"Will you drink, by God? Drink with me to the confusion of all the

dirty beasts who refuse to work."

She drank, but with so trembling a hand that the two glasses struck

together with a tinkling sound. He had now pulled out of his pocket a

handful of silver, which he exhibited with drunken ostentation, saying

that he had earned that with his sweat, and that he defied the shammers

to show ten sous. The attitude of his mates exasperated him, and he

began to come to direct insults.

"Then it is at night that the moles come out? The police have to go to

sleep before we meet the brigands."

Étienne had risen, very calm and resolute.

"Listen! You annoy me. Yes, you are a spy; your money still stinks of

some treachery. You've sold yourself, and it disgusts me to touch your

skin. No matter; I'm your man. It is quite time that one of us did for

the other."

Chaval clenched his fists.

"Come along, then, cowardly dog! I must call you so to warm you up.

You all alone--I'm quite willing; and you shall pay for all the bloody

tricks that have been played on me."

With suppliant arms Catherine advanced between them. But they had no

need to repel her; she felt the necessity of the battle, and slowly

drew back of her own accord. Standing against the wall, she remained

silent, so paralysed with anguish that she no longer shivered, her

large eyes gazing at these two men who were going to kill each other

over her.

Madame Rasseneur simply removed the glasses from the counter for fear

that they might be broken. Then she sat down again on the bench,

without showing any improper curiosity. But two old mates could

not be left to murder each other like this. Rasseneur persisted in

interfering, and Souvarine had to take him by the shoulder and lead him

back to the table, saying:

"It doesn't concern you. There is one of them too many, and the

strongest must live."

Without waiting for the attack, Chaval's fists were already dealing

blows at space. He was the taller of the two, and his blows swung about

aiming at the face, with furious cutting movements of both arms one

after the other, as though he were handling a couple of sabres. And he

went on talking, playing to the gallery with volleys of abuse, which

served to excite him.

"Ah! you damned devil, I'll have your nose! I'll do for your bloody

nose! Just let me get at your chops, you whore's looking-glass;

I'll make a hash for the bloody swine, and then we shall see if the

strumpets will run after you!"

In silence, and with clenched teeth, Étienne gathered up his small

figure, according to the rules of the game, protecting his chest and

face by both fists; and he watched and let them fly like springs

released, with terrible straight blows.

At first they did each other little damage. The whirling and blustering

blows of the one, the cool watchfulness of the other, prolonged the

struggle. A chair was overthrown; their heavy boots crushed the white

sand scattered on the floor. But at last they were out of breath, their

panting respiration was heard, while their faces became red and swollen

as from an interior fire which flamed out from the clear holes of their

eyes.

"Played!" yelled Chaval; "trumps on your carcass!"

In fact his fist, working like a flail, had struck his adversary's

shoulder. Étienne restrained a groan of pain and the only sound that

was heard was the dull bruising of the muscles. Étienne replied with

a straight blow to Chaval's chest, which would have knocked him out,

had he had not saved himself by one of his constant goat-like leaps.

The blow, however, caught him on the left flank with such effect that

he tottered, momentarily winded. He became furious on feeling his arm

grow limp with pain, and kicked out like a wild beast, aiming at his

adversary's belly with his heel.

"Have at your guts!" he stammered in a choked voice. "I'll pull them

out and unwind them for you!"

Étienne avoided the blow, so indignant at this infraction of the laws

of fair fighting that he broke silence.

"Hold your tongue, brute! And no feet, by God! or I take a chair and

bash you with it!"

Then the struggle became serious. Rasseneur was disgusted, and would

again have interfered, but a severe look from his wife held him back:

had not two customers a right to settle an affair in the house?

He simply placed himself before the fireplace, for fear lest they

should tumble over into it. Souvarine, in his quiet way, had rolled a

cigarette, but he forgot to light it. Catherine was motionless against

the wall; only her hands had unconsciously risen to her waist, and with

constant fidgeting movements were twisting and tearing at the stuff of

her dress. She was striving as hard as possible not to cry out, and so,

perhaps, kill one of them by declaring her preference; but she was,

too, so distracted that she did not even know which she preferred.

