea of reddish earth the low sky seemed

to melt into black dust, without a breath of wind now to animate the

darkness. It was the wan and deathly melancholy of a funeral.

Étienne walked straight ahead at random, with no other aim but to shake

off his fever. When he passed before the Voreux, already growing gloomy

at the bottom of its hole and with no lantern yet shining from it, he

stopped a moment to watch the departure of the day-workers. No doubt

six o'clock had struck; landers, porters from the pit-eye, and grooms

were going away in bands, mixed with the vague and laughing figures of

the screening girls in the shade.

At first it was Brulé and her son-in-law, Pierron. She was abusing him

because he had not supported her in a quarrel with an overseer over her

reckoning of stones.

"Get along! damned good-for-nothing! Do you call yourself a man to

lower yourself like that before one of these beasts who devour us?"

Pierron followed her peacefully, without replying. At last he said:

"I suppose I ought to jump on the boss? Thanks for showing me how to

get into a mess!"

"Bend your backside to him, then," she shouted. "By God! if my daughter

had listened to me! It's not enough for them to kill the father.

Perhaps you'd like me to say 'thank you.' No, I'll have their skins

first!"

Their voices were lost. Étienne saw her disappear, with her eagle nose,

her flying white hair, her long, lean arms that gesticulated furiously.

But the conversation of two young people behind caused him to listen.

He had recognized Zacharie, who was waiting there, and who had just

been addressed by his friend Mouquet.

"Are you here?" said the latter. "We will have something to eat, and

then off to the Volcan."

"Directly. I've something to attend to."

"What, then?"

The lander turned and saw Philoméne coming out of the screening-shed.

He thought he understood.

"Very well, if it's that. Then I go ahead."

"Yes, I'll catch you up."

As he went away, Mouquet met his father, old Mouque, who was also

coming out of the Voreux. The two men simply wished each other good

evening, the son taking the main road while the father went along by

the canal.

Zacharie was already pushing Philoméne in spite of her resistance into

the same solitary path. She was in a hurry, another time; and the two

wrangled like old housemates. There was no fun in only seeing one

another out of doors, especially in winter, when the earth is moist and

there are no wheatfields to lie in.

"No, no, it's not that," he whispered impatiently. "I've something to

say to you." He led her gently with his arm round her waist. Then, when

they were in the shadow of the pit-bank, he asked if she had any money.

"What for?" she demanded.

Then he became confused, spoke of a debt of two francs which had

reduced his family to despair.

"Hold your tongue! I've seen Mouquet; you're going again to the Volcan

with him, where those dirty singer-women are."

He defended himself, struck his chest, gave his word of honour. Then,

as she shrugged her shoulders, he said suddenly:

"Come with us if it will amuse you. You see that you don't put me out.

What do I want to do with the singers? Will you come?"

"And the little one?" she replied. "How can one stir with a child

that's always screaming? Let me go back, I guess they're not getting on

at the house."

But he held her and entreated. See! it was only not to look foolish

before Mouquet to whom he had promised. A man could not go to bed every

evening like the fowls. She was overcome, and pulled up the skirt of

her gown; with her nail she cut the thread and drew out some half-franc

pieces from a corner of the hem. For fear of being robbed by her mother

she hid there the profit of the overtime work she did at the pit.

"I've got five, you see," she said, "I'll give you three. Only you must

swear that you'll make your mother decide to let us marry. We've had

enough of this life in the open air. And mother reproaches me for every

mouthful I eat. Swear first."

She spoke with the soft voice of a big, delicate girl, without passion,

simply tired of her life. He swore, exclaimed that it was a sacred

promise; then, when he had got the three pieces, he kissed her, tickled

her, made her laugh, and would have pushed things to an extreme in

this corner of the pit-bank, which was the winter chamber of their

household, if she had not again refused, saying that it would not give

her any pleasure. She went back to the settlement alone, while he cut

across the fields to rejoin his companion.

Étienne had followed them mechanically, from afar, without

understanding, regarding it as a simple rendezvous. The girls were

precocious in the pits; and he recalled the Lille work-girls whom he

had waited for behind the factories, those bands of girls, corrupted at

fourteen, in the abandonment of their wretchedness. But another meeting

surprised him more. He stopped.

At the bottom of the pit-bank, in a hollow into which some large stones

had slipped, little Jeanlin was violently snubbing Lydie and Bébert,

seated one at his right, the other at his left.

"What do you say? Eh? I'll slap each of you if you want more. Who

thought of it first, eh?"

In fact, Jeanlin had had an idea. After having roamed about in the

meadows, along the canal, for an hour, gathering dandelions with the

two others, it had occurred to him, before this pile of salad, that

they would never eat all that at home; and instead of going back to the

settlement he had gone to Montsou, keeping Bébert to watch, and making

Lydie ring at the houses and offer the dandelions. He was experienced

enough to know that, as he said, girls could sell what they liked.

In the ardour of business, the entire pile had disappeared; but the

girl had gained eleven sous. And now, with empty hands, the three were

dividing the profits.

"That's not fair!" Bébert declared. "Must divide into three. If you

keep seven sous we shall only have two each."

"What? not fair!" replied Jeanlin furiously. "I gathered more first of

all."

The other usually submitted with timid admiration and a credulity which

always made him the dupe. Though older and stronger, he even allowed

himself to be struck. But this time the sight of all that money excited

him to rebellion.

"He's robbing us, Lydie, isn't he? If he doesn't share, we'll tell his

mother."

Jeanlin at once thrust his fist beneath the other's nose.

"Say that again! I'll go and say at your house that you sold my

mother's salad. And then, you silly beast, how can I divide eleven

sous into three? Just try and see, if you're so clever. Here are your

two sous each. Just look sharp and take them, or I'll put them in my

pocket."

Bébert was vanquished and accepted the two sous. Lydie, who was

trembling, had said nothing, for with Jeanlin she experienced the fear

and the tenderness of a little beaten woman. When he held out the two

sous to her she advanced her hand with a submissive laugh. But he

suddenly changed his mind.

"Eh! what will you do with all that? Your mother will nab them, sure

enough, if you don't know how to hide them from her. I'd better keep

them for you. When you want money you can ask me for it."

And the nine sous disappeared. To shut her mouth he had put his arms

around her laughingly and was rolling with her over the pit-bank. She

was his little wife, and in the dark corners they used to try together

the love which they heard and saw in their homes behind partitions,

through the cracks of doors. They knew everything, but they were able

to do nothing, being too young, fumbling and playing for hours at the

games of vicious puppies. He called that playing at papa and mama; and

when he chased her she ran away and let herself be caught with the

delicious trembling of instinct, often angry, but always yielding, in

the expectation of something which never came.

As Bébert was not admitted to these games and received a cuffing

whenever he wanted to touch Lydie, he was always constrained, agitated

by anger and uneasiness when the other two were amusing themselves,

which they did not hesitate to do in his presence. His one idea,

therefore, was to frighten them and disturb them, calling out that

someone could see them.

"It's all up! There's a man looking."

This time he told the truth; it was Étienne, who had decided to

continue his walk. The children jumped up and ran away, and he passed

by round the bank, following the canal, amused at the terror of these

little rascals. No doubt it was too early at their age, but they saw

and heard so much that one would have to tie them up to restrain them.

Yet Étienne became sad.

A hundred paces farther on he came across more couples. He had arrived

at Réquillart, and there, around the old ruined mine, all the girls of

Montsou prowled about with their lovers. It was the common rendezvous,

the remote and deserted spot to which the putters came to get their

first child when they dared not risk the shed. The broken palings

opened to every one the old yard, now become a nondescript piece of

ground, obstructed by the ruins of the two sheds which had fallen

in, and by the skeletons of the large buttresses which were still

standing. Derelict trams were lying about, and piles of old rotting

wood, while a dense vegetation was reconquering this corner of ground,

displaying itself in thick grass, and springing up in young trees that

were already vigorous. Every girl found herself at home here; there

were concealed holes for all; their lovers placed them over beams,

behind the timber, in the trams; they even lay elbow to elbow without

troubling about their neighbours. And it seemed that around this

extinguished engine, near this shaft weary of disgorging coal, there

was a revenge of creation in the free love which, beneath the lash of

instinct, planted children in the bellies of these girls who were yet

hardly women.

Yet a caretaker lived there, old Mouque, to whom the Company had given

up, almost beneath the destroyed tower, two rooms which were constantly

threatened by destruction from the expected fall of the last walls.

He had even been obliged to shore up a part of the roof, and he lived

there very comfortably with his family, he and Mouquet in one room,

Mouquette in the other. As the windows no longer possessed a single

pane, he had decided to close them by nailing up boards; one could

not see well, but it was warm. For the rest, this caretaker cared for

nothing: he went to look after his horses at the Voreux, and never

troubled himself about the ruins of Réquillart, of which the shaft

only was preserved, in order to serve as a chimney for a fire which

ventilated the neighbouring pit.

It was thus that Father Mouque was ending his old age in the midst of

love. Ever since she was ten Mouquette had been lying about in all the

corners of the ruins, not as a timid and still green little urchin

like Lydie, but as a girl who was already big, and a mate for bearded

lads. The father had nothing to say, for she was considerate, and

never introduced a lover into the house. Then he was used to this sort

of accident. When he went to the Voreux, when he came back, whenever

he came out of his hole, he could scarcely put a foot down without

treading on a couple in the grass; and it was worse if he wanted to

gather wood to heat his soup or look for burdocks for his rabbit at

the other end of the enclosure. Then he saw one by one the voluptuous

noses of all the girls of Montsou rising up around him, while he had

to be careful not to knock against the limbs stretched out level with

the paths. Besides, these meetings had gradually ceased to disturb

either him who was simply taking care not to stumble, or the girls whom

he allowed to finish their affairs, going away with discreet little

steps like a worthy man who was at peace with the ways of nature. Only

just as they now knew him he at last also knew them, as one knows the

rascally magpies who become corrupted in the pear-trees in the garden.

Ah! youth! youth! how it goes on, how wild it is! Sometimes he wagged

his chin with silent regret, turning away from the noisy wantons who

were breathing too loudly in the darkness. Only one thing put him out

of temper: two lovers had acquired the bad habit of embracing outside

his wall. It was not that it prevented him from sleeping, but they

leaned against the wall so heavily that at last they damaged it.

Every evening old Mouque received a visit from his friend, Father

Bonnemort, who regularly before dinner took the same walk. The two old

men spoke little, scarcely exchanging ten words during the half-hour

that they spent together. But it cheered them thus to think over the

days of old, to chew their recollections over again without need to

talk of them. At Réquillart they sat on a beam side by side, saying a

word and then sinking into their dreams, with faces bent towards the

earth. No doubt they were becoming young again. Around them lovers

were turning over their sweethearts; there was a murmur of kisses and

laughter; the warm odour of the girls arose in the freshness of the

trodden grass. It was now forty-three years since Father Bonnemort had

taken his wife behind the pit; she was a putter, so slight that he had

placed her on a tram to embrace her at ease. Ah! those were fine days.

And the two old men, shaking their heads, at last left each other,

often without saying good night.

That evening, however, as Étienne arrived, Father Bonnemort, who was

getting up from the beam to return to the settlement, said to Mouque:

"Good night, old man. I say, you knew Roussie?"

Mouque was silent for a moment, rocked his shoulders; then, returning

to the house:

"Good night, good night, old man."

Étienne came and sat on the beam, in his turn. His sadness was

increasing, though he could not tell why. The old man, whose

disappearing back he watched, recalled his arrival in the morning,

and the flood of words which the piercing wind had dragged from his

silence. What wretchedness! And all these girls, worn out with fatigue,

who were still stupid enough in the evening to fabricate little ones,

to yield flesh for labour and suffering! It would never come to an end

if they were always filling themselves with starvelings. Would it not

be better if they were to shut up their bellies, and press their thighs

together, as at the approach of misfortune? Perhaps these gloomy ideas

only stirred confusedly in him because he was alone, while all the

others at this hour were going about taking their pleasure in couples.

The mild weather stifled him a little, occasional drops of rain fell on

his feverish hands. Yes, they all came to it; it was something stronger

than reason.

Just then, as Étienne remained seated motionless in the shadow, a

couple who came down from Montsou rustled against him without seeing

him as they entered the uneven Réquillart ground. The girl, certainly a

virgin, was struggling and resisting with low whispered supplications,

while the lad in silence was pushing her towards the darkness of a

corner of the shed, still upright, under which there were piles of

old mouldy rope. It was Catherine and big Chaval. But Étienne had not

recognized them in passing, and his eyes followed them; he was watching

for the end of the story, touched by a sensuality which changed the

course of his thoughts. Why should he interfere? When girls refuse it

is because they like first to be forced.

On leaving the settlement of the Deux-Cent-Quarante Catherine had gone

to Montsou along the road. From the age of ten, since she had earned

her living at the pit, she went about the country alone in the complete

liberty of the colliers' families; and if no man had possessed her at

fifteen it was owing to the tardy awakening of her puberty, the crisis

of which had not yet arrived. When she was in front of the Company's

Yards she crossed the road and entered a laundress's where she was

certain to find Mouquette; for the latter stayed there from morning

till night, among women who treated each other with coffee all round.

But she was disappointed; Mouquette had just then been regaling them in

her turn so thoroughly that she was not able to lend the half-franc she

had promised. To console her they vainly offered a glass of hot coffee.

She was not even willing that her companion should borrow from another

woman. An idea of economy had come to her, a sort of superstitious

fear, the certainty that that ribbon would bring her bad luck if she

were to buy it now.

She hastened to regain the road to the settlement, and had reached the

last houses of Montsou when a man at the door of the Piquette Estaminet

called her:

"Eh! Catherine! where are you off to so quick?"

It was lanky Chaval. She was vexed, not because he displeased her, but

because she was not inclined to joke.

"Come in and have a drink. A little glass of sweet, won't you?"

She refused politely; the night was coming on, they were expecting her

at home. He had advanced, and was entreating her in a low voice in the

middle of the road. It had been his idea for a long time to persuade

her to come up to the room which he occupied on the first story of the

Estaminet Piquette, a fine room for a household, with a large bed. Did

he frighten her, that she always refused? She laughed good-naturedly,

and said that she would come up some day when children didn't grow.

Then, one thing leading to another, she told him, without knowing how,

about the blue ribbon which she had not been able to buy.

"But I'll pay for it," he exclaimed.

She blushed, feeling that it would be best to refuse again, but

possessed by a strong desire to have the ribbon. The idea of a loan

came back to her, and at last she accepted on condition that she should

return to him what he spent on her. They began to joke again: it was

agreed that if she did not sleep with him she should return him the

money. But there was another difficulty when he talked of going to

Maigrat's.

"No, not Maigrat's; mother won't let me."

"Why? is there any need to say where one goes? He has the best ribbons

in Montsou."

When Maigrat saw lanky Chaval and Catherine coming to his shop like two

lovers who are buying their engagement gifts, he became very red, and

exhibited his pieces of blue ribbon with the rage of a man who is being

made fun of. Then, when he had served the young people, he planted

himself at the door to watch them disappear in the twilight; and when

his wife came to ask him a question in a timid voice, he fell on her,

abusing her, and exclaiming that he would make them repent some day,

the filthy creatures, who had no gratitude, when they ought all to be

on the ground licking his feet.

Lanky Chaval accompanied Catherine along the road. He walked beside

her, swinging his arms; only he pushed her by the hip, conducting her

without seeming to do so. She suddenly perceived that he had made her

leave the pavement and that they were taking the narrow Réquillart

road. But she had no time to be angry; his arm was already round her

waist, and he was dazing her with a constant caress of words. How

stupid she was to be afraid! Did he want to hurt such a little darling,

who was as soft as silk, so tender that he could have devoured her?

And he breathed behind her ear, in her neck, so that a shudder passed

over the skin of her whole body. She felt stifled, and had nothing to

reply. It was true that he seemed to love her. On Saturday evenings,

after having blown out the candle, she had asked herself what would

happen if he were to take her in this way; then, on going to sleep,

she had dreamed that she would no longer refuse, quite overcome by

pleasure. Why, then, at the same idea to-day did she feel repugnance

and something like regret? While he was tickling her neck with his

moustache so softly that she closed her eyes, the shadow of another

man, of the lad she had seen that morning, passed over the darkness of

her closed eyelids.

Catherine suddenly looked around her. Chaval had conducted her into the

ruins of Réquillart and she recoiled, shuddering, from the darkness of

the fallen shed.

"Oh! no! oh, no!" she murmured, "please let me go!" The fear of the

male had taken hold of her, that fear which stiffens the muscles in

an impulse of defence, even when girls are willing, and feel the

conquering approach of man. Her virginity which had nothing to learn

took fright as at a threatening blow, a wound of which she feared the

unknown pain.

"No, no! I don't want to! I tell you that I am too young. It's true!

Another time, when I am quite grown up."

He growled in a low voice:

"Stupid! There's nothing to fear. What does that matter?"

But without speaking more he had seized her firmly and pushed her

beneath the shed. And she fell on her back on the old ropes; she ceased

to protest, yielding to the male before her time, with that hereditary

submission which from childhood had thrown down in the open air all the

girls of her race. Her frightened stammering grew faint, and only the

ardent breath of the man was heard.

Étienne, however, had listened without moving. Another who was taking

the leap! And now that he had seen the comedy he got up, overcome

by uneasiness, by a kind of jealous excitement in which there was a

touch of anger. He no longer restrained himself; he stepped over the

beams, for those two were too much occupied now to be disturbed. He was

surprised, therefore, when he had gone a hundred paces along the path,

to find that they were already standing up, and that they appeared,

like himself, to be returning to the settlement. The man again had

his arm round the girl's waist, and was squeezing her, with an air of

gratitude, still speaking in her neck; and it was she who seemed in a

hurry, anxious to return quickly, and annoyed at the delay.

Then Étienne was tormented by the desire to see their faces. It was

foolish, and he hastened his steps, so as not to yield to it; but

his feet slackened of their own accord, and at the first lamppost he

concealed himself in the shade. He was petrified by horror when he

recognized Catherine and lanky Chaval. He hesitated at first: was it

indeed she, that young girl in the coarse blue dress, with that bonnet?