Chaval, who was bathed in sweat and striking at random, soon became

exhausted. In spite of his anger, Étienne continued to cover himself,

parrying nearly all the blows, a few of which grazed him. His ear was

split, a finger nail had torn away a piece of his neck, and this so

smarted that he swore in his turn as he drove out one of his terrible

straight blows. Once more Chaval saved his chest by a leap, but he had

lowered himself, and the fist reached his face, smashing his nose and

crushing one eye. Immediately a jet of blood came from his nostrils,

and his eye became swollen and bluish. Blinded by this red flood, and

dazed by the shock to his skull, the wretch was beating the air with

his arms at random, when another blow, striking him at last full in the

chest, finished him. There was a crunching sound; he fell on his back

with a heavy thud, as when a sack of plaster is emptied.

Étienne waited.

"Get up! if you want some more, we'll begin again."

Without replying, Chaval, after a few minutes' stupefaction, moved

on the ground and stretched his limbs. He picked himself up with

difficulty, resting for a moment curled up on his knees, doing

something with his hand in the bottom of his pocket which could not be

observed. Then, when he was up, he rushed forward again, his throat

swelling with a savage yell.

But Catherine had seen; and in spite of herself a loud cry came from

her heart, astonishing her like the avowal of a preference she had

herself been ignorant of:

"Take care! he's got his knife!"

Étienne had only time to parry the first blow with his arm. His woollen

jacket was cut by the thick blade, one of those blades fastened by a

copper ferrule into a boxwood handle. He had already seized Chaval's

wrist, and a terrible struggle began; for he felt that he would be lost

if he let go, while the other shook his arm in the effort to free it

and strike. The weapon was gradually lowered as their stiffened limbs

grew fatigued. Étienne twice felt the cold sensation of the steel

against his skin; and he had to make a supreme effort, so crushing the

other's wrist that the knife slipped from his hand. Both of them had

fallen to the earth, and it was Étienne who snatched it up, brandishing

it in his turn. He held Chaval down beneath his knee and threatened to

slit his throat open.

"Ah, traitor! by God! you've got it coming to you now!"

He felt an awful voice within, deafening him. It arose from his bowels

and was beating in his head like a hammer, a sudden mania of murder, a

need to taste blood. Never before had the crisis so shaken him. He was

not drunk, however, and he struggled against the hereditary disease

with the despairing shudder of a man who is mad with lust and struggles

on the verge of rape. At last he conquered himself; he threw the knife

behind him, stammering in a hoarse voice:

"Get up--off you go!"

This time Rasseneur had rushed forward, but without quite daring to

venture between them, for fear of catching a nasty blow. He did not

want any one to be murdered in his house, and was so angry that his

wife, sitting erect at the counter, remarked to him that he always

cried out too soon. Souvarine, who had nearly caught the knife in his

legs, decided to light his cigarette. Was it, then, all over? Catherine

was looking on stupidly at the two men, who were unexpectedly both

living.

"Off you go!" repeated Étienne. "Off you go, or I'll do for you!"

Chaval arose, and with the back of his hand wiped away the blood which

continued to flow from his nose; with jaw smeared red and bruised

eye, he went away trailing his feet, furious at his defeat. Catherine

mechanically followed him. Then he turned round, and his hatred broke

out in a flood of filth.

"No, no! since you want him, sleep with him, dirty jade! and don't put

your bloody feet in my place again if you value your skin!"

He violently banged the door. There was deep silence in the warm room,

the low crackling of the coal was alone heard. On the ground there only

remained the overturned chair and a rain of blood which the sand on the

floor was drinking up.

CHAPTER IV

When they came out of Rasseneur's, Étienne and Catherine walked on in

silence. The thaw was beginning, a slow cold thaw which stained the

snow without melting it. In the livid sky a full moon could be faintly

seen behind great clouds, black rags driven furiously by a tempestuous

wind far above; and on the earth no breath was stirring, nothing could

be heard but drippings from the roofs, the falling of white lumps with

a soft thud.