Was that the urchin whom he had seen in breeches, with her head in

the canvas cap? That was why she could pass so near him without his

recognizing her. But he no longer doubted; he had seen her eyes again,

with their greenish limpidity of spring water, so clear and so deep.

What a wench! And he experienced a furious desire to avenge himself on

her with contempt, without any motive. Besides, he did not like her as

a girl: she was frightful.

Catherine and Chaval had passed him slowly. They did not know that they

were watched. He held her to kiss her behind the ear, and she began

to slacken her steps beneath his caresses, which made her laugh. Left

behind, Étienne was obliged to follow them, irritated because they

barred the road and because in spite of himself he had to witness these

things which exasperated him. It was true, then, what she had sworn to

him in the morning: she was not any one's mistress; and he, who had not

believed her, who had deprived himself of her in order not to act like

the other! and who had let her be taken beneath his nose, pushing his

stupidity so far as to be dirtily amused at seeing them! It made him

mad! he clenched his hands, he could have devoured that man in one of

those impulses to kill in which he saw everything red.

The walk lasted for half an hour. When Chaval and Catherine approached

the Voreux they slackened their pace still more; they stopped twice

beside the canal, three times along the pit-bank, very cheerful now and

occupied with little tender games. Étienne was obliged to stop also

when they stopped, for fear of being perceived. He endeavoured to feel

nothing but a brutal regret: that would teach him to treat girls with

consideration through being well brought up! Then, after passing the

Voreux, and at last free to go and dine at Rasseneur's, he continued

to follow them, accompanying them to the settlement, where he remained

standing in the shade for a quarter of an hour, waiting until Chaval

left Catherine to enter her home. And when he was quite sure that they

were no longer together, he set off walking afresh, going very far

along the Marchiennes road, stamping, and thinking of nothing, too

stifled and too sad to shut himself up in a room.

It was not until an hour later, towards nine o'clock, that Étienne

again passed the settlement, saying to himself that he must eat and

sleep, if he was to be up again at four o'clock in the morning. The

village was already asleep, and looked quite black in the night. Not a

gleam shone from the closed shutters, the house fronts slept, with the

heavy sleep of snoring barracks. Only a cat escaped through the empty

gardens. It was the end of the day, the collapse of workers falling

from the table to the bed, overcome with weariness and food.

At Rasseneur's, in the lighted room, an engine-man and two day-workers

were drinking. But before going in Étienne stopped to throw one last

glance into the darkness. He saw again the same black immensity as in

the morning when he had arrived in the wind. Before him the Voreux was

crouching, with its air of an evil beast, its dimness pricked with a

few lantern lights. The three braziers of the bank were burning in the

air, like bloody moons, now and then showing the vast silhouettes of

Father Bonnemort and his yellow horse. And beyond, in the flat plain,

shade had submerged everything, Montsou, Marchiennes, the forest of

Vandame, the immense sea of beetroot and of wheat, in which there only

shone, like distant lighthouses, the blue fires of the blast furnaces,

and the red fires of the coke ovens. Gradually the night came on, the

rain was now falling slowly, continuously, burying this void in its

monotonous streaming. Only one voice was still heard, the thick, slow

respiration of the pumping engine, breathing both by day and by night.

PART THREE

CHAPTER I

On the next day, and the days that followed, Étienne continued his

work at the pit. He grew accustomed to it; his existence became

regulated by this labour and to these new habits which had seemed

so hard to him at first. Only one episode interrupted the monotony

of the first fortnight: a slight fever which kept him in bed for

forty-eight hours with aching limbs and throbbing head, dreaming in a

state of semi-delirium that he was pushing his tram in a passage that

was so narrow that his body would not pass through. It was simply the

exhaustion of his apprenticeship, an excess of fatigue from which he

quickly recovered.

And days followed days, until weeks and months had slipped by. Now,

like his mates, he got up at three o'clock, drank his coffee, and

carried off the double slice of bread and butter which Madame Rasseneur

had prepared for him the evening before. Regularly as he went every

morning to the pit, he met old Bonnemort who was going home to sleep,

and on leaving in the afternoon he crossed Bouteloup who was going

to his task. He had his cap, his breeches and canvas jacket, and he

shivered and warmed his back in the shed before the large fire. Then

came the waiting with naked feet in the receiving-room, swept by

furious currents of air. But the engine, with its great steel limbs

starred with copper shining up above in the shade, no longer attracted

his attention, nor the cables which flew by with the black and

silent motion of a nocturnal bird, nor the cages rising and plunging

unceasingly in the midst of the noise of signals, of shouted orders, of

trams shaking the metal floor. His lamp burnt badly, that confounded

lamp-man could not have cleaned it; and he only woke up when Mouquet

bundled them all off, roguishly smacking the girls' flanks. The cage

was unfastened, and fell like a stone to the bottom of a hole without

causing him even to lift his head to see the daylight vanish. He never

thought of a possible fall; he felt himself at home as he sank into the

darkness beneath the falling rain. Below at the pit-eye, when Pierron

had unloaded them with his air of hypocritical mildness, there was

always the same tramping as of a flock, the yard-men each going away

to his cutting with trailing steps. He now knew the mine galleries

better than the streets of Montsou; he knew where he had to turn, where

he had to stoop, and where he had to avoid a puddle. He had grown so

accustomed to these two kilometres beneath the earth, that he could

have traversed them without a lamp, with his hands in his pockets. And

every time the same meetings took place: a captain lighting up the

faces of the passing workmen, Father Mouque leading a horse, Bébert

conducting the snorting Bataille, Jeanlin running behind the tram to

close the ventilation doors, and big Mouquette and lean Lydie pushing

their trams.

After a time, also, Étienne suffered much less from the damp and

closeness of the cutting. The chimney or ascending passage seemed to

him more convenient for climbing up, as if he had melted and could

pass through cracks where before he would not have risked a hand.

He breathed the coal-dust without difficulty, saw clearly in the

obscurity, and sweated tranquilly, having grown accustomed to the

sensation of wet garments on his body from morning to night. Besides,

he no longer spent his energy recklessly; he had gained skill so

rapidly that he astonished the whole stall. In three weeks he was

named among the best putters in the pit; no one pushed a tram more

rapidly to the upbrow, nor loaded it afterwards so correctly. His small

figure allowed him to slip about everywhere, and though his arms were

as delicate and white as a woman's, they seemed to be made of iron

beneath the smooth skin, so vigorously did they perform their task.

He never complained, out of pride no doubt, even when he was panting

with fatigue. The only thing they had against him was that he could not

take a joke, and grew angry as soon as any one trod on his toes. In all

other respects he was accepted and looked upon as a real miner, reduced

beneath this pressure of habit, little by little, to a machine.

Maheu regarded Étienne with special friendship, for he respected work

that was well done. Then, like the others, he felt that this lad had

more education than himself; he saw him read, write, and draw little

plans; he heard him talking of things of which he himself did not

know even the existence. This caused him no astonishment, for miners

are rough fellows who have thicker heads than engine-men; but he was

surprised at the courage of this little chap, and at the cheerful way

he had bitten into the coal to avoid dying of hunger. He had never met

a workman who grew accustomed to it so quickly. So when hewing was

urgent, and he did not wish to disturb a pikeman, he gave the timbering

over to the young man, being sure of the neatness and solidity of his

work. The bosses were always bothering him about the damned planking

question; he feared every hour the appearance of the engineer Négrel,

followed by Dansaert, shouting, discussing, ordering everything to

be done over again, and he remarked that his putter's timbering gave

greater satisfaction to these gentlemen, in spite of their air of never

being pleased with anything, and their repeated assertions that the

Company would one day or another take radical measures. Things dragged

on; a deep discontent was fomenting in the pit, and Maheu himself, in

spite of his calmness, was beginning to clench his fists.

There was at first some rivalry between Zacharie and Étienne. One

evening they were even coming to blows. But the former, a good lad

though careless of everything but his own pleasure, was quickly

appeased by the friendly offer of a glass, and soon yielded to the

superiority of the new-comer. Levaque was also on good terms with

him, talking politics with the putter, who, as he said, had his own

ideas. The only one of the men in whom he felt a deep hostility was

lanky Chaval: not that they were cool towards each other, for, on

the contrary, they had become companions; only when they joked their

eyes seemed to devour each other. Catherine continued to move among

them as a tired, resigned girl, bending her back, pushing her tram,

always good-natured with her companion in the putting, who aided her

in his turn, and submissive to the wishes of her lover, whose caresses

she now received openly. It was an accepted situation, a recognized

domestic arrangement to which the family itself closed its eyes to

such a degree that Chaval every evening led away the putter behind the

pit-bank, then brought her back to her parents' door, where he finally

embraced her before the whole settlement. Étienne, who believed that he

had reconciled himself to the situation, often teased her about these

walks, making crude remarks by way of joke, as lads and girls will at

the bottom of the cuttings; and she replied in the same tone, telling

in a swaggering way what her lover had done to her, yet disturbed and

growing pale when the young man's eyes chanced to meet hers. Then both

would turn away their heads, not speaking again, perhaps, for an hour,

looking as if they hated each other because of something buried within

them and which they could never explain to each other.

The spring had come. On emerging from the pit one day Étienne had

received in his face a warm April breeze, a good odour of young earth,

of tender greenness, of large open air; and now, every time he came

up the spring smelt sweeter, warmed him more, after his ten hours of

labour in the eternal winter at the bottom, in the midst of that damp

darkness which no summer had ever dissipated. The days grew longer and

longer; at last, in May, he went down at sunrise when a vermilion sky

lit up the Voreux with a mist of dawn in which the white vapour of the

pumping-engine became rose-coloured. There was no more shivering, a

warm breath blew across the plain, while the larks sang far above. Then

at three o'clock he was dazzled by the now burning sun which set fire

to the horizon, and reddened the bricks beneath the filth of the coal.

In June the wheat was already high, of a blue green, which contrasted

with the black green of the beetroots. It was an endless vista

undulating beneath the slightest breeze; and he saw it spread and grow

from day to day, and was sometimes surprised, as if he had found it in

the evening more swollen with verdure than it had been in the morning.

The poplars along the canal were putting on their plumes of leaves.

Grass was invading the pit-bank, flowers were covering the meadows, a

whole life was germinating and pushing up from this earth beneath which

he was groaning in misery and fatigue.

When Étienne now went for a walk in the evening he no longer startled

lovers behind the pit-bank. He could follow their track in the wheat

and divine their wanton birds' nests by eddies among the yellowing

blades and the great red poppies. Zacharie and Philoméne came back to

it out of old domestic habit; Mother Brulé, always on Lydie's heels,

was constantly hunting her out with Jeanlin, buried so deeply together

that one had to tread on them before they made up their minds to get

up; and as to Mouquette, she lay about everywhere--one could not cross

a field without seeing her head plunge down while only her feet emerged

as she lay at full length. But all these were quite free; the young man

found nothing guilty there except on the evenings when he met Catherine

and Chaval. Twice he saw them on his approach tumble down in the midst

of a field, where the motionless stalks afterwards remained dead.

Another time, as he was going along a narrow path, Catherine's clear

eyes appeared before him, level with the wheat, and immediately sank.

Then the immense plain seemed to him too small, and he preferred to

pass the evening at Rasseneur's, in the Avantage.

"Give me a glass, Madame Rasseneur. No, I'm not going out to-night; my

legs are too stiff."

And he turned towards a comrade, who always sat at the bottom table

with his head against the wall.

"Souvarine, won't you have one?"

"No, thanks; nothing."

Étienne had become acquainted with Souvarine through living there side

by side. He was an engine-man at the Voreux, and occupied the furnished

room upstairs next to his own. He must have been about thirty years

old, fair and slender, with a delicate face framed by thick hair and a

slight beard. His white pointed teeth, his thin mouth and nose, with

his rosy complexion, gave him a girlish appearance, an air of obstinate

gentleness, across which the grey reflection of his steely eyes threw

savage gleams. In his poor workman's room there was nothing but a box

of papers and books. He was a Russian, and never spoke of himself, so

that many stories were afloat concerning him. The colliers, who are

very suspicious with strangers, guessing from his small middle-class

hands that he belonged to another caste, had at first imagined a

romance, some assassination, and that he was escaping punishment. But

then he had behaved in such a fraternal way with them, without any

pride, distributing to the youngsters of the settlement all the sous

in his pockets, that they now accepted him, reassured by the term

"political refugee" which circulated about him--a vague term, in which

they saw an excuse even for crime, and, as it were, a companionship in

suffering.

During the first weeks, Étienne had found him timid and reserved, so

that he only discovered his history later on. Souvarine was the latest

born of a noble family in the Government of Tula. At St. Petersburg,

where he studied medicine, the socialistic enthusiasm which then

carried away all the youth in Russia had decided him to learn a manual

trade, that of a mechanic, so that he could mix with the people, in

order to know them and help them as a brother. And it was by this

trade that he was now living after having fled, in consequence of an

unsuccessful attempt against the tsar's life: for a month he had lived

in a fruiterer's cellar, hollowing out a mine underneath the road,

and charging bombs, with the constant risk of being blown up with

the house. Renounced by his family, without money, expelled from the

French workshops as a foreigner who was regarded as a spy, he was dying

of starvation when the Montsou Company had at last taken him on at a

moment of pressure. For a year he had laboured there as a good, sober,

silent workman, doing day-work one week and night-work the next week,

so regularly that the masters referred to him as an example to the

others.

"Are you never thirsty?" said Étienne to him, laughing.

And he replied with his gentle voice, almost without an accent:

"I am thirsty when I eat."

His companion also joked him about the girls, declaring that he had

seen him with a putter in the wheat on the Bas-de-Soie side. Then he

shrugged his shoulders with tranquil indifference. What should he do

with a putter? Woman was for him a boy, a comrade, when she had the

fraternal feeling and the courage of a man. What was the good of having

a possible act of cowardice on one's conscience? He desired no bond,

either woman or friend; he would be master of his own life and those of

others.

Every evening towards nine o'clock, when the inn was emptying, Étienne

remained thus talking with Souvarine. He drank his beer in small

sips, while the engine-man smoked constant cigarettes, of which the

tobacco had at last stained his slender fingers. His vague mystic's

eyes followed the smoke in the midst of a dream; his left hand sought

occupation by nervously twitching; and he usually ended by installing a

tame rabbit on his knees, a large doe with young, who lived at liberty

in the house. This rabbit, which he had named Poland, had grown to

worship him; she would come and smell his trousers, fawn on him and

scratch him with her paws until he took her up like a child. Then,

lying in a heap against him, her ears laid back, she would close her

eyes; and without growing tired, with an unconscious caressing gesture,

he would pass his hand over her grey silky fur, calmed by that warm

living softness.

"You know I have had a letter from Pluchart," said Étienne one evening.

Only Rasseneur was there. The last client had departed for the

settlement, which was now going to bed.

"Ah!" exclaimed the innkeeper, standing up before his two lodgers. "How

are things going with Pluchart?"

During the last two months, Étienne had kept up a constant

correspondence with the Lille mechanician, whom he had told of his

Montsou engagement, and who was now indoctrinating him, having been

struck by the propaganda which he might carry on among the miners.

"The association is getting on very well. It seems that they are coming

in from all sides."

"What have you got to say, eh, about their society?" asked Rasseneur of

Souvarine.

The latter, who was softly scratching Poland's head, blew out a puff of

smoke and muttered, with his tranquil air:

"More foolery!"

But Étienne grew enthusiastic. A predisposition for revolt was throwing

him, in the first illusions of his ignorance, into the struggle

of labour against capital. It was the International Working Men's

Association that they were concerned with, that famous International

which had just been founded in London. Was not that a superb effort, a

campaign in which justice would at last triumph? No more frontiers; the

workers of the whole world rising and uniting to assure to the labourer

the bread that he has earned. And what a simple and great organization!

Below, the section which represents the commune; then the federation

which groups the sections of the same province; then the nation; and

then, at last, humanity incarnated in a general council in which each

nation was represented by a corresponding secretary. In six months

it would conquer the world, and would be able to dictate laws to the

masters should they prove obstinate.

"Foolery!" repeated Souvarine. "Your Karl Marx is still only thinking

about letting natural forces act. No politics, no conspiracies, is it

not so? Everything in the light of day, and simply to raise wages.

Don't bother me with your evolution! Set fire to the four corners of

the town, mow down the people, level everything, and when there is

nothing more of this rotten world left standing, perhaps a better one

will grow up in its place."

Étienne began to laugh. He did not always take in his comrade's

sayings; this theory of destruction seemed to him an affectation.

Rasseneur, who was still more practical, like a man of solid common

sense did not condescend to get angry. He only wanted to have things

clear.

"Then, what? Are you going to try and create a section at Montsou?"

This was what was desired by Pluchart, who was secretary to the

Federation of the Nord. He insisted especially on the services which

the association would render to the miners should they go out on

strike. Étienne believed that a strike was imminent: this timbering

business would turn out badly; any further demands on the part of the

Company would cause rebellion in all the pits.

"It's the subscriptions that are the nuisance," Rasseneur declared, in

a judicial tone. "Half a franc a year for the general fund, two francs

for the section; it looks like nothing, but I bet that many will refuse

to give it."

"All the more," added Étienne, "because we must first have here a

Provident Fund, which we can use if need be as an emergency fund. No

matter, it is time to think about these things. I am ready if the

others are."

There was silence. The petroleum lamp smoked on the counter. Through

the large open door they could distinctly hear the shovel of a stoker

at the Voreux stoking the engine.

"Everything is so dear!" began Madame Rasseneur, who had entered

and was listening with a gloomy air as if she had grown up in her

everlasting black dress. "When I tell you that I've paid twenty-two

sous for eggs! It will have to burst up."

All three men this time were of the same opinion. They spoke one after

the other in a despairing voice, giving expression to their complaints.

The workers could not hold out; the Revolution had only aggravated

their wretchedness; only the bourgeois had grown fat since '89, so

greedily that they had not even left the bottom of the plates to lick.

Who could say that the workers had had their reasonable share in the

extraordinary increase of wealth and comfort during the last hundred

years? They had made fun of them by declaring them free. Yes, free to

starve, a freedom of which they fully availed themselves. It put no

bread into your cupboard to go and vote for fine fellows who went away

and enjoyed themselves, thinking no more of the wretched voters than

of their old boots. No! one way or another it would have to come to an

end, either quietly by laws, by an understanding in good fellowship,

or like savages by burning everything and devouring one another. Even

if they never saw it, their children would certainly see it, for the

century could not come to an end without another revolution, that of

the workers this time, a general hustling which would cleanse society

from top to bottom, and rebuild it with more cleanliness and justice.

"It will have to burst up," Madame Rasseneur repeated energetically.

"Yes, yes," they all three cried. "It will have to burst up." Souvarine

was now tickling Poland's ears, and her nose was curling with pleasure.

He said in a low voice, with abstracted gaze, as if to himself:

"Raise wages--how can you? They're fixed by an iron law to the smallest

possible sum, just the sum necessary to allow the workers to eat dry

bread and get children. If they fall too low, the workers die, and the

demand for new men makes them rise. If they rise too high, more men

come, and they fall. It is the balance of empty bellies, a sentence to

a perpetual prison of hunger."

When he thus forgot himself, entering into the questions that stir an

educated socialist, Étienne and Rasseneur became restless, disturbed by

his despairing statements which they were unable to answer.

"Do you understand?" he said again, gazing at them with his habitual

calmness; "we must destroy everything, or hunger will reappear. Yes,

anarchy and nothing more; the earth washed in blood and purified by

fire! Then we shall see!"

"Monsieur is quite right," said Madame Rasseneur, who, in her

revolutionary violence, was always very polite.

Étienne, in despair at his ignorance, would argue no longer. He rose,

remarking:

"Let's go to bed. All this won't save one from getting up at three

o'clock."

Souvarine, having blown away the cigarette-end which was sticking to

his lips, was already gently lifting the big rabbit beneath the belly

to place it on the ground. Rasseneur was shutting up the house. They

separated in silence with buzzing ears, as if their heads had swollen

with the grave questions they had been discussing.

And every evening there were similar conversations in the bare room

around the single glass which Étienne took an hour to empty. A crowd

of obscure ideas, asleep within him, were stirring and expanding.

Especially consumed by the need of knowledge, he had long hesitated

to borrow books from his neighbour, who unfortunately had hardly

any but German and Russian works. At last he had borrowed a French

book on Co-operative Societies--mere foolery, said Souvarine; and

he also regularly read a newspaper which the latter received, the

Combat, an Anarchist journal published at Geneva. In other respects,

notwithstanding their daily relations, he found him as reserved as

ever, with his air of camping in life, without interests or feelings or

possessions of any kind.

Towards the first days of July, Étienne's situation began to improve.

In the midst of this monotonous life, always beginning over again,

an accident had occurred. The stalls in the Guillaume seam had come

across a shifting of the strata, a general disturbance in the layers,

which certainly announced that they were approaching a fault; and, in

fact, they soon came across this fault which the engineers, in spite

of considerable knowledge of the soil, were still ignorant of. This

upset the pit; nothing was talked of but the lost seam, which was to

be found, no doubt, lower down on the other side of the fault. The old

miners were already expanding their nostrils, like good dogs, in a

chase for coal. But, meanwhile, the hewers could not stand with folded

arms, and placards announced that the Company would put up new workings

to auction.

Maheu, on coming out one day, accompanied Étienne and offered to take

him on as a pikeman in his working, in place of Levaque who had gone

to another yard. The matter had already been arranged with the head

captain and the engineer, who were very pleased with the young man. So

Étienne merely had to accept this rapid promotion, glad of the growing

esteem in which Maheu held him.

In the evening they returned together to the pit to take note of the

placards. The cuttings put up to auction were in the Filonniére seam in

the north gallery of the Voreux. They did not seem very advantageous,

and the miner shook his head when the young man read out the

conditions. On the following day when they had gone down, he took him

to see the seam, and showed him how far away it was from the pit-eye,

the crumbly nature of the earth, the thinness and hardness of the coal.

But if they were to eat they would have to work. So on the following

Sunday they went to the auction, which took place in the shed and was

presided over by the engineer of the pit, assisted by the head captain,

in the absence of the divisional engineer. From five to six hundred

miners were there in front of the little platform, which was placed in

the corner, and the bidding went on so rapidly that one only heard a

deep tumult of voices, of shouted figures drowned by other figures.

For a moment Maheu feared that he would not be able to obtain one of

the forty workings offered by the Company. All the rivals went lower,

disquieted by the rumours of a crisis and the panic of a lock-out.

Négrel, the engineer, did not hurry in the face of this panic, and

allowed the offers to fall to the lowest possible figures, while

Dansaert, anxious to push matters still further, lied with regard to

the quality of the workings. In order to get his fifty metres, Maheu

struggled with a comrade who was also obstinate; in turn they each took

off a centime from the tram; and if he conquered in the end it was only

by lowering the wage to such an extent, that the captain Richomme, who

was standing behind him, muttered between his teeth, and nudged him

with his elbow, growling angrily that he could never do it at that

price.

When they came out Étienne was swearing. And he broke out before

Chaval, who was returning from the wheatfields in company with

Catherine, amusing himself while his father-in-law was absorbed in

serious business.

"By God!" he exclaimed, "it's simply slaughter! Today it is the worker

who is forced to devour the worker!"

Chaval was furious. He would never have lowered it, he wouldn't.

And Zacharie, who had come out of curiosity, declared that it was

disgusting. But Étienne with a violent gesture silenced them.

"It will end some day, we shall be the masters!"

Maheu, who had been mute since the auction, appeared to wake up. He

repeated:

"Masters! Ah! bad luck! it can't be too soon!"

CHAPTER II

It was Montsou feast-day, the last Sunday in July. Since Saturday

evening the good housekeepers of the settlement had deluged their

parlours with water, throwing bucketfuls over the flags and against the

walls; and the floor was not yet dry, in spite of the white sand which

had been strewn over it, an expensive luxury for the purses of the

poor. But the day promised to be very warm; it was one of those heavy

skies threatening storm, which in summer stifle this flat bare country

of the Nord.

Sunday upset the hours for rising, even among the Maheus. While the

father, after five o'clock, grew weary of his bed and dressed himself,

the children lay in bed until nine. On this day Maheu went to smoke

a pipe in the garden, and then came back to eat his bread and butter

alone, while waiting. He thus passed the morning in a random manner; he

mended the tub, which leaked; stuck up beneath the clock a portrait of

the prince imperial which had been given to the little ones. However,

the others came down one by one. Father Bonnemort had taken a chair

outside, to sit in the sun, while the mother and Alzire had at once set

about cooking. Catherine appeared, pushing before her Lénore and Henri,

whom she had just dressed. Eleven o'clock struck, and the odour of the

rabbit, which was boiling with potatoes, was already filling the house

when Zacharie and Jeanlin came down last, still yawning and with their

swollen eyes.

The settlement was now in a flutter, excited by the feast-day, and

in expectation of dinner, which was being hastened for the departure

in bands to Montsou. Troops of children were rushing about. Men in

their shirt-sleeves were trailing their old shoes with the lazy gait

of days of rest. Windows and doors, opened wide in the fine weather,

gave glimpses of rows of parlours which were filled with movement and

shouts and the chatter of families. And from one end to the other of

the frontages, there was a smell of rabbit, a rich kitchen smell which

on this day struggled with the inveterate odour of fried onion.

The Maheus dined at midday. They made little noise in the midst of

the chatter from door to door, in the coming and going of women in

a constant uproar of calls and replies, of objects borrowed, of

youngsters hunted away or brought back with a slap. Besides, they

had not been on good terms during the last three weeks with their

neighbours, the Levaques, on the subject of the marriage of Zacharie

and Philoméne. The men passed the time of day, but the women pretended

not to know each other. This quarrel had strengthened the relations

with Pierronne, only Pierronne had left Pierron and Lydie with her

mother, and set out early in the morning to spend the day with a cousin

at Marchiennes; and they joked, for they knew this cousin; she had a

moustache, and was head captain at the Voreux. Maheude declared that it

was not proper to leave one's family on a feast-day Sunday.

Beside the rabbit with potatoes, a rabbit which had been fattening

in the shed for a month, the Maheus had meat soup and beef. The

fortnight's wages had just fallen due the day before. They could not

recollect such a spread. Even at the last St. Barbara's Day, the fete

of the miners when they do nothing for three days, the rabbit had

not been so fat nor so tender. So the ten pairs of jaws, from little

Estelle, whose teeth were beginning to appear, to old Bonnemort,

who was losing his, worked so heartily that the bones themselves

disappeared. The meat was good, but they could not digest it well; they

saw it too seldom. Everything disappeared; there only remained a piece

of boiled beef for the evening. They could add bread and butter if they

were hungry.

Jeanlin went out first. Bébert was waiting for him behind the school,

and they prowled about for a long time before they were able to entice

away Lydie, whom Brulé, who had decided not to go out, was trying

to keep with her. When she perceived that the child had fled, she

shouted and brandished her lean arms, while Pierron, annoyed at the

disturbance, strolled quietly away with the air of a husband who can

amuse himself with a good conscience, knowing that his wife also has

her little amusements.

Old Bonnemort set out at last, and Maheu decided to have a little fresh

air after asking Maheude if she would come and join him down below.

No, she couldn't at all, it was nothing but drudgery with the little

ones; but perhaps she would, all the same; she would think about it:

they could easily find each other. When he got outside he hesitated,

then he went into the neighbours' to see if Levaque was ready. There he

found Zacharie, who was waiting for Philoméne, and the Levaque woman

started again on that everlasting subject of marriage, saying that

she was being made fun of and that she would have an explanation with

Maheude once and for all. Was life worth living when one had to keep

one's daughter's fatherless children while she went off with her lover?

Philoméne quietly finished putting on her bonnet, and Zacharie took

her off, saying that he was quite willing if his mother was willing.

As Levaque had already gone, Maheu referred his angry neighbour to his

wife and hastened to depart. Bouteloup, who was finishing a fragment of

cheese with both elbows on the table, obstinately refused the friendly

offer of a glass. He would stay in the house like a good husband.

Gradually the settlement was emptied; all the men went off one behind

the other, while the girls, watching at the doors, set out in the

opposite direction on the arms of their lovers. As her father turned

the corner of the church, Catherine perceived Chaval, and, hastening to

join him, they took together the Montsou road. And the mother remained

alone, in the midst of her scattered children, without strength to

leave her chair, where she was pouring out a second glass of boiling

coffee, which she drank in little sips. In the settlement there were

only the women left, inviting each other to finish the dregs of the

coffee-pots, around tables that were still warm and greasy with the

dinner.

Maheu had guessed that Levaque was at the Avantage, and he slowly

went down to Rasseneur's. In fact, behind the bar, in the little

garden shut in by a hedge, Levaque was having a game of skittles with

some mates. Standing by, and not playing, Father Bonnemort and old

Mouque were following the ball, so absorbed that they even forgot to

nudge each other with their elbows. A burning sun struck down on them

perpendicularly; there was only one streak of shade by the side of the

inn; and Étienne was there drinking his glass before a table, annoyed

because Souvarine had just left him to go up to his room. Nearly every

Sunday the engine-man shut himself up to write or to read.

"Will you have a game?" asked Levaque of Maheu.

But he refused: it was too hot, he was already dying of thirst.

"Rasseneur," called Étienne, "bring a glass, will you?"

And turning towards Maheu:

"I'll stand it, you know."

They now all treated each other familiarly. Rasseneur did not hurry

himself, he had to be called three times; and Madame Rasseneur at last

brought some lukewarm beer. The young man had lowered his voice to

complain about the house: they were worthy people, certainly, people

with good ideas, but the beer was worthless and the soup abominable!

He would have changed his lodgings ten times over, only the thought of

the walk from Montsou held him back. One day or another he would go and

live with some family at the settlement.

"Sure enough!" said Maheu in his slow voice, "sure enough, you would be

better in a family."

But shouts now broke out. Levaque had overthrown all the skittles at

one stroke. Mouque and Bonnemort, with their faces towards the ground,

in the midst of the tumult preserved a silence of profound approbation.

And the joy at this stroke found vent in jokes, especially when the

players perceived Mouquette's radiant face behind the hedge. She had

been prowling about there for an hour, and at last ventured to come

near on hearing the laughter.

"What! are you alone?" shouted Levaque. "Where are your sweethearts?"

"My sweethearts! I've stabled them," she replied, with a fine impudent

gaiety. "I'm looking for one."

They all offered themselves, throwing coarse chaff at her. She refused

with a gesture and laughed louder, playing the fine lady. Besides, her

father was watching the game without even taking his eyes from the

fallen skittles.

"Ah!" Levaque went on, throwing a look towards Étienne: "one can tell

where you're casting sheep's eyes, my girl! You'll have to take him by

force."

Then Étienne brightened up. It was in fact around him that the putter

was revolving. And he refused, amused indeed, but without having the

least desire for her. She remained planted behind the hedge for some

minutes longer, looking at him with large fixed eyes; then she slowly

went away, and her face suddenly became serious as if she were overcome

by the powerful sun.

In a low voice Étienne was again giving long explanations to Maheu

regarding the necessity for the Montsou miners to establish a Provident

Fund. "Since the Company professes to leave us free," he repeated,

"what is there to fear? We only have their pensions and they distribute

them according to their own idea, since they don't hold back any of our

pay. Well, it will be prudent to form, outside their good pleasure, an

association of mutual help on which we can count at least in cases of

immediate need."

And he gave details, and discussed the organization, promising to

undertake the labour of it.

"I am willing enough," said Maheu, at last convinced. "But there are

the others; get them to make up their minds."

Levaque had won, and they left the skittles to empty their glasses. But

Maheu refused to drink a second glass; he would see later on, the day

was not yet done. He was thinking about Pierron. Where could he be?

No doubt at the Lenfant Estaminet. And, having persuaded Étienne and

Levaque, the three set out for Montsou, at the same moment that a new

band took possession of the skittles at the Avantage.

On the road they had to pause at the Casimir Bar, and then at the

Estaminet du Progrés. Comrades called them through the open doors, and

there was no way of refusing. Each time it was a glass, two if they

were polite enough to return the invitation. They remained there ten

minutes, exchanging a few words, and then began again, a little farther

on, knowing the beer, with which they could fill themselves without any

other discomfort than having to piss it out again in the same measure,

as clear as rock water. At the Estaminet Lenfant they came right upon

Pierron, who was finishing his second glass, and who, in order not to

refuse to touch glasses, swallowed a third. They naturally drank theirs

also. Now there were four of them, and they set out to see if Zacharie

was not at the Estaminet Tison. It was empty, and they called for a

glass, in order to wait for him a moment. Then they thought of the

Estaminet Saint-Éloi and accepted there a round from Captain Richomme.

Then they rambled from bar to bar, without any pretext, simply saying

that they were having a stroll.

"We must go to the Volcan!" suddenly said Levaque, who was getting

excited.

The others began to laugh, and hesitated. Then they accompanied their

comrade in the midst of the growing crowd. In the long narrow room of

the Volcan, on a platform raised at the end, five singers, the scum

of the Lille prostitutes, were walking about, low-necked and with

monstrous gestures, and the customers gave ten sous when they desired

to have one behind the stage. There was especially a number of putters

and landers, even trammers of fourteen, all the youth of the pit,

drinking more gin than beer. A few old miners also ventured there, and

the worst husbands of the settlements, those whose households were

falling into ruin.

As soon as the band was seated round a little table, Étienne took

possession of Levaque to explain to him his idea of the Provident

Fund. Like all new converts who have found a mission, he had become an

obstinate propagandist.

"Every member," he repeated, "could easily pay in twenty sous a month.

As these twenty sous accumulated they would form a nice little sum

in four or five years, and when one has money one is ready, eh, for

anything that turns up? Eh, what do you say to it?"

"I've nothing to say against it," replied Levaque, with an abstracted

air. "We will talk about it."

He was excited by an enormous blonde, and determined to remain behind

when Maheu and Pierron, after drinking their glasses, set out without

waiting for a second song.

Outside, Étienne who had gone with them found Mouquette, who seemed to

be following them. She was always there, looking at him with her large

fixed eyes, laughing her good-natured laugh, as if to say: "Are you

willing?" The young man joked and shrugged his shoulders. Then, with a

gesture of anger, she was lost in the crowd.

"Where, then, is Chaval?" asked Pierron.

"True!" said Maheu. "He must surely be at Piquette's. Let us go to

Piquette's."

But as they all three arrived at the Estaminet Piquette, sounds of

a quarrel arrested them at the door; Zacharie with his fist was

threatening a thick-set phlegmatic Walloon nail-maker, while Chaval,

with his hands in his pockets, was looking on.

"Hullo! there's Chaval," said Maheu quietly; "he is with Catherine."

For five long hours the putter and her lover had been walking about

the fair. All along the Montsou road, that wide road with low bedaubed

houses winding downhill, a crowd of people wandered up and down in the

sun, like a trail of ants, lost in the flat, bare plain. The eternal

black mud had dried, a black dust was rising and floating about like a

storm-cloud.

On both sides the public-houses were crowded; there were rows of tables

to the street, where stood a double rank of hucksters at stalls in

the open air, selling neck-handkerchiefs and looking-glasses for the

girls, knives and caps for the lads; to say nothing of sweetmeats,

sugar-plums, and biscuits. In front of the church archery was going on.

Opposite the Yards they were playing at bowls. At the corner of the

Joiselle road, beside the Administration buildings, in a spot enclosed

by fences, crowds were watching a cock-fight, two large red cocks,

armed with steel spurs, their breasts torn and bleeding. Farther on, at

Maigrat's, aprons and trousers were being won at billiards. And there

were long silences; the crowd drank and stuffed itself without a sound;

a mute indigestion of beer and fried potatoes was expanding in the

great heat, still further increased by the frying-pans bubbling in the

open air.