Étienne was embarrassed by this woman who had been given to him, and

in his disquiet he could find nothing to say. The idea of taking her

with him to hide at Réquillart seemed absurd. He had proposed to lead

her back to the settlement, to her parents' house, but she had refused

in terror. No, no! anything rather than be a burden on them once more

after having behaved so badly to them! And neither of them spoke any

more; they tramped on at random through the roads which were becoming

rivers of mud. At first they went down towards the Voreux; then they

turned to the right and passed between the pit-bank and the canal.

"But you'll have to sleep somewhere," he said at last. "Now, if I only

had a room, I could easily take you----"

But a curious spasm of timidity interrupted him. The past came back

to him, their old longings for each other, and the delicacies and the

shames which had prevented them from coming together. Did he still

desire her, that he felt so troubled, gradually warmed at the heart by

a fresh longing? The recollection of the blows she had dealt him at

Gaston-Marie now attracted him instead of filling him with spite. And

he was surprised; the idea of taking her to Réquillart was becoming

quite natural and easy to execute.

"Now, come, decide; where would you like me to take you? You must hate

me very much to refuse to come with me!"

She was following him slowly, delayed by the painful slipping of her

sabots into the ruts; and without raising her head she murmured:

"I have enough trouble, good God! don't give me any more. What good

would it do us, what you ask, now that I have a lover and you have a

woman yourself?"

She meant Mouquette. She believed that he still went with this girl, as

the rumour ran for the last fortnight; and when he swore to her that it

was not so she shook her head, for she remembered the evening when she

had seen them eagerly kissing each other.

"Isn't it a pity, all this nonsense?" he whispered, stopping. "We might

understand each other so well."

She shuddered slightly and replied:

"Never mind, you've nothing to be sorry for; you don't lose much. If

you knew what a trumpery thing I am--no bigger than two ha'porth of

butter, so ill made that I shall never become a woman, sure enough!"

And she went on freely accusing herself, as though the long delay of

her puberty had been her own fault. In spite of the man whom she had

had, this lessened her, placed her among the urchins. One has some

excuse, at any rate, when one can produce a child.

"My poor little one!" said Étienne, with deep pity, in a very low voice.

They were at the foot of the pit-bank, hidden in the shadow of the

enormous pile. An inky cloud was just then passing over the moon;

they could no longer even distinguish their faces, their breaths

were mingled, their lips were seeking each other for that kiss which

had tormented them with desire for months. But suddenly the moon

reappeared, and they saw the sentinel above them, at the top of the

rocks white with light, standing out erect on the Voreux. And before

they had kissed an emotion of modesty separated them, that old modesty

in which there was something of anger, a vague repugnance, and much

friendship. They set out again heavily, up to their ankles in mud.

"Then it's settled. You don't want to have anything to do with me?"

asked Étienne.

"No," she said. "You after Chaval; and after you another, eh? No, that

disgusts me; it doesn't give me any pleasure. What's the use of doing

it?"

They were silent, and walked some hundred paces without exchanging a

word.

"But, anyhow, do you know where to go to?" he said again. "I can't

leave you out in a night like this."

She replied, simply:

"I'm going back. Chaval is my man. I have nowhere else to sleep but

with him."

"But he will beat you to death."

There was silence again. She had shrugged her shoulders in resignation.

He would beat her, and when he was tired of beating her he would stop.

Was not that better than to roam the streets like a vagabond? Then she

was used to blows; she said, to console herself, that eight out of ten

girls were no better off than she was. If her lover married her some

day it would, all the same, be very nice of him.

Étienne and Catherine were moving mechanically towards Montsou, and

as they came nearer their silences grew longer. It was as though they

had never before been together. He could find no argument to convince

her, in spite of the deep vexation which he felt at seeing her go back

to Chaval. His heart was breaking, he had nothing better to offer than

an existence of wretchedness and flight, a night with no to-morrow

should a soldier's bullet go through his head. Perhaps, after all, it

was wiser to suffer what he was suffering rather than risk a fresh

suffering. So he led her back to her lover's, with sunken head, and

made no protest when she stopped him on the main road, at the corner of

the Yards, twenty metres from the Estaminet Piquette, saying:

"Don't come any farther. If he sees you it will only make things worse."

Eleven o'clock struck at the church. The estaminet was closed, but

gleams came through the cracks.

"Good-bye," she murmured.