Chaval bought a looking-glass for nineteen sous and a handkerchief

for three francs, to give to Catherine. At every turn they met Mouque

and Bonnemort, who had come to the fair and, in meditative mood, were

plodding heavily through it side by side. Another meeting made them

angry; they caught sight of Jeanlin inciting Bébert and Lydie to steal

bottles of gin from an extemporized bar installed at the edge of an

open piece of ground. Catherine succeeded in boxing her brother's ears;

the little girl had already run away with a bottle. These imps of Satan

would certainly end in a prison. Then, as they arrived before another

bar, the Tête-Coupée, it occurred to Chaval to take his sweetheart

in to a competition of chaffinches which had been announced on the

door for the past week. Fifteen nail-makers from the Marchiennes nail

works had responded to the appeal, each with a dozen cages; and the

gloomy little cages in which the blinded finches sat motionless were

already hung upon a paling in the inn yard. It was a question as to

which, in the course of an hour, should repeat the phrase of its song

the greatest number of times. Each nail-maker with a slate stood near

his cages to mark, watching his neighbours and watched by them. And

the chaffinches had begun, the _chichouïeux_ with the deeper

note, the _batisecouics_ with their shriller note, all at first

timid, and only risking a rare phrase, then, excited by each other's

songs, increasing the pace; then at last carried away by such a rage

of rivalry that they would even fall dead. The nail-makers violently

whipped them on with their voices, shouting out to them in Walloon to

sing more, still more, yet a little more, while the spectators, about

a hundred people, stood by in mute fascination in the midst of this

infernal music of a hundred and eighty chaffinches all repeating the

same cadence out of time. It was a _batisecouic_ which gained the

first prize, a metal coffee-pot.

Catherine and Chaval were there when Zacharie and Philoméne entered.

They shook hands, and all stayed together. But suddenly Zacharie

became angry, for he discovered that a nail-maker, who had come in

with his mates out of curiosity, was pinching his sister's thigh. She

blushed and tried to make him be silent, trembling at the idea that all

these nail-makers would throw themselves on Chaval and kill him if he

objected to her being pinched. She had felt the pinch, but said nothing

out of prudence. Her lover, however, merely made a grimace, and as they

all four now went out the affair seemed to be finished. But hardly

had they entered Piquette's to drink a glass, when the nail-maker

reappeared, making fun of them and coming close up to them with an air

of provocation. Zacharie, insulted in his good family feelings, threw

himself on the insolent intruder.

"That's my sister, you swine! Just wait a bit, and I'm damned if I

don't make you respect her."

The two men were separated, while Chaval, who was quite calm, only

repeated:

"Let be! it's my concern. I tell you I don't care a damn for him."

Maheu now arrived with his party, and quieted Catherine and Philoméne

who were in tears. The nail-maker had disappeared, and there was

laughter in the crowd. To bring the episode to an end, Chaval, who

was at home at the Estaminet Piquette, called for drinks. Étienne had

touched glasses with Catherine, and all drank together--the father,

the daughter and her lover, the son and his mistress--saying politely:

"To your good health!" Pierron afterwards persisted in paying for more

drinks. And they were all in good humour, when Zacharie grew wild again

at the sight of his comrade Mouquet, and called him, as he said, to go

and finish his affair with the nail-maker.

"I shall have to go and do for him! Here, Chaval, keep Philoméne with

Catherine. I'm coming back."

Maheu offered drinks in his turn. After all, if the lad wished to

avenge his sister it was not a bad example. But as soon as she had seen

Mouquet, Philoméne felt at rest, and nodded her head. Sure enough the

two chaps would be off to the Volcan!

On the evenings of feast-days the fair was terminated in the ball-room

of the Bon-Joyeux. It was a widow, Madame Désir, who kept this

ball-room, a fat matron of fifty, as round as a tub, but so fresh that

she still had six lovers, one for every day of the week, she said, and

the six together for Sunday. She called all the miners her children;

and grew tender at the thought of the flood of beer which she had

poured out for them during the last thirty years; and she boasted also

that a putter never became pregnant without having first stretched her

legs at her establishment. There were two rooms in the Bon-Joyeux: the

bar which contained the counter and tables; then, communicating with

it on the same floor by a large arch, was the ball-room, a large hall

only planked in the middle, being paved with bricks round the sides.

It was decorated with two garlands of paper flowers which crossed one

another, and were united in the middle by a crown of the same flowers;

while along the walls were rows of gilt shields bearing the names of

saints--St. Éloi, patron of the iron-workers; St. Crispin, patron of

the shoemakers; St. Barbara, patron of the miners; the whole calendar

of corporations. The ceiling was so low that the three musicians on

their platform, which was about the size of a pulpit, knocked their

heads against it. When it became dark four petroleum lamps were

fastened to the four corners of the room.

On this Sunday there was dancing from five o'clock with the full

daylight through the windows, but it was not until towards seven

that the rooms began to fill. Outside, a gale was rising, blowing

great black showers of dust which blinded people and sleeted into

the frying-pans. Maheu, Étienne, and Pierron, having come in to sit

down, had found Chaval at the Bon-Joyeux dancing with Catherine, while

Philoméne by herself was looking on. Neither Levaque nor Zacharie had

reappeared. As there were no benches around the ball-room, Catherine

came after each dance to rest at her father's table. They called

Philoméne, but she preferred to stand up. The twilight was coming on;

the three musicians played furiously; one could only see in the hall

the movement of hips and breasts in the midst of a confusion of arms.

The appearance of the four lamps was greeted noisily, and suddenly

everything was lit up--the red faces, the dishevelled hair sticking

to the skin, the flying skirts spreading abroad the strong odour of

perspiring couples. Maheu pointed out Mouquette to Étienne: she was as

round and greasy as a bladder of lard, revolving violently in the arms

of a tall, lean lander. She had been obliged to console herself and

take a man.

At last, at eight o'clock, Maheude appeared with Estelle at her breast,

followed by Alzire, Henri, and Lénore. She had come there straight

to her husband without fear of missing him. They could sup later on;

as yet nobody was hungry, with their stomachs soaked in coffee and

thickened with beer. Other women came in, and they whispered together

when they saw, behind Maheude, the Levaque woman enter with Bouteloup,

who led in by the hand Achille and Désirée, Philoméne's little ones.

The two neighbours seemed to be getting on well together, one turning

round to chat with the other. On the way there had been a great

explanation, and Maheude had resigned herself to Zacharie's marriage,

in despair at the loss of her eldest son's wages, but overcome by the

thought that she could not hold it back any longer without injustice.

She was trying, therefore, to put a good face on it, though with an

anxious heart, as a housekeeper who was asking herself how she could

make both ends meet now that the best part of her purse was going.

"Place yourself there, neighbour," she said, pointing to a table near

that where Maheu was drinking with Étienne and Pierron.

"Is not my husband with you?" asked the Levaque woman.

The others told her that he would soon come. They were all seated

together in a heap, Bouteloup and the youngsters so tightly squeezed

among the drinkers that the two tables only formed one. There was a

call for drinks. Seeing her mother and her children Philoméne had

decided to come near. She accepted a chair, and seemed pleased to hear

that she was at last to be married; then, as they were looking for

Zacharie, she replied in her soft voice:

"I am waiting for him; he is over there."

Maheu had exchanged a look with his wife. She had then consented? He

became serious and smoked in silence. He also felt anxiety for the

morrow in face of the ingratitude of these children, who got married

one by one leaving their parents in wretchedness.

The dancing still went on, and the end of a quadrille drowned the

ball-room in red dust; the walls cracked, a cornet produced shrill

whistling sounds like a locomotive in distress; and when the dancers

stopped they were smoking like horses.

"Do you remember?" said the Levaque woman, bending towards Maheude's

ear; "you talked of strangling Catherine if she did anything foolish!"

Chaval brought Catherine back to the family table, and both of them

standing behind the father finished their glasses.

"Bah!" murmured Maheude, with an air of resignation, "one says things

like that--. But what quiets me is that she will not have a child; I

feel sure of that. You see if she is confined, and obliged to marry,

what shall we do for a living then?"

Now the cornet was whistling a polka, and as the deafening noise began

again, Maheu, in a low voice, communicated an idea to his wife. Why

should they not take a lodger? Étienne, for example, who was looking

out for quarters? They would have room since Zacharie was going to

leave them, and the money that they would lose in that direction would

be in part regained in the other. Maheude's face brightened; certainly

it was a good idea, it must be arranged. She seemed to be saved from

starvation once more, and her good humour returned so quickly that she

ordered a new round of drinks.

Étienne, meanwhile, was seeking to indoctrinate Pierron, to whom he was

explaining his plan of a Provident Fund. He had made him promise to

subscribe, when he was imprudent enough to reveal his real aim.

"And if we go out on strike you can see how useful that fund will be.

We can snap our fingers at the Company, we shall have there a fund to

fight against them. Eh? don't you think so?"

Pierron lowered his eyes and grew pale; he stammered:

"I'll think over it. Good conduct, that's the best Provident Fund."

Then Maheu took possession of Étienne, and squarely, like a good man,

proposed to take him as a lodger. The young man accepted at once,

anxious to live in the settlement with the idea of being nearer to his

mates. The matter was settled in three words, Maheude declaring that

they would wait for the marriage of the children.

Just then, Zacharie at last came back, with Mouquet and Levaque. The

three brought in the odours of the Volcan, a breath of gin, a musky

acidity of ill-kept girls. They were very tipsy and seemed well pleased

with themselves, digging their elbows into each other and grinning.

When he knew that he was at last to be married Zacharie began to laugh

so loudly that he choked. Philoméne peacefully declared that she would

rather see him laugh than cry. As there were no more chairs, Bouteloup

had moved so as to give up half of his to Levaque. And the latter,

suddenly much affected by realizing that the whole family party was

there, once more had beer served out.

"By the Lord! we don't amuse ourselves so often!" he roared.

They remained there till ten o'clock. Women continued to arrive, either

to join or to take away their men; bands of children followed in rows,

and the mothers no longer troubled themselves, pulling out their long

pale breasts, like sacks of oats, and smearing their chubby babies with

milk; while the little ones who were already able to walk, gorged with

beer and on all fours beneath the table, relieved themselves without

shame. It was a rising sea of beer, from Madame Désir's disembowelled

barrels, the beer enlarged every belly, flowing from noses, eyes, and

everywhere. So puffed out was the crowd that every one had a shoulder

or knee poking into his neighbour; all were cheerful and merry in thus

feeling each other's elbows. A continuous laugh kept their mouths open

from ear to ear. The heat was like an oven; they were roasting and felt

themselves at ease with glistening skin, gilded in a thick smoke from

the pipes; the only discomfort was when one had to move away; from time

to time a girl rose, went to the other end, near the pump, lifted her

clothes, and then came back. Beneath the garlands of painted paper the

dancers could no longer see each other, they perspired so much; this

encouraged the trammers to tumble the putters over, catching them at

random by the hips. But where a girl tumbled with a man over her, the

cornet covered their fall with its furious music; the swirl of feet

wrapped them round as if the ball had collapsed upon them.

Someone who was passing warned Pierron that his daughter Lydie was

sleeping at the door, across the pavement. She had drunk her share

of the stolen bottle and was tipsy. He had to carry her away in his

arms while Jeanlin and Bébert, who were more sober, followed him

behind, thinking it a great joke. This was the signal for departure,

and several families came out of the Bon-Joyeux, the Maheus and the

Levaques deciding to return to the settlement. At the same moment

Father Bonnemort and old Mouque also left Montsou, walking in the

same somnambulistic manner, preserving the obstinate silence of their

recollections. And they all went back together, passing for the last

time through the fair, where the frying-pans were coagulating, and by

the estaminets, from which the last glasses were flowing in a stream

towards the middle of the road. The storm was still threatening, and

sounds of laughter arose as they left the lighted houses to lose

themselves in the dark country around. Panting breaths arose from the

ripe wheat; many children must have been made on that night. They

arrived in confusion at the settlement. Neither the Levaques nor the

Maheus supped with appetite, and the latter kept on dropping off to

sleep while finishing their morning's boiled beef.

Étienne had led away Chaval for one more drink at Rasseneur's.

"I am with you!" said Chaval, when his mate had explained the matter of

the Provident Fund. "Put it there! you're a fine fellow!"

The beginning of drunkenness was flaming in Étienne's eyes. He

exclaimed:

"Yes, let's join hands. As for me, you know I would give up everything

for the sake of justice, both drink and girls. There's only one thing

that warms my heart, and that is the thought that we are going to sweep

away these bourgeois."

CHAPTER III

Towards the middle of August, Étienne settled with the Maheus, Zacharie

having married and obtained from the Company a vacant house in the

settlement for Philoméne and the two children. During the first days,

the young man experienced some constraint in the presence of Catherine.

There was a constant intimacy, as he everywhere replaced the elder

brother, sharing Jeanlin's bed over against the big sister's. Going to

bed and getting up he had to dress and undress near her, and see her

take off and put on her garments. When the last skirt fell from her,

she appeared of pallid whiteness, that transparent snow of anaemic

blondes; and he experienced a constant emotion in finding her, with

hands and face already spoilt, as white as if dipped in milk from her

heels to her neck, where the line of tan stood out sharply like a

necklace of amber. He pretended to turn away; but little by little he

knew her: the feet at first which his lowered eyes met; then a glimpse

of a knee when she slid beneath the coverlet; then her bosom with

little rigid breasts as she leant over the bowl in the morning. She

would hasten without looking at him, and in ten seconds was undressed

and stretched beside Alzire, with so supple and snake-like a movement

that he had scarcely taken off his shoes when she disappeared, turning

her back and only showing her heavy knot of hair.

She never had any reason to be angry with him. If a sort of obsession

made him watch her in spite of himself at the moment when she lay down,

he avoided all practical jokes or dangerous pastimes. The parents were

there, and besides he still had for her a feeling, half of friendship

and half of spite, which prevented him from treating her as a girl to

be desired, in the midst of the abandonment of their now common life in

dressing, at meals, during work, where nothing of them remained secret,

not even their most intimate needs. All the modesty of the family had

taken refuge in the daily bath, for which the young girl now went

upstairs alone, while the men bathed below one after the other.

At the end of the first month, Étienne and Catherine seemed no longer

to see each other when in the evening, before extinguishing the candle,

they moved about the room, undressed. She had ceased to hasten, and

resumed her old custom of doing up her hair at the edge of her bed,

while her arms, raised in the air, lifted her chemise to her thighs,

and he, without his trousers, sometimes helped her, looking for the

hairpins that she had lost. Custom killed the shame of being naked;

they found it natural to be like this, for they were doing no harm, and

it was not their fault if there was only one room for so many people.

Sometimes, however, a trouble came over them suddenly, at moments when

they had no guilty thought. After some nights when he had not seen

her pale body, he suddenly saw her white all over, with a whiteness

which shook him with a shiver, which obliged him to turn away for fear

of yielding to the desire to take her. On other evenings, without

any apparent reason, she would be overcome by a panic of modesty and

hasten to slip between the sheets as if she felt the hands of this lad

seizing her. Then, when the candle was out, they both knew that they

were not sleeping but were thinking of each other in spite of their

weariness. This made them restless and sulky all the following day;

they liked best the tranquil evenings when they could behave together

like comrades.

Étienne only complained of Jeanlin, who slept curled up. Alzire

slept lightly, and Lénore and Henri were found in the morning, in

each other's arms, exactly as they had gone to sleep. In the dark

house there was no other sound than the snoring of Maheu and Maheude,

rolling out at regular intervals like a forge bellows. On the whole,

Étienne was better off than at Rasseneur's; the bed was tolerable and

the sheets were changed every month. He had better soup, too, and

only suffered from the rarity of meat. But they were all in the same

condition, and for forty-five francs he could not demand rabbit to

every meal. These forty-five francs helped the family and enabled them

to make both ends meet, though always leaving some small debts and

arrears; so the Maheus were grateful to their lodger; his linen was

washed and mended, his buttons sewn on, and his affairs kept in order;

in fact he felt all around him a woman's neatness and care.

It was at this time that Étienne began to understand the ideas

that were buzzing in his brain. Up till then he had only felt an

instinctive revolt in the midst of the inarticulate fermentation among

his mates. All sorts of confused questions came before him: Why are

some miserable? why are others rich? why are the former beneath the

heel of the latter without hope of ever taking their place? And his

first stage was to understand his ignorance. A secret shame, a hidden

annoyance, gnawed him from that time; he knew nothing, he dared not

talk about these things which were working in him like a passion--the

equality of all men, and the equity which demanded a fair division

of the earth's wealth. He thus took to the methodless study of those

who in ignorance feel the fascination of knowledge. He now kept up a

regular correspondence with Pluchart, who was better educated than

himself and more advanced in the Socialist movement. He had books sent

to him, and his ill-digested reading still further excited his brain,

especially a medical book entitled _Hygiéne du Mineur_, in which

a Belgian doctor had summed up the evils of which the people in coal

mines were dying; without counting treatises on political economy,

incomprehensible in their technical dryness, Anarchist pamphlets which

upset his ideas, and old numbers of newspapers which he preserved as

irrefutable arguments for possible discussions. Souvarine also lent him

books, and the work on Co-operative Societies had made him dream for a

month of a universal exchange association abolishing money and basing

the whole social life on work. The shame of his ignorance left him, and

a certain pride came to him now that he felt himself thinking.

During these first months Étienne retained the ecstasy of a novice; his

heart was bursting with generous indignation against the oppressors,

and looking forward to the approaching triumph of the oppressed.

He had not yet manufactured a system, his reading had been too

vague. Rasseneur's practical demands were mixed up in his mind with

Souvarine's violent and destructive methods, and when he came out of

the Avantage, where he was to be found nearly every day railing with

them against the Company, he walked as if in a dream, assisting at

a radical regeneration of nations to be effected without one broken

window or a single drop of blood. The methods of execution remained

obscure; he preferred to think that things would go very well, for

he lost his head as soon as he tried to formulate a programme of

reconstruction. He even showed himself full of illogical moderation;

he often said that we must banish politics from the social question, a

phrase which he had read and which seemed a useful one to repeat among

the phlegmatic colliers with whom he lived.

Every evening now, at the Maheus', they delayed half an hour before

going up to bed. Étienne always introduced the same subject. As his

nature became more refined he found himself wounded by the promiscuity

of the settlement. Were they beasts to be thus penned together in the

midst of the fields, so tightly packed that one could not change one's

shirt without exhibiting one's backside to the neighbours? And how

bad it was for health; and boys and girls were forced to grow corrupt

together.

"Lord!" replied Maheu, "if there were more money there would be more

comfort. All the same it's true enough that it's good for no one to

live piled up like that. It always ends with making the men drunk and

the girls big-bellied."

And the family began to talk, each having his say, while the petroleum

lamp vitiated the air of the room, already stinking of fried onion. No,

life was certainly not a joke. One had to work like a brute at labour

which was once a punishment for convicts; one left one's skin there

oftener than was one's turn, all that without even getting meat on the

table in the evening. No doubt one had one's feed; one ate, indeed, but

so little, just enough to suffer without dying, overcome with debts and

pursued as if one had stolen the bread. When Sunday came one slept from

weariness. The only pleasures were to get drunk and to get a child with

one's wife; then the beer swelled the belly, and the child, later on,

left you to go to the dogs. No, it was certainly not a joke.

Then Maheude joined in.

"The bother is, you see, when you have to say to yourself that it won't

change. When you're young you think that happiness will come some time,

you hope for things; and then the wretchedness begins always over

again, and you get shut up in it. Now, I don't wish harm to any one,

but there are times when this injustice makes me mad."

There was silence; they were all breathing with the vague discomfort

of this closed-in horizon. Father Bonnemort only, if he was there,

opened his eyes with surprise, for in his time people used not to worry

about things; they were born in the coal and they hammered at the seam,

without asking for more; while now there was an air stirring which made

the colliers ambitious.

"It don't do to spit at anything," he murmured. "A good glass is a good

glass. As to the masters, they're often rascals; but there always will

be masters, won't there? What's the use of racking your brains over

those things?"

Étienne at once became animated. What! The worker was to be forbidden

to think! Why! that was just it; things would change now because the

worker had begun to think. In the old man's time the miner lived in

the mine like a brute, like a machine for extracting coal, always

under the earth, with ears and eyes stopped to outward events. So

the rich, who governed, found it easy to sell him and buy him, and

to devour his flesh; he did not even know what was going on. But now

the miner was waking up down there, germinating in the earth just as

a grain germinates; and some fine day he would spring up in the midst

of the fields: yes, men would spring up, an army of men who would

re-establish justice. Is it not true that all citizens are equal since

the Revolution, because they vote together? Why should the worker

remain the slave of the master who pays him? The big companies with

their machines were crushing everything, and one no longer had against

them the ancient guarantees when people of the same trade, united in a

body, were able to defend themselves. It was for that, by God, and for

no other reason, that all would burst up one day, thanks to education.

One had only to look into the settlement itself: the grandfathers could

not sign their names, the fathers could do so, and as for the sons,

they read and wrote like schoolmasters. Ah! it was springing up, it was

springing up, little by little, a rough harvest of men who would ripen

in the sun! From the moment when they were no longer each of them stuck

to his place for his whole existence, and when they had the ambition to

take a neighbour's place, why should they not hit out with their fists

and try for the mastery?

Maheu was shaken but remained full of doubts.

"As soon as you move they give you back your certificate," he said.

"The old man is right; it will always be the miner who gets all the

trouble, without a chance of a leg of mutton now and then as a reward."

Maheude, who had been silent for a while, awoke as from a dream.

"But if what the priests tell is true, if the poor people in this world

become the rich ones in the next!"

A burst of laughter interrupted her; even the children shrugged their

shoulders, being incredulous in the open air, keeping a secret fear of

ghosts in the pit, but glad of the empty sky.

"Ah! bosh! the priests!" exclaimed Maheu. "If they believed that,

they'd eat less and work more, so as to reserve a better place for

themselves up there. No, when one's dead, one's dead."

Maheude sighed deeply.

"Oh, Lord, Lord!"

Then her hands fell on to her knees with a gesture of immense dejection:

"Then if that's true, we are done for, we are."

They all looked at one another. Father Bonnemort spat into his

handkerchief, while Maheu sat with his extinguished pipe, which he had

forgotten, in his mouth. Alzire listened between Lénore and Henri,

who were sleeping on the edge of the table. But Catherine, with her

chin in her hand, never took her large clear eyes off Étienne while he

was protesting, declaring his faith, and opening out the enchanting

future of his social dream. Around them the settlement was asleep; one

only heard the stray cries of a child or the complaints of a belated

drunkard. In the parlour the clock ticked slowly, and a damp freshness

arose from the sanded floor in spite of the stuffy air.

"Fine ideas!" said the young man; "why do you need a good God and his

paradise to make you happy? Haven't you got it in your own power to

make yourselves happy on earth?"

With his enthusiastic voice he spoke on and on. The closed horizon was

bursting out; a gap of light was opening in the sombre lives of these

poor people. The eternal wretchedness, beginning over and over again,

the brutalizing labour, the fate of a beast who gives his wool and

has his throat cut, all the misfortune disappeared, as though swept

away by a great flood of sunlight; and beneath the dazzling gleam of

fairyland justice descended from heaven. Since the good God was dead,

justice would assure the happiness of men, and equality and brotherhood

would reign. A new society would spring up in a day just as in dreams,

an immense town with the splendour of a mirage, in which each citizen

lived by his work, and took his share in the common joys. The old

rotten world had fallen to dust; a young humanity purged from its

crimes formed but a single nation of workers, having for their motto:

"To each according to his deserts, and to each desert according to its

performance." And this dream grew continually larger and more beautiful

and more seductive as it mounted higher in the impossible.

At first Maheude refused to listen, possessed by a deep dread. No, no,

it was too beautiful; it would not do to embark upon these ideas, for

they made life seem abominable afterwards, and one would have destroyed

everything in the effort to be happy. When she saw Maheu's eyes shine,

and that he was troubled and won over, she became restless, and

exclaimed, interrupting Étienne:

"Don't listen, my man! You can see he's only telling us fairy-tales. Do

you think the bourgeois would ever consent to work as we do?"

But little by little the charm worked on her also. Her imagination was

aroused and she smiled at last, entering his marvellous world of hope.

It was so sweet to forget for a while the sad reality! When one lives

like the beasts with face bent towards the earth, one needs a corner

of falsehood where one can amuse oneself by regaling on the things one

will never possess. And what made her enthusiastic and brought her into

agreement with the young man was the idea of justice.

"Now, there you're right!" she exclaimed. "When a thing's just I don't

mind being cut to pieces for it. And it's true enough! it would be just

for us to have a turn."

Then Maheu ventured to become excited.

"Blast it all! I am not rich, but I would give five francs to keep

alive to see that. What a hustling, eh? Will it be soon? And how can we

set about it?"

Étienne began talking again. The old social system was cracking; it

could not last more than a few months, he affirmed roundly. As to the

methods of execution, he spoke more vaguely, mixing up his reading,

and fearing before ignorant hearers to enter on explanations where he

might lose himself. All the systems had their share in it, softened by

the certainty of easy triumph, a universal kiss which would bring to an

end all class misunderstandings; without taking count, however, of the

thick-heads among the masters and bourgeois whom it would perhaps be

necessary to bring to reason by force. And the Maheus looked as if they

understood, approving and accepting miraculous solutions with the blind

faith of new believers, like those Christians of the early days of the

Church, who awaited the coming of a perfect society on the dunghill of

the ancient world. Little Alzire picked up a few words, and imagined

happiness under the form of a very warm house, where children could

play and eat as long as they liked. Catherine, without moving, her chin

always resting in her hand, kept her eyes fixed on Étienne, and when he

stopped a slight shudder passed over her, and she was quite pale as if

she felt the cold.

But Maheude looked at the clock.

"Past nine! Can it be possible? We shall never get up to-morrow."

And the Maheus left the table with hearts ill at ease and in despair.

It seemed to them that they had just been rich and that they had now

suddenly fallen back into the mud. Father Bonnemort, who was setting

out for the pit, growled that those sort of stories wouldn't make the

soup better; while the others went upstairs in single file, noticing

the dampness of the walls and the pestiferous stuffiness of the air.

Upstairs, amid the heavy slumber of the settlement when Catherine had

got into bed last and blown out the candle, Étienne heard her tossing

feverishly before getting to sleep.

Often at these conversations the neighbours came in: Levaque, who

grew excited at the idea of a general sharing; Pierron, who prudently

went to bed as soon as they attacked the Company. At long intervals

Zacharie came in for a moment; but politics bored him, he preferred to

go off and drink a glass at the Avantage. As to Chaval, he would go to

extremes and wanted to draw blood. Nearly every evening he passed an

hour with the Maheus; in this assiduity there was a certain unconfessed

jealousy, the fear that he would be robbed of Catherine. This girl, of

whom he was already growing tired, had become precious to him now that

a man slept near her and could take her at night.

Étienne's influence increased; he gradually revolutionized the

settlement. His propaganda was unseen, and all the more sure since he

was growing in the estimation of all. Maheude, notwithstanding the

caution of a prudent housekeeper, treated him with consideration, as

a young man who paid regularly and neither drank nor gambled, with

his nose always in a book; she spread abroad his reputation among the

neighbours as an educated lad, a reputation which they abused by asking

him to write their letters. He was a sort of business man, charged with

correspondence and consulted by households in affairs of difficulty.

Since September he had thus at last been able to establish his famous

Provident Fund, which was still very precarious, only including the

inhabitants of the settlement; but he hoped to be able to obtain the

adhesion of the miners at all the pits, especially if the Company,

which had remained passive, continued not to interfere. He had been

made secretary of the association and he even received a small salary

for the clerking. This made him almost rich. If a married miner can

with difficulty make both ends meet, a sober lad who has no burdens can

even manage to save.

From this time a slow transformation took place in Étienne. Certain

instincts of refinement and comfort which had slept during his poverty

were now revealed. He began to buy cloth garments; he also bought

a pair of elegant boots; he became a big man. The whole settlement

grouped round him. The satisfaction of his self-love was delicious;

he became intoxicated with this first enjoyment of popularity; to be

at the head of others, to command, he who was so young, and but the

day before had been a mere labourer, this filled him with pride, and

enlarged his dream of an approaching revolution in which he was to play

a part. His face changed: he became serious and put on airs, while

his growing ambition inflamed his theories and pushed him to ideas of

violence.

But autumn was advancing, and the October cold had blighted the

little gardens of the settlement. Behind the thin lilacs the trammers

no longer tumbled the putters over on the shed, and only the winter

vegetables remained, the cabbages pearled with white frost, the leeks

and the salads. Once more the rains were beating down on the red tiles

and flowing down into the tubs beneath the gutters with the sound of a

torrent. In every house the stove piled up with coal was never cold,

and poisoned the close parlours. It was the season of wretchedness

beginning once more.

In October, on one of the first frosty nights, Étienne, feverish after

his conversation below, could not sleep. He had seen Catherine glide

beneath the coverlet and then blow out the candle. She also appeared

to be quite overcome, and tormented by one of those fits of modesty

which still made her hasten sometimes, and so awkwardly that she only

uncovered herself more. In the darkness she lay as though dead; but

he knew that she also was awake, and he felt that she was thinking of

him just as he was thinking of her: this mute exchange of their beings

had never before filled them with such trouble. The minutes went by

and neither he nor she moved, only their breathing was embarrassed in

spite of their efforts to retain it. Twice over he was on the point of

rising and taking her. It was idiotic to have such a strong desire for

each other and never to satisfy it. Why should they thus sulk against

what they desired? The children were asleep, she was quite willing; he

was certain that she was waiting for him, stifling, and that she would

close her arms round him in silence with clenched teeth. Nearly an hour

passed. He did not go to take her, and she did not turn round for fear

of calling him. The more they lived side by side, the more a barrier

was raised of shames, repugnancies, delicacies of friendship, which

they could not explain even to themselves.

CHAPTER IV

"Listen," said Maheude to her man, "when you go to Montsou for the pay,

just bring me back a pound of coffee and a kilo of sugar."

He was sewing one of his shoes, in order to spare the cobbling.

"Good!" he murmured, without leaving his task.

"I should like you to go to the butcher's too. A bit of veal, eh? It's

so long since we saw it."

This time he raised his head.

"Do you think, then, that I've got thousands coming in? The fortnight's

pay is too little as it is, with their confounded idea of always

stopping work."

They were both silent. It was after breakfast, one Saturday, at the end

of October. The Company, under the pretext of the derangement caused by

payment, had on this day once more suspended output in all their pits.

Seized by panic at the growing industrial crisis, and not wishing to

augment their already considerable stock, they profited by the smallest

pretexts to force their ten thousand workers to rest.

"You know that Étienne is waiting for you at Rasseneur's," began

Maheude again. "Take him with you; he'll be more clever than you are in

clearing up matters if they haven't counted all your hours."

Maheu nodded approval.

"And just talk to those gentlemen about your father's affair. The

doctor's on good terms with the directors. It's true, isn't it, old un,

that the doctor's mistaken, and that you can still work?"

For ten days Father Bonnemort, with benumbed paws, as he said, had

remained nailed to his chair. She had to repeat her question, and he

growled:

"Sure enough, I can work. One isn't done for because one's legs are

bad. All that is just stories they make up, so as not to give the

hundred-and-eighty-franc pension."

Maheude thought of the old man's forty sous, which he would, perhaps,

never bring in any more, and she uttered a cry of anguish:

"My God! we shall soon be all dead if this goes on."

"When one is dead," said Maheu, "one doesn't get hungry."

He put some nails into his shoes, and decided to set out. The

Deux-Cent-Quarante settlement would not be paid till towards four

o'clock. The men did not hurry, therefore, but waited about, going off

one by one, beset by the women, who implored them to come back at once.

Many gave them commissions, to prevent them forgetting themselves in

public-houses.

At Rasseneur's Étienne had received news. Disquieting rumours were

flying about; it was said that the Company were more and more

discontented over the timbering. They were overwhelming the workmen

with fines, and a conflict appeared inevitable. That was, however, only

the avowed dispute; beneath it there were grave and secret causes of

complication.

Just as Étienne arrived, a comrade, who was drinking a glass on

his return from Montsou, was telling that an announcement had been

stuck up at the cashier's; but he did not quite know what was on the

announcement. A second entered, then a third, and each brought a

different story. It seemed certain, however, that the Company had taken

a resolution.

"What do you say about it, eh?" asked Étienne, sitting down near

Souvarine at a table where nothing was to be seen but a packet of

tobacco.

The engine-man did not hurry, but finished rolling his cigarette.

"I say that it was easy to foresee. They want to push you to extremes."

He alone had a sufficiently keen intelligence to analyse the situation.

He explained it in his quiet way. The Company, suffering from the

crisis, had been forced to reduce their expenses if they were not to

succumb, and it was naturally the workers who would have to tighten

their bellies; under some pretext or another the Company would nibble

at their wages. For two months the coal had been remaining at the

surface of their pits, and nearly all the workshops were resting. As

the Company did not dare to rest in this way, terrified at the ruinous

inaction, they were meditating a middle course, perhaps a strike, from

which the miners would come out crushed and worse paid. Then the new

Provident Fund was disturbing them, as it was a threat for the future,

while a strike would relieve them of it, by exhausting it when it was

still small.

Rasseneur had seated himself beside Étienne, and both of them were

listening in consternation. They could talk aloud, because there was no

one there but Madame Rasseneur, seated at the counter.

"What an idea!" murmured the innkeeper; "what's the good of it? The

Company has no interest in a strike, nor the men either. It would be

best to come to an understanding."

This was very sensible. He was always on the side of reasonable

demands. Since the rapid popularity of his old lodger, he had even

exaggerated this system of possible progress, saying they would

obtain nothing if they wished to have everything at once. In his fat,

good-humoured nature, nourished on beer, a secret jealousy was forming,

increased by the desertion of his bar, into which the workmen from

the Voreux now came more rarely to drink and to listen; and he thus

sometimes even began to defend the Company, forgetting the rancour of

an old miner who had been turned off.

"Then you are against the strike?" cried Madame Rasseneur, without

leaving the counter.

And as he energetically replied, "Yes!" she made him hold his tongue.

"Bah! you have no courage; let these gentlemen speak."

Étienne was meditating, with his eyes fixed on the glass which she had

served to him. At last he raised his head.

"I dare say it's all true what our mate tells us, and we must get

resigned to this strike if they force it on us. Pluchart has just

written me some very sensible things on this matter. He's against the

strike too, for the men would suffer as much as the masters, and it

wouldn't come to anything decisive. Only it seems to him a capital

chance to get our men to make up their minds to go into his big

machine. Here's his letter."

In fact, Pluchart, in despair at the suspicion which the International

aroused among the miners at Montsou, was hoping to see them enter in a

mass if they were forced to fight against the Company. In spite of his

efforts, Étienne had not been able to place a single member's card,

and he had given his best efforts to his Provident Fund, which was

much better received. But this fund was still so small that it would

be quickly exhausted, as Souvarine said, and the strikers would then

inevitably throw themselves into the Working Men's Association so that

their brothers in every country could come to their aid.

"How much have you in the fund?" asked Rasseneur. "Hardly three

thousand francs," replied Étienne, "and you know that the directors

sent for me yesterday. Oh! they were very polite; they repeated that

they wouldn't prevent their men from forming a reserve fund. But I

quite understood that they wanted to control it. We are bound to have a

struggle over that."

The innkeeper was walking up and down, whistling contemptuously. "Three

thousand francs! what can you do with that! It wouldn't yield six days'

bread; and if we counted on foreigners, such as the people in England,

one might go to bed at once and turn up one's toes. No, it was too

foolish, this strike!"

Then for the first time bitter words passed between these two men who

usually agreed together at last, in their common hatred of capital.

"We shall see! and you, what do you say about it?" repeated Étienne,

turning towards Souvarine.

The latter replied with his usual phrase of habitual contempt.

"A strike? Foolery!"

Then, in the midst of the angry silence, he added gently:

"On the whole, I shouldn't say no if it amuses you; it ruins the one

side and kills the other, and that is always so much cleared away. Only

in that way it will take quite a thousand years to renew the world.

Just begin by blowing up this prison in which you are all being done to

death!"