She had given him her hand; he kept it, and she had to draw it away

painfully, with a slow effort, to leave him. Without turning her head,

she went in through the little latched door. But he did not turn away,

standing at the same place with his eyes on the house, anxious as to

what was passing within. He listened, trembling lest he should hear the

cries of a beaten woman. The house remained black and silent; he only

saw a light appear at a first-floor window, and as this window opened,

and he recognized the thin shadow that was leaning over the road, he

came near.

Catherine then whispered very low:

"He's not come back. I'm going to bed. Please go away."

Étienne went off. The thaw was increasing; a regular shower was falling

from the roofs, a moist sweat flowed down the walls, the palings, the

whole confused mass of this industrial district lost in night. At

first he turned towards Réquillart, sick with fatigue and sadness,

having no other desire except to disappear under the earth and to be

annihilated there. Then the idea of the Voreux occurred to him again.

He thought of the Belgian workmen who were going down, of his mates at

the settlement, exasperated against the soldiers and resolved not to

tolerate strangers in their pit. And he passed again along the canal

through the puddles of melted snow.

As he stood once more near the pit-bank the moon was shining brightly.

He raised his eyes and gazed at the sky. The clouds were galloping by,

whipped on by the strong wind which was blowing up there; but they were

growing white, and ravelling out thinly with the misty transparency

of troubled water over the moon's face. They succeeded each other so

rapidly that the moon, veiled at moments, constantly reappeared in

limpid clearness.

With gaze full of this pure brightness, Étienne was lowering his head,

when a spectacle on the summit of the pit-bank attracted his attention.

The sentinel, stiffened by cold, was walking up and down, taking

twenty-five paces towards Marchiennes, and then returning towards

Montsou. The white glitter of his bayonet could be seen above his black

silhouette, which stood out clearly against the pale sky. But what

interested the young man, behind the cabin where Bonnemort used to take

shelter on tempestuous nights, was a moving shadow--a crouching beast

in ambush--which he immediately recognized as Jeanlin, with his long

flexible spine like a marten's. The sentinel could not see him. That

brigand of a child was certainly preparing some practical joke, for he

was still furious against the soldiers, and asking when they were going

to be freed from these murderers who had been sent here with guns to

kill people.

For a moment Étienne thought of calling him to prevent the execution of

some stupid trick. The moon was hidden. He had seen him draw himself

up ready to spring; but the moon reappeared, and the child remained

crouching. At every turn the sentinel came as far as the cabin, then

turned his back and walked in the opposite direction. And suddenly, as

a cloud threw its shadow, Jeanlin leapt on to the soldier's shoulders

with the great bound of a wild cat, and gripping him with his claws

buried his large open knife in his throat. The horse-hair collar

resisted; he had to apply both hands to the handle and hang on with

all the weight of his body. He had often bled fowls which he had found

behind farms. It was so rapid that there was only a stifled cry in the

night, while the musket fell with the sound of old iron. Already the

moon was shining again.

Motionless with stupor, Étienne was still gazing. A shout had been

choked in his chest. Above, the pit-bank was vacant; no shadow was

any longer visible against the wild flight of clouds. He ran up and

found Jeanlin on all fours before the corpse, which was lying back

with extended arms. Beneath the limpid light the red trousers and grey

overcoat contrasted harshly with the snow. Not a drop of blood had

flowed, the knife was still in the throat up to the handle. With a

furious, unreasoning blow of the fist he knocked the child down beside

the body.

"What have you done that for?" he stammered wildly.

Jeanlin picked himself up and rested on his hands, with a feline

movement of his thin spine; his large ears, his green eyes, his

prominent jaws were quivering and aflame with the shock of his deadly

blow.

"By God! why have you done this?"

"I don't know; I wanted to."

He persisted in this reply. For three days he had wanted to. It

tormented him, it made his head ache behind his ears, because he

thought about it so much. Need one be so particular with these damned

soldiers who were worrying the colliers in their own homes? Of the

violent speeches he had heard in the forest, the cries of destruction

and death shouted among the pits, five or six words had remained with

him, and these he repeated like a street urchin playing at revolution.

And he knew no more; no one had urged him on, it had come to him of

itself, just as the desire to steal onions from a field came to him.