With his delicate hand he pointed out the Voreux, the buildings of

which could be seen through the open door. But an unforeseen drama

interrupted him: Poland, the big tame rabbit, which had ventured

outside, came bounding back, fleeing from the stones of a band of

trammers; and in her terror, with fallen ears and raised tail, she took

refuge against his legs, scratching and imploring him to take her up.

When he had placed her on his knees, he sheltered her with both hands,

and fell into that kind of dreamy somnolence into which the caress of

this soft warm fur always plunged him.

Almost at the same time Maheu came in. He would drink nothing, in spite

of the polite insistence of Madame Rasseneur, who sold her beer as

though she made a present of it. Étienne had risen, and both of them

set out for Montsou.

On pay-day at the Company's Yards, Montsou seemed to be in the midst of

a fete as on fine Sunday feast-days. Bands of miners arrived from all

the settlements. The cashier's office being very small, they preferred

to wait at the door, stationed in groups on the pavement, barring the

way in a crowd that was constantly renewed. Hucksters profited by the

occasion and installed themselves with their movable stalls that sold

even pottery and cooked meats. But it was especially the estaminets

and the bars which did a good trade, for the miners before being paid

went to the counters to get patience, and returned to them to wet

their pay as soon as they had it in their pockets. But they were very

sensible, except when they finished it at the Volcan. As Maheu and

Étienne advanced among the groups they felt that on that day a deep

exasperation was rising up. It was not the ordinary indifference with

which the money was taken and spent at the publics. Fists were clenched

and violent words were passing from mouth to mouth.

"Is it true, then," asked Maheu of Chaval, whom he met before the

Estaminet Piquette, "that they've played the dirty trick?"

But Chaval contented himself by replying with a furious growl, throwing

a sidelong look on Étienne. Since the working had been renewed he had

hired himself on with others, more and more bitten by envy against this

comrade, the new-comer who posed as a boss and whose boots, as he said,

were licked by the whole settlement. This was complicated by a lover's

jealousy. He never took Catherine to Réquillart now or behind the

pit-bank without accusing her in abominable language of sleeping with

her mother's lodger; then, seized by savage desire, he would stifle her

with caresses.

Maheu asked him another question:

"Is it the Voreux's turn now?"

And when he turned his back after nodding affirmatively, both men

decided to enter the Yards.

The counting-house was a small rectangular room, divided in two by a

grating. On the forms along the wall five or six miners were waiting;

while the cashier assisted by a clerk was paying another who stood

before the wicket with his cap in his hand. Above the form on the

left, a yellow placard was stuck up, quite fresh against the smoky

grey of the plaster, and it was in front of this that the men had

been constantly passing all the morning. They entered two or three

at a time, stood in front of it, and then went away without a word,

shrugging their shoulders as if their backs were crushed.

Two colliers were just then standing in front of the announcement, a

young one with a square brutish head and a very thin old one, his face

dull with age. Neither of them could read; the young one spelt, moving

his lips, the old one contented himself with gazing stupidly. Many came

in thus to look, without understanding.

"Read us that there!" said Maheu, who was not very strong either in

reading, to his companion.

Then Étienne began to read him the announcement. It was a notice from

the Company to the miners of all the pits, informing them that in

consequence of the lack of care bestowed on the timbering, and being

weary of inflicting useless fines, the Company had resolved to apply

a new method of payment for the extraction of coal. Henceforward they

would pay for the timbering separately, by the cubic metre of wood

taken down and used, based on the quantity necessary for good work.

The price of the tub of coal extracted would naturally be lowered, in

the proportion of fifty centimes to forty, according to the nature

and distance of the cuttings, and a somewhat obscure calculation

endeavoured to show that this diminution of ten centimes would be

exactly compensated by the price of the timbering. The Company added

also that, wishing to leave every one time to convince himself of the

advantages presented by this new scheme, they did not propose to apply

it till Monday, the 1st of December.

"Don't read so loud over there," shouted the cashier. "We can't hear

what we are saying."

Étienne finished reading without paying attention to this observation.

His voice trembled, and when he had reached the end they all continued

to gaze steadily at the placard. The old miner and the young one looked

as though they expected something more; then they went away with

depressed shoulders.

"Good God!" muttered Maheu.

He and his companions sat down absorbed, with lowered heads, and while

files of men continued to pass before the yellow paper they made

calculations. Were they being made fun of? They could never make up

with the timbering for the ten centimes taken off the tram. At most

they could only get to eight centimes, so the Company would be robbing

them of two centimes, without counting the time taken by careful work.

This, then, was what this disguised lowering of wages really came to.

The Company was economizing out of the miners' pockets.

"Good Lord! Good Lord!" repeated Maheu, raising his head. "We should be

bloody fools if we took that."

But the wicket being free he went up to be paid. The heads only of the

workings presented themselves at the desk and then divided the money

between their men to save time.

"Maheu and associates," said the clerk, "Filonniére seam, cutting No.

7."

He searched through the lists which were prepared from the inspection

of the tickets on which the captains stated every day for each stall

the number of trams extracted. Then he repeated:

"Maheu and associates, Filonniére seam, cutting No. 7. One hundred and

thirty-five francs."

The cashier paid.

"Beg pardon, sir," stammered the pikeman in surprise. "Are you sure you

have not made a mistake?"

He looked at this small sum of money without picking it up, frozen by

a shudder which went to his heart. It was true he was expecting bad

payment, but it could not come to so little or he must have calculated

wrong. When he had given their shares to Zacharie, Étienne, and the

other mate who replaced Chaval, there would remain at most fifty francs

for himself, his father, Catherine, and Jeanlin.

"No, no, I've made no mistake," replied the clerk. "There are two

Sundays and four rest days to be taken off; that makes nine days of

work." Maheu followed this calculation in a low voice: nine days gave

him about thirty francs, eighteen to Catherine, nine to Jeanlin. As

to Father Bonnemort, he only had three days. No matter, by adding the

ninety francs of Zacharie and the two mates, that would surely make

more.

"And don't forget the fines," added the clerk. "Twenty francs for fines

for defective timbering."

The pikeman made a gesture of despair. Twenty francs of fines, four

days of rest! That made out the account. To think that he had once

brought back a fortnight's pay of full a hundred and fifty francs when

Father Bonnemort was working and Zacharie had not yet set up house for

himself!

"Well, are you going to take it?" cried the cashier impatiently. "You

can see there's someone else waiting. If you don't want it, say so."

As Maheu decided to pick up the money with his large trembling hand the

clerk stopped him.

"Wait: I have your name here. Toussaint Maheu, is it not? The general

secretary wishes to speak to you. Go in, he is alone."

The dazed workman found himself in an office furnished with old

mahogany, upholstered with faded green rep. And he listened for five

minutes to the general secretary, a tall sallow gentleman, who spoke

to him over the papers of his bureau without rising. But the buzzing

in his ears prevented him from hearing. He understood vaguely that the

question of his father's retirement would be taken into consideration

with the pension of a hundred and fifty francs, fifty years of age

and forty years' service. Then it seemed to him that the secretary's

voice became harder. There was a reprimand; he was accused of occupying

himself with politics; an allusion was made to his lodger and the

Provident Fund; finally he was advised not to compromise himself with

these follies, he, who was one of the best workmen in the mine. He

wished to protest, but could only pronounce words at random, twisting

his cap between his feverish fingers, and he retired, stuttering:

"Certainly, sir--I can assure you, sir----"

Outside, when he had found Étienne who waiting for him, he broke out:

"Well, I am a bloody fool, I ought to have replied! Not enough money to

get bread, and insults as well! Yes, he has been talking against you;

he told me the settlement was being poisoned. And what's to be done?

Good God! bend one's back and say thank you. He's right, that's the

wisest plan."

Maheu fell silent, overcome at once by rage and fear. Étienne was

gloomily thinking. Once more they traversed the groups who blocked the

road. The exasperation was growing, the exasperation of a calm race,

the muttered warning of a storm, without violent gestures, terrible

to see above this solid mass. A few men understanding accounts had

made calculations, and the two centimes gained by the Company over the

wood were rumoured about, and excited the hardest heads. But it was

especially the rage over this disastrous pay, the rebellion of hunger

against the rest days and the fines. Already there was not enough to

eat, and what would happen if wages were still further lowered? In the

estaminets the anger grew loud, and fury so dried their throats that

the little money taken went over the counters.

From Montsou to the settlement Étienne and Maheu never exchanged

a word. When the latter entered, Maheude, who was alone with the

children, noticed immediately that his hands were empty.

"Well, you're a nice one!" she said. "Where's my coffee and my sugar

and the meat? A bit of veal wouldn't have ruined you."

He made no reply, stifled by the emotion he had been keeping back.

Then the coarse face of this man hardened to work in the mines became

swollen with despair, and large tears broke from his eyes and fell in

a warm rain. He had thrown himself into a chair, weeping like a child,

and throwing fifty francs on the table:

"Here," he stammered. "That's what I've brought you back. That's our

work for all of us."

Maheude looked at Étienne, and saw that he was silent and overwhelmed.

Then she also wept. How were nine people to live for a fortnight on

fifty francs? Her eldest son had left them, the old man could no longer

move his legs: it would soon mean death. Alzire threw herself round

her mother's neck, overcome on hearing her weep. Estelle was howling,

Lénore and Henri were sobbing.

And from the entire settlement there soon arose the same cry of

wretchedness. The men had come back, and each household was lamenting

the disaster of this bad pay. The doors opened, women appeared, crying

aloud outside, as if their complaints could not be held beneath the

ceilings of these small houses. A fine rain was falling, but they did

not feel it, they called one another from the pavements, they showed

one another in the hollow of their hands the money they had received.

"Look! they've given him this. Do they want to make fools of people?"

"As for me, see, I haven't got enough to pay for the fortnight's bread

with."

"And just count mine! I should have to sell my shifts!"

Maheude had come out like the others. A group had formed around the

Levaque woman, who was shouting loudest of all, for her drunkard of

a husband had not even turned up, and she knew that, large or small,

the pay would melt away at the Volcan. Philoméne watched Maheu so that

Zacharie should not get hold of the money. Pierronne was the only one

who seemed fairly calm, for that sneak of a Pierron always arranged

things, no one knew how, so as to have more hours on the captain's

ticket than his mates. But Mother Brulé thought this cowardly of her

son-in-law; she was among the enraged, lean and erect in the midst of

the group, with her fists stretched towards Montsou.

"To think," she cried, without naming the Hennebeaus, "that this

morning I saw their servant go by in a carriage! Yes, the cook in

a carriage with two horses, going to Marchiennes to get fish, sure

enough!"

A clamour arose, and the abuse began again. That servant in a white

apron taken to the market of the neighbouring town in her master's

carriage aroused indignation. While the workers were dying of hunger

they must have their fish, at all costs! Perhaps they would not always

be able to eat their fish: the turn of the poor people would come.

And the ideas sown by Étienne sprang up and expanded in this cry of

revolt. It was impatience before the promised age of gold, a haste to

get a share of the happiness beyond this horizon of misery, closed in

like the grave. The injustice was becoming too great; at last they

would demand their rights, since the bread was being taken out of

their mouths. The women especially would have liked at once to take by

assault this ideal city of progress, in which there was to be no more

wretchedness. It was almost night, and the rain increased while they

were still filling the settlement with their tears in the midst of the

screaming helter-skelter of the children.

That evening at the Avantage the strike was decided on. Rasseneur no

longer struggled against it, and Souvarine accepted it as a first step.

Étienne summed up the situation in a word: if the Company really wanted

a strike then the Company should have a strike.

CHAPTER V

A week passed, and work went on suspiciously and mournfully in

expectation of the conflict.

Among the Maheus the fortnight threatened to be more meagre than

ever. Maheude grew bitter, in spite of her moderation and good sense.

Her daughter Catherine, too, had taken it into her head to stay out

one night. On the following morning she came back so weary and ill

after this adventure that she was not able to go to the pit; and she

told with tears how it was not her fault, for Chaval had kept her,

threatening to beat her if she ran away. He was becoming mad with

jealousy, and wished to prevent her from returning to Étienne's bed,

where he well knew, he said, that the family made her sleep. Maheude

was furious, and, after forbidding her daughter ever to see such a

brute again, talked of going to Montsou to box his ears. But, all the

same, it was a day lost, and the girl, now that she had this lover,

preferred not to change him.

Two days after there was another incident. On Monday and Tuesday

Jeanlin, who was supposed to be quietly engaged on his task at the

Voreux, had escaped, to run away into the marshes and the forest of

Vandame with Bébert and Lydie. He had seduced them; no one knew to what

plunder or to what games of precocious children they had all three

given themselves up. He received a vigorous punishment, a whipping

which his mother applied to him on the pavement outside before the

terrified children of the settlement. Who could have thought such a

thing of children belonging to her, who had cost so much since their

birth, and who ought now to be bringing something in? And in this cry

there was the remembrance of her own hard youth, of the hereditary

misery which made of each little one in the brood a bread-winner later

on.

That morning, when the men and the girl set out for the pit, Maheude

sat up in her bed to say to Jeanlin:

"You know that if you begin that game again, you little beast, I'll

take the skin off your bottom!"

In Maheu's new stall the work was hard. This part of the Filonniére

seam was so thin that the pikemen, squeezed between the wall and the

roof, grazed their elbows at their work. It was, too, becoming very

damp; from hour to hour they feared a rush of water, one of those

sudden torrents which burst through rocks and carry away men. The day

before, as Étienne was violently driving in his pick and drawing it

out, he had received a jet of water in his face; but this was only an

alarm; the cutting simply became damper and more unwholesome. Besides,

he now thought nothing of possible accidents; he forgot himself there

with his mates, careless of peril. They lived in fire-damp without even

feeling its weight on their eyelids, the spider's-web veil which it

left on the eyelashes. Sometimes when the flame of the lamps grew paler

and bluer than usual it attracted attention, and a miner would put his

head against the seam to listen to the low noise of the gas, a noise

of air-bubbles escaping from each crack. But the constant threat was

of landslips; for, besides the insufficiency of the timbering, always

patched up too quickly, the soil, soaked with water, would not hold.

Three times during the day Maheu had been obliged to add to the

planking. It was half-past two, and the men would soon have to ascend.

Lying on his side, Étienne was finishing the cutting of a block, when a

distant growl of thunder shook the whole mine.

"What's that, then?" he cried, putting down his axe to listen.

He had at first thought that the gallery was falling in behind his back.

But Maheu had already glided along the slope of the cutting, saying:

"It's a fall! Quick, quick!"

All tumbled down and hastened, carried away by an impulse of anxious

fraternity. Their lamps danced at their wrists in the deathly silence

which had fallen; they rushed in single file along the passages with

bent backs, as though they were galloping on all fours; and without

slowing this gallop they asked each other questions and threw brief

replies. Where was it, then? In the cuttings, perhaps. No, it came from

below; no, from the haulage. When they arrived at the chimney passage,

they threw themselves into it, tumbling one over the other without

troubling about bruises.

Jeanlin, with skin still red from the whipping of the day before, had

not run away from the pit on this day. He was trotting with naked

feet behind his tram, closing the ventilation doors one by one; when

he was not afraid of meeting a captain he jumped on to the last tram,

which he was not allowed to do for fear he should go to sleep. But

his great amusement was, whenever the tram was shunted to let another

one pass, to go and join Bébert, who was holding the reins in front.

He would come up slyly without his lamp and vigorously pinch his

companion, inventing mischievous monkey tricks, with his yellow hair,

his large ears, his lean muzzle, lit up by little green eyes shining

in the darkness. With morbid precocity, he seemed to have the obscure

intelligence and the quick skill of a human abortion which had returned

to its animal ways.

In the afternoon, Mouque brought Bataille, whose turn it was, to the

trammers; and as the horse was snuffing in the shunting, Jeanlin, who

had glided up to Bébert, asked him:

"What's the matter with the old hack to stop short like that? He'll

break my legs."

Bébert could not reply; he had to hold in Bataille, who was growing

lively at the approach of the other tram. The horse had smelled from

afar his comrade, Trompette, for whom he had felt great tenderness ever

since the day when he had seen him disembarked in the pit. One might

say that it was the affectionate pity of an old philosopher anxious

to console a young friend by imparting to him his own resignation and

patience; for Trompette did not become reconciled, drawing his trams

without any taste for the work, standing with lowered head blinded

by the darkness, and for ever regretting the sun. So every time that

Bataille met him he put out his head snorting, and moistened him with

an encouraging caress.

"By God!" swore Bébert, "there they are, licking each other's skins

again!"

Then, when Trompette had passed, he replied, on the subject of Bataille:

"Oh, he's a cunning old beast! When he stops like that it's because he

guesses there's something in the way, a stone or a hole, and he takes

care of himself; he doesn't want to break his bones. To-day I don't

know what was the matter with him down there after the door. He pushed

it, and stood stock-still. Did you see anything?"

"No," said Jeanlin. "There's water, I've got it up to my knees."

The tram set out again. And, on the following journey, when he had

opened the ventilation door with a blow from his head, Bataille again

refused to advance, neighing and trembling. At last he made up his

mind, and set off with a bound.

Jeanlin, who closed the door, had remained behind. He bent down and

looked at the mud through which he was paddling, then, raising his

lamp, he saw that the wood had given way beneath the continual bleeding

of a spring. Just then a pikeman, one Berloque, who was called Chicot,

had arrived from his cutting, in a hurry to go to his wife who had just

been confined. He also stopped and examined the planking. And suddenly,

as the boy was starting to rejoin his train, a tremendous cracking

sound was heard, and a landslip engulfed the man and the child.

There was deep silence. A thick dust raised by the wind of the fall

passed through the passages. Blinded and choked, the miners came from

every part, even from the farthest stalls, with their dancing lamps

which feebly lighted up this gallop of black men at the bottom of

these molehills. When the first men tumbled against the landslip,

they shouted out and called their mates. A second band, come from the

cutting below, found themselves on the other side of the mass of earth

which stopped up the gallery. It was at once seen that the roof had

fallen in for a dozen metres at most. The damage was not serious. But

all hearts were contracted when a death-rattle was heard from the ruins.