Startled at this obscure growth of crime in the recesses of this

childish brain, Étienne again pushed him away with a kick, like an

unconscious animal. He trembled lest the guard at the Voreux had heard

the sentinel's stifled cry, and looked towards the pit every time the

moon was uncovered. But nothing stirred, and he bent down, felt the

hands that were gradually becoming icy, and listened to the heart,

which had stopped beneath the overcoat. Only the bone handle of the

knife could be seen with the motto on it, the simple word "Amour,"

engraved in black letters.

His eyes went from the throat to the face. Suddenly he recognized the

little soldier; it was Jules, the recruit with whom he had talked one

morning. And deep pity came over him in front of this fair gentle face,

marked with freckles. The blue eyes, wide open, were gazing at the sky

with that fixed gaze with which he had before seen him searching the

horizon for the country of his birth. Where was it, that Plogof which

had appeared to him beneath the dazzling sun? Over there, over there!

The sea was moaning afar on this tempestuous night. That wind passing

above had perhaps swept over the moors. Two women perhaps were standing

there, the mother and the sister, clutching their wind-blown coifs,

gazing as if they could see what was now happening to the little fellow

through the leagues which separated them. They would always wait for

him now. What an abominable thing it is for poor devils to kill each

other for the sake of the rich!

But this corpse had to be disposed of. Étienne at first thought of

throwing it into the canal, but was deterred from this by the certainty

that it would be found there. His anxiety became extreme, every minute

was of importance; what decision should he take? He had a sudden

inspiration: if he could carry the body as far as Réquillart, he would

be able to bury it there for ever.

"Come here," he said to Jeanlin.

The child was suspicious.

"No, you want to beat me. And then I have business. Good night."

In fact, he had given a rendezvous to Bébert and Lydie in a

hiding-place, a hole arranged under the wood supply at the Voreux. It

had been arranged to sleep out, so as to be there if the Belgians'

bones were to be broken by stoning when they went down the pit.

"Listen!" repeated Étienne. "Come here, or I shall call the soldiers,

who will cut your head off."

And as Jeanlin was making up his mind, he rolled his handkerchief, and

bound the soldier's neck tightly, without drawing out the knife, so as

to prevent the blood from flowing. The snow was melting; on the soil

there was neither a red patch nor the footmarks of a struggle.

"Take the legs!"

Jeanlin took the legs, while Étienne seized the shoulders, after having

fastened the gun behind his back, and then they both slowly descended

the pit-bank, trying to avoid rolling any rocks down. Fortunately the

moon was hidden. But as they passed along the canal it reappeared

brightly, and it was a miracle that the guard did not see them.

Silently they hastened on, hindered by the swinging of the corpse, and

obliged to place it on the ground every hundred metres. At the corner

of the Réquillart lane they heard a sound which froze them with terror,

and they only had time to hide behind a wall to avoid a patrol. Farther

on, a man came across them, but he was drunk, and moved away abusing

them. At last they reached the old pit, bathed in perspiration, and so

exhausted that their teeth were chattering.

Étienne had guessed that it would not be easy to get the soldier down

the ladder shaft. It was an awful task. First of all Jeanlin, standing

above, had to let the body slide down, while Étienne, hanging on to

the bushes, had to accompany it to enable it to pass the first two

ladders where the rungs were broken. Afterwards, at every ladder, he

had to perform the same manoeuvre over again, going down first, then

receiving the body in his arms; and he had thus, down thirty ladders,

two hundred and ten metres, to feel it constantly falling over him.

The gun scraped his spine; he had not allowed the child to go for the

candle-end, which he preserved avariciously. What was the use? The

light would only embarrass them in this narrow tube. When they arrived

at the pit-eye, however, out of breath, he sent the youngster for the

candle. He then sat down and waited for him in the darkness, near the

body, with heart beating violently. As soon as Jeanlin reappeared with

the light, Étienne consulted with him, for the child had explored these

old workings, even to the cracks through which men could not pass.

They set out again, dragging the dead body for nearly a kilometre,

through a maze of ruinous galleries. At last the roof became low,

and they found themselves kneeling beneath a sandy rock supported by

half-broken planks. It was a sort of long chest in which they laid the

little soldier as in a coffin; they placed his gun by his side; then

with vigorous blows of their heels they broke the timber at the risk

of being buried themselves. Immediately the rock gave way, and they

scarcely had time to crawl back on their elbows and knees. When Étienne

returned, seized by the desire to look once more, the roof was still

falling in, slowly crushing the body beneath its enormous weight. And

then there was nothing more left, nothing but the vast mass of the

earth.

Jeanlin, having returned to his own corner, his little cavern of

villainy, was stretching himself out on the hay, overcome by weariness,

and murmuring:

"Heigho! the brats must wait for me; I'm going to have an hour's sleep."

Étienne had blown out the candle, of which there was only a small end

left. He also was worn out, but he was not sleepy; painful nightmare

thoughts were beating like hammers in his skull. Only one at last

remained, torturing him and fatiguing him with a question to which he

could not reply: Why had he not struck Chaval when he held him beneath

the knife? and why had this child just killed a soldier whose very

name he did not know? It shook his revolutionary beliefs, the courage

to kill, the right to kill. Was he, then, a coward? In the hay the

child had begun snoring, the snoring of a drunken man, as if he were

sleeping off the intoxication of his murder. Étienne was disgusted and

irritated; it hurt him to know that the boy was there and to hear him.

Suddenly he started, a breath of fear passed over his face. A light

rustling, a sob, seemed to him to have come out of the depths of the

earth. The image of the little soldier, lying over there with his gun

beneath the rocks, froze his back and made his hair stand up. It was

idiotic, the whole mine seemed to be filled with voices; he had to

light the candle again, and only grew calm on seeing the emptiness of

the galleries by this pale light.

For another quarter of an hour he reflected, still absorbed in the

same struggle, his eyes fixed on the burning wick. But there was a

spluttering, the wick was going out, and everything fell back into

darkness. He shuddered again; he could have boxed Jeanlin's ears, to

keep him from snoring so loudly. The neighbourhood of the child became

so unbearable that he escaped, tormented by the need for fresh air,

hastening through the galleries and up the passage, as though he could

hear a shadow, panting, at his heels.

Up above, in the midst of the ruins of Réquillart, Étienne was at last

able to breathe freely. Since he dared not kill, it was for him to die;

and this idea of death, which had already touched him, came again and

fixed itself in his head, as a last hope. To die bravely, to die for

the revolution, that would end everything, would settle his account,

good or bad, and prevent him from thinking more. If the men attacked

the Borains, he would be in the first rank, and would have a good

chance of getting a bad blow. It was with firmer step that he returned

to prowl around the Voreux. Two o'clock struck, and the loud noise

of voices was coming from the captains' room, where the guards who

watched over the pit were posted. The disappearance of the sentinel had

overcome the guards with surprise; they had gone to arouse the captain,

and after a careful examination of the place, they concluded that it

must be a case of desertion. Hiding in the shade, Étienne recollected

this republican captain of whom the little soldier had spoken. Who

knows if he might not be persuaded to pass over to the people's side!

The troop would raise their rifles, and that would be the signal for

a massacre of the bourgeois. A new dream took possession of him; he

thought no more of dying, but remained for hours with his feet in the

mud, and a drizzle from the thaw falling on his shoulders, filled by

the feverish hope that victory was still possible.

Up to five o'clock he watched for the Borains. Then he perceived

that the Company had cunningly arranged that they should sleep at

the Voreux. The descent had begun, and the few strikers from the

Deux-Cent-Quarante settlement who had been posted as scouts had not yet

warned their mates. It was he who told them of the trick, and they set

out running, while he waited behind the pit-bank, on the towing-path.

Six o'clock struck, and the earthy sky was growing pale and lighting up

with a reddish dawn, when the Abbé Ranvier came along a path, holding

up his cassock above his thin legs. Every Monday he went to say an

early mass at a convent chapel on the other side of the pit.

"Good morning, my friend," he shouted in a loud voice, after staring at

the young man with his flaming eyes.