Bébert, leaving his tram, ran up, repeating:

"Jeanlin is underneath! Jeanlin is underneath!"

Maheu, at this very moment, had come out of the passage with Zacharie

and Étienne. He was seized with the fury of despair, and could only

utter oaths:

"My God! my God! my God!"

Catherine, Lydie, and Mouquette, who had also rushed up, began to sob

and shriek with terror in the midst of the fearful disorder, which was

increased by the darkness. The men tried to make them be silent, but

they shrieked louder as each groan was heard.

The captain, Richomme, had come up running, in despair that neither

Négrel, the engineer, nor Dansaert was at the pit. With his ear pressed

against the rocks he listened; and, at last, said those sounds could

not come from a child. A man must certainly be there. Maheu had already

called Jeanlin twenty times over. Not a breath was heard. The little

one must have been smashed up.

And still the groans continued monotonously. They spoke to the agonized

man, asking him his name. The groaning alone replied.

"Look sharp!" repeated Richomme, who had already organized a rescue,

"we can talk afterwards."

From each end the miners attacked the landslip with pick and shovel.

Chaval worked without a word beside Maheu and Étienne, while Zacharie

superintended the removal of the earth. The hour for ascent had come,

and no one had touched food; but they could not go up for their soup

while their mates were in peril. They realized, however, that the

settlement would be disturbed if no one came back, and it was proposed

to send off the women. But neither Catherine nor Mouquette, nor even

Lydie, would move, nailed to the spot with a desire to know what

had happened, and to help. Levaque then accepted the commission of

announcing the landslip up above--a simple accident, which was being

repaired. It was nearly four o'clock; in less than an hour the men had

done a day's work; half the earth would have already been removed if

more rocks had not slid from the roof. Maheu persisted with such energy

that he refused, with a furious gesture, when another man approached to

relieve him for a moment.

"Gently!" said Richomme at last, "we are getting near. We must not

finish them off."

In fact the groaning was becoming more and more distinct. It was a

continuous rattling which guided the workers; and now it seemed to be

beneath their very picks. Suddenly it stopped.

In silence they all looked at one another, and shuddered as they felt

the coldness of death pass in the darkness. They dug on, soaked in

sweat, their muscles tense to breaking. They came upon a foot, and then

began to remove the earth with their hands, freeing the limbs one by

one. The head was not hurt. They turned their lamps on it, and Chicot's

name went round. He was quite warm, with his spinal column broken by a

rock.

"Wrap him up in a covering, and put him in a tram," ordered the

captain. "Now for the lad; look sharp."

Maheu gave a last blow, and an opening was made, communicating with

the men who were clearing away the soil from the other side. They

shouted out that they had just found Jeanlin, unconscious, with both

legs broken, still breathing. It was the father who took up the little

one in his arms, with clenched jaws constantly uttering "My God!" to

express his grief, while Catherine and the other women again began to

shriek.

A procession was quickly formed. Bébert had brought back Bataille,

who was harnessed to the trams. In the first lay Chicot's corpse,

supported by Étienne; in the second, Maheu was seated with Jeanlin,

still unconscious, on his knees, covered by a strip of wool torn from

the ventilation door. They started at a walking pace. On each tram was

a lamp like a red star. Then behind followed the row of miners, some

fifty shadows in single file. Now that they were overcome by fatigue,

they trailed their feet, slipping in the mud, with the mournful

melancholy of a flock stricken by an epidemic. It took them nearly half

an hour to reach the pit-eye. This procession beneath the earth, in the

midst of deep darkness, seemed never to end through galleries which

bifurcated and turned and unrolled.

At the pit-eye Richomme, who had gone on before, had ordered an empty

cage to be reserved. Pierron immediately loaded the two trams. In the

first Maheu remained with his wounded little one on his knees, while in

the other Étienne kept Chicot's corpse between his arms to hold it up.

When the men had piled themselves up in the other decks the cage rose.

It took two minutes. The rain from the tubbing fell very cold, and the

men looked up towards the air impatient to see daylight.

Fortunately a trammer sent to Dr. Vanderhaghen's had found him and

brought him back. Jeanlin and the dead man were placed in the captains'

room, where, from year's end to year's end, a large fire burnt. A

row of buckets with warm water was ready for washing feet; and, two

mattresses having been spread on the floor, the man and the child were

placed on them. Maheu and Étienne alone entered. Outside, putters,

miners, and boys were running about, forming groups and talking in a

low voice.

As soon as the doctor had glanced at Chicot:

"Done for! You can wash him."

Two overseers undressed and then washed with a sponge this corpse

blackened with coal and still dirty with the sweat of work.

"Nothing wrong with the head," said the doctor again, kneeling on

Jeanlin's mattress. "Nor the chest either. Ah! it's the legs which have

given."

He himself undressed the child, unfastening the cap, taking off the

jacket, drawing off the breeches and shirt with the skill of a nurse.

And the poor little body appeared, as lean as an insect, stained with

black dust and yellow earth, marbled by bloody patches. Nothing could

be made out, and they had to wash him also. He seemed to grow leaner

beneath the sponge, the flesh so pallid and transparent that one could

see the bones. It was a pity to look on this last degeneration of a

wretched race, this mere nothing that was suffering and half crushed by

the falling of the rocks. When he was clean they perceived the bruises

on the thighs, two red patches on the white skin.

Jeanlin, awaking from his faint, moaned. Standing up at the foot of the

mattress with hands hanging down, Maheu was looking at him and large

tears rolled from his eyes.

"Eh, are you the father?" said the doctor, raising his eyes; "no need

to cry then, you can see he is not dead. Help me instead."

He found two simple fractures. But the right leg gave him some anxiety,

it would probably have to be cut off.

At this moment the engineer, Négrel, and Dansaert, who had been

informed, came up with Richomme. The first listened to the captain's

narrative with an exasperated air. He broke out: Always this cursed

timbering! Had he not repeated a hundred times that they would leave

their men down there! and those brutes who talked about going out on

strike if they were forced to timber more solidly. The worst was that

now the Company would have to pay for the broken pots. M. Hennebeau

would be pleased!

"Who is it?" he asked of Dansaert, who was standing in silence before

the corpse which was being wrapped up in a sheet.

"Chicot! one of our good workers," replied the chief captain. "He has

three children. Poor chap!"

Dr. Vanderhaghen ordered Jeanlin's immediate removal to his parents'.

Six o'clock struck, twilight was already coming on, and they would do

well to remove the corpse also; the engineer gave orders to harness

the van and to bring a stretcher. The wounded child was placed on the

stretcher while the mattress and the dead body were put into the van.

Some putters were still standing at the door talking with some miners

who were waiting about to look on. When the door reopened there was

silence in the group. A new procession was then formed, the van in

front, then the stretcher, and then the train of people. They left the

mine square and went slowly up the road to the settlement. The first

November cold had denuded the immense plain; the night was now slowly

burying it like a shroud fallen from the livid sky.

Étienne then in a low voice advised Maheu to send Catherine on to warn

Maheude so as to soften the blow. The overwhelmed father, who was

following the stretcher, agreed with a nod; and the young girl set out

running, for they were now near. But the van, that gloomy well-known

box, was already signalled. Women ran out wildly on to the paths; three

or four rushed about in anguish, without their bonnets. Soon there were

thirty of them, then fifty, all choking with the same terror. Then

someone was dead? Who was it? The story told by Levaque after first

reassuring them, now exaggerated their nightmare: it was not one man,

it was ten who had perished, and who were now being brought back in the

van one by one.

Catherine found her mother agitated by a presentiment; and after

hearing the first stammered words Maheude cried:

"The father's dead!"

The young girl protested in vain, speaking of Jeanlin. Without hearing

her, Maheude had rushed forward. And on seeing the van, which was

passing before the church, she grew faint and pale. The women at their

doors, mute with terror, were stretching out their necks, while others

followed, trembling as they wondered before whose house the procession

would stop.

The vehicle passed; and behind it Maheude saw Maheu, who was

accompanying the stretcher. Then, when they had placed the stretcher

at her door and when she saw Jeanlin alive with his legs broken, there

was so sudden a reaction in her that she choked with anger, stammering,

without tears:

"Is this it? They cripple our little ones now! Both legs! My God! What

do they want me to do with him?"

"Be still, then," said Dr. Vanderhaghen, who had followed to attend to

Jeanlin. "Would you rather he had remained below?"

But Maheude grew more furious, while Alzire, Lénore, and Henri were

crying around her. As she helped to carry up the wounded boy and to

give the doctor what he needed, she cursed fate, and asked where she

was to find money to feed invalids. The old man was not then enough,

now this rascal too had lost his legs! And she never ceased; while

other cries, more heart-breaking lamentations, were heard from a

neighbouring house: Chicot's wife and children were weeping over the

body. It was now quite night, the exhausted miners were at last eating

their soup, and the settlement had fallen into a melancholy silence,

only disturbed by these loud outcries.

Three weeks passed. It was found possible to avoid amputation; Jeanlin

kept both his legs, but he remained lame. On investigation the Company

had resigned itself to giving a donation of fifty francs. It had also

promised to find employment for the little cripple at the surface as

soon as he was well. All the same their misery was aggravated, for the

father had received such a shock that he was seriously ill with fever.

Since Thursday Maheu had been back at the pit and it was now Sunday.

In the evening Étienne talked of the approaching date of the 1st

of December, preoccupied in wondering if the Company would execute

its threat. They sat up till ten o'clock waiting for Catherine, who

must have been delaying with Chaval. But she did not return. Maheude

furiously bolted the door without a word. Étienne was long in going

to sleep, restless at the thought of that empty bed in which Alzire

occupied so little room.

Next morning she was still absent; and it was only in the afternoon, on

returning from the pit, that the Maheus learnt that Chaval was keeping

Catherine. He created such abominable scenes with her that she had

decided to stay with him. To avoid reproaches he had suddenly left the

Voreux and had been taken on at Jean-Bart, M. Deneulin's mine, and she

had followed him as a putter. The new household still lived at Montsou,

at Piquette's.

Maheu at first talked of going to fight the man and of bringing his

daughter back with a kick in the backside. Then he made a gesture of

resignation: what was the good? It always turned out like that; one

could not prevent a girl from sticking to a man when she wanted to. It

was much better to wait quietly for the marriage. But Maheude did not

take things so easily.

"Did I beat her when she took this Chaval?" she cried to Étienne, who

listened in silence, very pale. "See now, tell me! you, who are a

sensible man. We have left her free, haven't we? because, my God! they

all come to it. Now, I was in the family way when the father married

me. But I didn't run away from my parents, and I should never have done

so dirty a trick as to carry the money I earned to a man who had no

want of it before the proper age. Ah! it's disgusting, you know. People

will leave off getting children!"

And as Étienne still replied only by nodding his head, she insisted:

"A girl who went out every evening where she wanted to! What has she

got in her skin, then, not to be able to wait till I married her after

she had helped to get us out of difficulties? Eh? it's natural, one

has a daughter to work. But there! we have been too good, we ought not

to let her go and amuse herself with a man. Give them an inch and they

take an ell."

Alzire nodded approvingly. Lénore and Henri, overcome by this storm,

cried quietly, while the mother now enumerated their misfortunes: first

Zacharie who had had to get married; then old Bonnemort who was there

on his chair with his twisted feet; then Jeanlin who could not leave

the room for ten days with his badly-united bones; and now, as a last

blow, this jade Catherine, who had gone away with a man! The whole

family was breaking up. There was only the father left at the pit. How

were they to live, seven persons without counting Estelle, on his three

francs? They might as well jump into the canal in a band.

"It won't do any good to worry yourself," said Maheu in a low voice,

"perhaps we have not got to the end."

Étienne, who was looking fixedly at the flags on the floor, raised his

head, and murmured with eyes lost in a vision of the future:

"Ah! it is time! it is time!"

PART FOUR

CHAPTER I

On that Monday the Hennebeaus had invited the Grégoires and their

daughter Cécile to lunch. They had formed their plans: on rising from

table, Paul Négrel was to take the ladies to a mine, Saint-Thomas,

which had been luxuriously reinstalled. But this was only an amiable

pretext; this party was an invention of Madame Hennebeau's to hasten

the marriage of Cécile and Paul.

Suddenly, on this very Monday, at four o'clock in the morning, the

strike broke out. When, on the 1st of December, the Company had

adopted the new wage system, the miners remained calm. At the end of

the fortnight not one made the least protest on pay-day. Everybody,

from the manager down to the last overseer, considered the tariff

as accepted; and great was their surprise in the morning at this

declaration of war, made with a tactical unity which seemed to indicate

energetic leadership.

At five o'clock Dansaert woke M. Hennebeau to inform him that not

a single man had gone down at the Voreux. The settlement of the

Deux-Cent-Quarante, which he had passed through, was sleeping deeply,

with closed windows and doors. And as soon as the manager had jumped

out of bed, his eyes still swollen with sleep, he was overwhelmed.

Every quarter of an hour messengers came in, and dispatches fell on his

desk as thick as hail. At first he hoped that the revolt was limited

to the Voreux; but the news became more serious every minute. There

was the Mirou, the Crévecoeur, the Madeleine, where only the grooms

had appeared; the Victoire and Feutry-Cantel, the two best disciplined

pits, where the men had been reduced by a third; Saint-Thomas alone

numbered all its people, and seemed to be outside the movement. Up to

nine o'clock he dictated dispatches, telegraphing in all directions,

to the prefect of Lille, to the directors of the Company, warning the

authorities and asking for orders. He had sent Négrel to go round the

neighbouring pits to obtain precise information.

Suddenly M. Hennebeau recollected the lunch; and he was about to send

the coachman to tell the Grégoires that the party had been put off,

when a certain hesitation and lack of will stopped him--the man who in

a few brief phrases had just made military preparations for a field of

battle. He went up to Madame Hennebeau, whose hair had just been done

by her lady's maid, in her dressing-room.

"Ah! they are on strike," she said quietly, when he had told her.

"Well, what has that to do with us? We are not going to leave off

eating, I suppose?"

And she was obstinate; it was vain to tell her that the lunch would be

disturbed, and that the visit to Saint-Thomas could not take place.

She found an answer to everything. Why lose a lunch that was already

cooking? And as to visiting the pit, they could give that up afterwards

if the walk was really imprudent.

"Besides," she added, when the maid had gone out, "you know that I am

anxious to receive these good people. This marriage ought to affect you

more than the follies of your men. I want to have it, don't contradict

me."

He looked at her, agitated by a slight trembling, and the hard firm

face of the man of discipline expressed the secret grief of a wounded

heart. She had remained with naked shoulders, already over-mature, but

still imposing and desirable, with the broad bust of a Ceres gilded by

the autumn. For a moment he felt a brutal desire to seize her, and to

roll his head between the breasts she was exposing in this warm room,

which exhibited the private luxury of a sensual woman and had about it

an irritating perfume of musk, but he recoiled; for ten years they had

occupied separate rooms.

"Good!" he said, leaving her. "Do not make any alterations."

M. Hennebeau had been born in the Ardennes. In his early life he had

undergone the hardships of a poor boy thrown as an orphan on the Paris

streets. After having painfully followed the courses of the École

des Mines, at the age of twenty-four he had gone to the Grand' Combe

as engineer to the Sainte-Barbe mine. Three years later he became

divisional engineer in the Pas-de-Calais, at the Marles mines. It was

there that he married, wedding, by one of those strokes of fortune

which are the rule among the Corps des Mines, the daughter of the rich

owner of a spinning factory at Arras. For fifteen years they lived in

the same small provincial town, and no event broke the monotony of

existence, not even the birth of a child. An increasing irritation

detached Madame Hennebeau, who had been brought up to respect money,

and was disdainful of this husband who gained a small salary with such

difficulty, and who enabled her to gratify none of the satisfactions

of vanity which she had dreamed of at school. He was a man of strict

honesty, who never speculated, but stood at his post like a soldier.

The lack of harmony had only increased, aggravated by one of those

curious misunderstandings of the flesh which freeze the most ardent;

he adored his wife, she had the sensuality of a greedy blonde, and

already they slept apart, ill at ease and wounded. From that time she

had a lover of whom he was ignorant. At last he left the Pas-de-Calais

to occupy a situation in an office at Paris, with the idea that she

would be grateful to him. But Paris only completed their separation,

that Paris which she had desired since her first doll, and where she

washed away her provincialism in a week, becoming a woman of fashion

at once, and throwing herself into all the luxurious follies of the

period. The ten years which she spent there were filled by a great

passion, a public intrigue with a man whose desertion nearly killed

her. This time the husband had not been able to keep his ignorance, and

after some abominable scenes he resigned himself, disarmed by the quiet

unconsciousness of this woman who took her happiness where she found

it. It was after the rupture, and when he saw that she was ill with

grief, that he had accepted the management of the Montsou mines, still

hoping also that she would reform down there in that desolate black

country.

The Hennebeaus, since they had lived at Montsou, returned to the

irritated boredom of their early married days. At first she seemed

consoled by the great quiet, soothed by the flat monotony of the

immense plain; she buried herself in it as a woman who has done with

the world; she affected a dead heart, so detached from life that she

did not even mind growing stout. Then, beneath this indifference a

final fever declared itself, the need to live once more, and she

deluded herself for six months by organizing and furnishing to her

taste the little villa belonging to the management. She said it was

frightful, and filled it with upholstery, bric-a-brac, and all sorts of

artistic luxuries which were talked of as far as Lille. Now the country

exasperated her, those stupid fields spread out to infinity, those

eternal black roads without a tree, swarming with a horrid population

which disgusted and frightened her. Complaints of exile began; she

accused her husband of having sacrificed her to a salary of forty

thousand francs, a trifle which hardly sufficed to keep the house up.

Why could he not imitate others, demand a part for himself, obtain

shares, succeed in something at last? And she insisted with the cruelty

of an heiress who had brought her own fortune. He, always restrained,

and taking refuge in the deceptive coldness of a man of business, was

torn by desire for this creature, one of those late desires which are

so violent and which increase with age. He had never possessed her as a

lover; he was haunted by a continual image, to have her once to himself

as she had given herself to another. Every morning he dreamed of

winning her in the evening; then, when she looked at him with her cold

eyes, and when he felt that everything within her denied itself to him,

he even avoided touching her hand. It was a suffering without possible

cure, hidden beneath the stiffness of his attitude, the suffering of a

tender nature in secret anguish at the lack of domestic happiness. At

the end of six months, when the house, being definitely furnished, no

longer occupied Madame Hennebeau, she fell into the languor of boredom,

a victim who was being killed by exile, and who said that she was glad

to die of it.