But Étienne did not reply. Far away between the Voreux platforms he had

just seen a woman pass, and he rushed forward anxiously, for he thought

he recognized Catherine. Since midnight, Catherine had been walking

about the thawing roads. Chaval, on coming back and finding her in bed,

had knocked her out with a blow. He shouted to her to go at once by the

door if she did not wish to go by the window; and scarcely dressed,

in tears, and bruised by kicks in her legs, she had been obliged to

go down, pushed outside by a final thrust. This sudden separation

dazed her, and she sat down on a stone, looking up at the house, still

expecting that he would call her back. It was not possible; he would

surely look for her and tell her to come back when he saw her thus

shivering and abandoned, with no one to take her in.

At the end of two hours she made up her mind, dying of cold and as

motionless as a dog thrown into the street. She left Montsou, then

retraced her steps, but dared neither to call from the pathway nor to

knock at the door. At last she went off by the main road to the right

with the idea of going to the settlement, to her parents' house. But

when she reached it she was seized by such shame that she rushed away

along the gardens for fear of being recognized by someone, in spite of

the heavy sleep which weighed on all eyes behind the closed shutters.

And after that she wandered about, frightened at the slightest noise,

trembling lest she should be seized and led away as a strumpet to

that house at Marchiennes, the threat of which had haunted her like

nightmare for months. Twice she stumbled against the Voreux, but

terrified at the loud voices of the guard, she ran away out of breath,

looking behind her to see if she was being pursued. The Réquillart lane

was always full of drunken men; she went back to it, however, with the

vague hope of meeting there him she had repelled a few hours earlier.

Chaval had to go down that morning, and this thought brought Catherine

again towards the pit, though she felt that it would be useless to

speak to him: all was over between them. There was no work going on

at Jean-Bart, and he had sworn to kill her if she worked again at the

Voreux, where he feared that she would compromise him. So what was to

be done?--to go elsewhere, to die of hunger, to yield beneath the blows

of every man who might pass? She dragged herself along, tottering amid

the ruts, with aching legs and mud up to her spine. The thaw had now

filled the streets with a flood of mire. She waded through it, still

walking, not daring to look for a stone to sit on.

Day appeared. Catherine had just recognized the back of Chaval, who was

cautiously going round the pit-bank, when she noticed Lydie and Bébert

putting their noses out of their hiding-place beneath the wood supply.

They had passed the night there in ambush, without going home, since

Jeanlin's order was to await him; and while this latter was sleeping

off the drunkenness of his murder at Réquillart, the two children were

lying in each other's arms to keep warm. The wind blew between the

planks of chestnut and oak, and they rolled themselves up as in some

wood-cutter's abandoned hut. Lydie did not dare to speak aloud the

sufferings of a small beaten woman, any more than Bébert found courage

to complain of the captain's blows which made his cheeks swell; but

the captain was really abusing his power, risking their bones in mad

marauding expeditions while refusing to share the booty. Their hearts

rose in revolt, and they had at last embraced each other in spite of

his orders, careless of that box of the ears from the invisible with

which he had threatened them. It never came, so they went on kissing

each other softly, with no idea of anything else, putting into that

caress the passion they had long struggled against--the whole of their

martyred and tender natures. All night through they had thus kept each

other warm, so happy, at the bottom of this secret hole, that they

could not remember that they had ever been so happy before--not even on

St. Barbara's day, when they had eaten fritters and drunk wine.

The sudden sound of a bugle made Catherine start. She raised herself,

and saw the Voreux guards taking up their arms. Étienne arrived

running; Bébert and Lydie jumped out of their hiding-place with a leap.

And over there, beneath the growing daylight, a band of men and women

were coming from the settlement, gesticulating wildly with anger.

CHAPTER V

All the entrances to the Voreux had been closed, and the sixty

soldiers, with grounded arms, were barring the only door left free,

that leading to the receiving-room by a narrow staircase into which

opened the captains' room and the shed. The men had been drawn up in

two lines against the brick wall, so that they could not be attacked

from behind.

At first the band of miners from the settlement kept at a distance.

They were some thirty at most, and talked together in a violent and

confused way.

Maheude, who had arrived first with dishevelled hair beneath a

handkerchief knotted on in haste, and having Estelle asleep in her

arms, repeated in feverish tones:

"Don't let any one in or any one out! Shut them all in there!"

Maheu approved, and just then Father Mouque arrived from Réquillart.