Just then Paul Négrel arrived at Montsou. His mother, the widow of

a Provence captain, living at Avignon on a slender income, had had

to content herself with bread and water to enable him to reach the

École Polytechnique. He had come out low in rank, and his uncle, M.

Hennebeau, had enabled him to leave by offering to take him as engineer

at the Voreux. From that time he was treated as one of the family; he

even had his room there, his meals there, lived there, and was thus

enabled to send to his mother half his salary of three thousand francs.

To disguise this kindness M. Hennebeau spoke of the embarrassment to

a young man of setting up a household in one of those little villas

reserved for the mine engineers. Madame Hennebeau had at once taken the

part of a good aunt, treating her nephew with familiarity and watching

over his comfort. During the first months, especially, she exhibited

an overwhelming maternity with her advice regarding the smallest

subjects. But she remained a woman, however, and slid into personal

confidences. This lad, so young and so practical, with his unscrupulous

intelligence, professing a philosopher's theory of love, amused her

with the vivacity of the pessimism which had sharpened his thin face

and pointed nose. One evening he naturally found himself in her arms,

and she seemed to give herself up out of kindness, while saying to

him that she had no heart left, and wished only to be his friend. In

fact, she was not jealous; she joked him about the putters, whom he

declared to be abominable, and she almost sulked because he had no

young man's pranks to narrate to her. Then she was carried away by the

idea of getting him married; she dreamed of sacrificing herself and of

finding a rich girl for him. Their relations continued a plaything, a

recreation, in which she felt the last tenderness of a lazy woman who

had done with the world.

Two years had passed by. One night M. Hennebeau had a suspicion when

he heard naked feet passing his door. But this new adventure revolted

him, in his own house, between this mother and this son! And besides,

on the following day his wife spoke to him about the choice of Cécile

Grégoire which she had made for her nephew. She occupied herself over

this marriage with such ardour that he blushed at his own monstrous

imagination. He only felt gratitude towards the young man who, since

his arrival, had made the house less melancholy.

As he came down from the dressing-room, M. Hennebeau found that Paul,

who had just returned, was in the vestibule. He seemed to be quite

amused by the story of this strike.

"Well?" asked his uncle.

"Well, I've been round the settlements. They seem to be quite sensible

in there. I think they will first send you a deputation."

But at that moment Madame Hennebeau's voice called from the first story:

"Is that you, Paul? Come up, then, and tell me the news. How queer they

are to make such a fuss, these people who are so happy!"

And the manager had to renounce further information, since his wife had

taken his messenger. He returned and sat before his desk, on which a

new packet of dispatches was placed.

At eleven o'clock the Grégoires arrived, and were astonished when

Hippolyte, the footman, who was placed as sentinel, hustled them in

after an anxious glance at the two ends of the road. The drawing-room

curtains were drawn, and they were taken at once into the study, where

M. Hennebeau apologized for their reception; but the drawing-room

looked over the street and it was undesirable to seem to offer

provocations.

"What! you don't know?" he went on, seeing their surprise.

M. Grégoire, when he heard that the strike had at last broken out,

shrugged his shoulders in his placid way. Bah! it would be nothing,

the people were honest. With a movement of her chin, Madame Grégoire

approved his confidence in the everlasting resignation of the colliers;

while Cécile, who was very cheerful that day, feeling that she looked

well in her capuchin cloth costume, smiled at the word "strike," which

reminded her of visits to the settlements and the distribution of

charities.

Madame Hennebeau now appeared in black silk, followed by Négrel.

"Ah! isn't it annoying!" she said, at the door. "As if they couldn't

wait, those men! You know that Paul refuses to take us to Saint-Thomas."

"We can stay here," said M. Grégoire, obligingly. "We shall be quite

pleased."

Paul had contented himself with formally saluting Cécile and her

mother. Angry at this lack of demonstrativeness, his aunt sent him with

a look to the young girl; and when she heard them laughing together she

enveloped them in a maternal glance.

M. Hennebeau, however, finished reading his dispatches and prepared a

few replies. They talked near him; his wife explained that she had not

done anything to this study, which, in fact, retained its faded old red

paper, its heavy mahogany furniture, its cardboard files, scratched

by use. Three-quarters of an hour passed and they were about to seat

themselves at table when the footman announced M. Deneulin. He entered

in an excited way and bowed to Madame Hennebeau.

"Ah! you here!" he said, seeing the Grégoires.

And he quickly spoke to the manager:

"It has come, then? I've just heard of it through my engineer. With me,

all the men went down this morning. But the thing may spread. I'm not

at all at ease. How is it with you?"

He had arrived on horseback, and his anxiety betrayed itself in his

loud speech and abrupt gestures, which made him resemble a retired

cavalry officer.

M. Hennebeau was beginning to inform him regarding the precise

situation, when Hippolyte opened the dining-room door. Then he

interrupted himself to say:

"Lunch with us. I will tell you more at dessert."

"Yes, as you please," replied Deneulin, so full of his thoughts that he

accepted without ceremony.

He was, however, conscious of his impoliteness and turned towards

Madame Hennebeau with apologies. She was very charming, however. When

she had had a seventh plate laid she placed her guests: Madame Grégoire

and Cécile by her husband, then M. Grégoire and Deneulin at her own

right and left; then Paul, whom she put between the young girl and her

father. As they attacked the _hors-d'oeuvre_ she said, with a

smile:

"You must excuse me; I wanted to give you oysters. On Monday, you know,

there was an arrival of Ostend oysters at Marchiennes, and I meant to

send the cook with the carriage. But she was afraid of being stoned--"

They all interrupted her with a great burst of gaiety. They thought the

story very funny.

"Hush!" said M. Hennebeau, vexed, looking at the window, through which

the road could be seen. "We need not tell the whole country that we

have company this morning."

"Well, here is a slice of sausage which they shan't have," M. Grégoire

declared.

The laughter began again, but with greater restraint. Each guest made

himself comfortable, in this room upholstered with Flemish tapestry

and furnished with old oak chests. The silver shone behind the panes

of the sideboards; and there was a large hanging lamp of red copper,

whose polished surfaces reflected a palm and an aspidistra growing

in majolica pots. Outside, the December day was frozen by a keen

north-east wind. But not a breath of it entered; a green-house warmth

developed the delicate odour of the pineapple, sliced in a crystal bowl.

"Suppose we were to draw the curtains," proposed Négrel, who was amused

at the idea of frightening the Grégoires.

The housemaid, who was helping the footman, treated this as an order

and went and closed one of the curtains. This led to interminable

jokes: not a glass or a plate could be put down without precaution;

every dish was hailed as a waif escaped from the pillage in a conquered

town; and behind this forced gaiety there was a certain fear which

betrayed itself in involuntary glances towards the road, as though a

band of starvelings were watching the table from outside.

After the scrambled eggs with truffles, trout came on. The conversation

then turned to the industrial crisis, which had become aggravated

during the last eighteen months.

"It was inevitable," said Deneulin, "the excessive prosperity of recent

years was bound to bring us to it. Think of the enormous capital which

has been sunk, the railways, harbours, and canals, all the money buried

in the maddest speculations. Among us alone sugar works have been set

up as if the department could furnish three beetroot harvests. Good

heavens! and to-day money is scarce, and we have to wait to catch up

the interest of the expended millions; so there is a mortal congestion

and a final stagnation of business."

M. Hennebeau disputed this theory, but he agreed that the fortunate

years had spoilt the men.

"When I think," he exclaimed, "that these chaps in our pits used to

gain six francs a day, double what they gain now! And they lived well,

too, and acquired luxurious tastes. To-day, naturally, it seems hard to

them to go back to their old frugality."

"Monsieur Grégoire," interrupted Madame Hennebeau, "let me persuade

you, a little more trout. They are delicious, are they not?"

The manager went on:

"But, as a matter of fact, is it our fault? We, too, are cruelly

struck. Since the factories have closed, one by one, we have had a

deuce of a difficulty in getting rid of our stock; and in face of

the growing reduction in demand we have been forced to lower our net

prices. It is just this that the men won't understand."

There was silence. The footman presented roast partridge, while the

housemaid began to pour out Chambertin for the guests.

"There has been a famine in India," said Deneulin in a low voice, as

though he were speaking to himself. "America, by ceasing to order iron,

has struck a heavy blow at our furnaces. Everything holds together; a

distant shock is enough to disturb the world. And the empire, which was

so proud of this hot fever of industry!"

He attacked his partridge wing. Then, raising his voice:

"The worst is that to lower the net prices we ought logically to

produce more; otherwise the reduction bears on wages, and the worker is

right in saying that he has to pay the damage."

This confession, the outcome of his frankness, raised a discussion.

The ladies were not at all interested. Besides, all were occupied with

their plates, in the first zest of appetite. When the footman came

back, he seemed about to speak, then he hesitated.

"What is it?" asked M. Hennebeau. "If there are letters, give them to

me. I am expecting replies."

"No, sir. It is Monsieur Dansaert, who is in the hall. But he doesn't

wish to disturb you."

The manager excused himself, and had the head captain brought in. The

latter stood upright, a few paces from the table, while all turned

to look at him, huge, out of breath with the news he was bringing.

The settlements were quiet; only it had now been decided to send a

deputation. It would, perhaps, be there in a few minutes.

"Very well; thank you," said M. Hennebeau. "I want a report morning and

evening, you understand."

And as soon as Dansaert had gone, they began to joke again, and

hastened to attack the Russian salad, declaring that not a moment was

to be lost if they wished to finish it. The mirth was unbounded when

Négrel, having asked the housemaid for bread, she replied, "Yes, sir,"

in a voice as low and terrified as if she had behind her a troop ready

for murder and rape.

"You may speak," said Madame Hennebeau complacently. "They are not here

yet."

The manager, who now received a packet of letters and dispatches,

wished to read one of his letters aloud. It was from Pierron, who,

in respectful phrases, gave notice that he was obliged to go out on

strike with his comrades, in order to avoid ill-treatment; and he added

that he had not even been able to avoid taking part in the deputation,

although he blamed that step.

"So much for liberty of work!" exclaimed M. Hennebeau.

Then they returned to the strike, and asked him his opinion.

"Oh!" he replied, "we have had them before. It will be a week, or, at

most, a fortnight, of idleness, as it was last time. They will go and

wallow in the public-houses, and then, when they are hungry, they will

go back to the pits."

Deneulin shook his head:

"I'm not so satisfied; this time they appear to be better organized.

Have they not a Provident Fund?"

"Yes, scarcely three thousand francs. What do you think they can do

with that? I suspect a man called Étienne Lantier of being their

leader. He is a good workman; it would vex me to have to give him his

certificate back, as we did of old to the famous Rasseneur, who still

poisons the Voreux with his ideas and his beer. No matter, in a week

half the men will have gone down, and in a fortnight the ten thousand

will be below."

He was convinced. His only anxiety was concerning his own possible

disgrace should the directors put the responsibility of the strike on

him. For some time he had felt that he was diminishing in favour. So

leaving the spoonful of Russian salad which he had taken, he read over

again the dispatches received from Paris, endeavouring to penetrate

every word. His guests excused him; the meal was becoming a military

lunch, eaten on the field of battle before the first shots were fired.

The ladies then joined in the conversation. Madame Grégoire expressed

pity for the poor people who would suffer from hunger; and Cécile was

already making plans for distributing gifts of bread and meat. But

Madame Hennebeau was astonished at hearing of the wretchedness of

the Montsou colliers. Were they not very fortunate? People who were

lodged and warmed and cared for at the expense of the Company! In her

indifference for the herd, she only knew the lessons she had learnt,

and with which she had surprised the Parisians who came on a visit.

She believed them at last, and was indignant at the ingratitude of the

people.

Négrel, meanwhile, continued to frighten M. Grégoire. Cécile did not

displease him, and he was quite willing to marry her to be agreeable to

his aunt, but he showed no amorous fever; like a youth of experience,

who, he said, was not easily carried away now. He professed to be

a Republican, which did not prevent him from treating his men with

extreme severity, or from making fun of them in the company of the

ladies.

"Nor have I my uncle's optimism, either," he continued. "I fear

there will be serious disturbances. So I should advise you, Monsieur

Grégoire, to lock up Piolaine. They may pillage you."

Just then, still retaining the smile which illuminated his good-natured

face, M. Grégoire was going beyond his wife in paternal sentiments with

regard to the miners.

"Pillage me!" he cried, stupefied. "And why pillage me?"

"Are you not a shareholder in Montsou! You do nothing; you live on the

work of others. In fact you are an infamous capitalist, and that is

enough. You may be sure that if the revolution triumphs, it will force

you to restore your fortune as stolen money."

At once he lost his child-like tranquillity, his serene

unconsciousness. He stammered:

"Stolen money, my fortune! Did not my great-grandfather gain, and

hardly, too, the sum originally invested? Have we not run all the risks

of the enterprise, and do I today make a bad use of my income?"

Madame Hennebeau, alarmed at seeing the mother and daughter also white

with fear, hastened to intervene, saying:

"Paul is joking, my dear sir."

But M. Grégoire was carried out of himself. As the servant was passing

round the crayfish he took three of them without knowing what he was

doing and began to break their claws with his teeth.

"Ah! I don't say but what there are shareholders who abuse their

position. For instance, I have been told that ministers have received

shares in Montsou for services rendered to the Company. It is like a

nobleman whom I will not name, a duke, the biggest of our shareholders,

whose life is a scandal of prodigality, millions thrown into the street

on women, feasting, and useless luxury. But we who live quietly, like

good citizens as we are, who do not speculate, who are content to live

wholesomely on what we have, giving a part to the poor: Come, now! your

men must be mere brigands if they came and stole a pin from us!"

Négrel himself had to calm him, though amused at his anger. The

crayfish were still going round; the little crackling sound of their

carapaces could be heard, while the conversation turned to politics,

M. Grégoire, in spite of everything and though still trembling, called

himself a Liberal and regretted Louis Philippe. As for Deneulin, he was

for a strong Government; he declared that the Emperor was gliding down

the slope of dangerous concessions.

"Remember '89," he said. "It was the nobility who made the Revolution

possible, by their complicity and taste for philosophic novelties. Very

well! the middle class to-day are playing the same silly game with

their furious Liberalism, their rage for destruction, their flattery of

the people. Yes, yes, you are sharpening the teeth of the monster that

will devour us. It will devour us, rest assured!"

The ladies bade him be silent, and tried to change the conversation by

asking him news of his daughters. Lucie was at Marchiennes, where she

was singing with a friend; Jeanne was painting an old beggar's head.

But he said these things in a distracted way; he constantly looked at

the manager, who was absorbed in the reading of his dispatches and

forgetful of his guests. Behind those thin leaves he felt Paris and the

directors' orders, which would decide the strike. At last he could not

help yielding to his preoccupation.

"Well, what are you going to do?" he asked suddenly.

M. Hennebeau started; then turned off the question with a vague phrase.

"We shall see."

"No doubt you are solidly placed, you can wait," Deneulin began to

think aloud. "But as for me, I shall be done for if the strike reaches

Vandame. I shall have reinstalled Jean-Bart in vain; with a single pit,

I can only get along by constant production. Ah! I am not in a very

pleasant situation, I can assure you!"

This involuntary confession seemed to strike M. Hennebeau. He listened

and a plan formed within him: in case the strike turned out badly,

why not utilize it by letting things run down until his neighbour was

ruined, and then buy up his concession at a low price? That would be

the surest way of regaining the good graces of the directors, who for

years had dreamed of possessing Vandame.

"If Jean-Bart bothers you as much as that," said he, laughing, "why

don't you give it up to us?"

But Deneulin was already regretting his complaints. He exclaimed:

"Never, never!"

They were amused at his vigour and had already forgotten the strike

by the time the dessert appeared. An apple-charlotte meringue was

overwhelmed with praise. Afterwards the ladies discussed a recipe with

respect to the pineapple which was declared equally exquisite. The

grapes and pears completed their happy abandonment at the end of this

copious lunch. All talked excitedly at the same time, while the servant

poured out Rhine wine in place of champagne which was looked upon as

commonplace.

And the marriage of Paul and Cécile certainly made a forward step in

the sympathy produced by the dessert. His aunt had thrown such urgent

looks in his direction, that the young man showed himself very amiable,

and in his wheedling way reconquered the Grégoires, who had been cast

down by his stories of pillage. For a moment M. Hennebeau, seeing

the close understanding between his wife and his nephew, felt that

abominable suspicion again revive, as if in this exchange of looks he

had surprised a physical contact. But again the idea of the marriage,

made here before his face, reassured him.

Hippolyte was serving the coffee when the housemaid entered in a fright.

"Sir, sir, they are here!"

It was the delegates. Doors banged; a breath of terror was passing

through the neighbouring rooms.

Around the table the guests were looking at one another with uneasy

indecision. There was silence. Then they tried to resume their jokes:

they pretended to put the rest of the sugar in their pockets, and

talked of hiding the plate. But the manager remained grave; and the

laughter fell and their voices sank to a whisper, while the heavy feet

of the delegates who were being shown in tramped over the carpet of the

next room.

Madame Hennebeau said to her husband, lowering her voice:

"I hope you will drink your coffee."

"Certainly," he replied. "Let them wait."

He was nervous, listening to every sound, though apparently occupied

with his cup.

Paul and Cécile got up, and he made her venture an eye to the keyhole.

They were stifling their laughter and talking in a low voice.

"Do you see them?"

"Yes, I see a big man and two small ones behind."

"Haven't they ugly faces?"

"Not at all; they are very nice."

Suddenly M. Hennebeau left his chair, saying the coffee was too hot and

he would drink it afterwards. As he went out he put a finger to his

lips to recommend prudence. They all sat down again and remained at

table in silence, no longer daring to move, listening from afar with

intent ears jarred by these coarse male voices.