They wanted to prevent him from passing. But he protested; he said that

his horses ate their hay all the same, and cared precious little about

a revolution. Besides, there was a horse dead, and they were waiting

for him to draw it up. Étienne freed the old groom, and the soldiers

allowed him to go to the shaft. A quarter of an hour later, as the band

of strikers, which had gradually enlarged, was becoming threatening,

a large door opened on the ground floor and some men appeared drawing

out the dead beast, a miserable mass of flesh still fastened in the

rope net; they left it in the midst of the puddles of melting snow. The

surprise was so great that no one prevented the men from returning and

barricading the door afresh. They all recognized the horse, with his

head bent back and stiff against the plank. Whispers ran around:

"It's Trompette, isn't it? it's Trompette."

It was, in fact, Trompette. Since his descent he had never become

acclimatized. He remained melancholy, with no taste for his task, as

though tortured by regret for the light. In vain Bataille, the _doyen_

of the mine, would rub him with his ribs in his friendly way,

softly biting his neck to impart to him a little of the resignation

gained in his ten years beneath the earth. These caresses increased his

melancholy, his skin quivered beneath the confidences of the comrade

who had grown old in darkness; and both of them, whenever they met and

snorted together, seemed to be grieving, the old one that he could no

longer remember, the young one that he could not forget. At the stable

they were neighbours at the manger, and lived with lowered heads,

breathing in each other's nostrils, exchanging a constant dream of

daylight, visions of green grass, of white roads, of infinite yellow

light. Then, when Trompette, bathed in sweat, lay in agony in his

litter, Bataille had smelled at him despairingly with short sniffs like

sobs. He felt that he was growing cold, the mine was taking from him

his last joy, that friend fallen from above, fresh with good odours,

who recalled to him his youth in the open air. And he had broken his

tether, neighing with fear, when he perceived that the other no longer

stirred.

Mouque had indeed warned the head captain a week ago. But much they

troubled about a sick horse at such time as this! These gentlemen did

not at all like moving the horses. Now, however, they had to make up

their minds to take him out. The evening before the groom had spent

an hour with two men tying up Trompette. They harnessed Bataille to

bring him to the shaft. The old horse slowly pulled, dragging his dead

comrade through so narrow a gallery that he could only shake himself at

the risk of taking the skin off. And he tossed his head, listening to

the grazing sound of the carcass as it went to the knacker's yard. At

the pit-eye, when he was unharnessed, he followed with his melancholy

eye the preparations for the ascent--the body pushed on to the

cross-bars over the sump, the net fastened beneath a cage. At last the

porters rang meat; he lifted his neck to see it go up, at first softly,

then at once lost in the darkness, flown up for ever to the top of that

black hole. And he remained with neck stretched out, his vague beast's

memory perhaps recalling the things of the earth. But it was all over;

he would never see his comrade again, and he himself would thus be

tied up in a pitiful bundle on the day when he would ascend up there.

His legs began to tremble, the fresh air which came from the distant

country choked him, and he seemed intoxicated when he went heavily back

to the stable.

At the surface the colliers stood gloomily before Trompette's carcass.

A woman said in a low voice:

"Another man; that may go down if it likes!"

But a new flood arrived from the settlement, and Levaque, who was at

the head followed by his wife and Bouteloup, shouted:

"Kill them, those Borains! No blacklegs here! Kill them! Kill them!"

All rushed forward, and Étienne had to stop them. He went up to the

captain, a tall thin young man of scarcely twenty-eight years, with

a despairing, resolute face. He explained things to him; he tried to

win him over, watching the effect of his words. What was the good of

risking a useless massacre? Was not justice on the side of the miners?

They were all brothers, and they ought to understand one another.

When he came to use the world "republic" the captain made a nervous

movement; but he preserved his military stiffness, and said suddenly:

"Keep off! Do not force me to do my duty."

Three times over Étienne tried again. Behind him his mates were

growling. The report ran that M. Hennebeau was at the pit, and they

talked of letting him down by the neck, to see if he would hew his

coal himself. But it was a false report; only Négrel and Dansaert were

there. They both showed themselves for a moment at a window of the

receiving-room; the head captain stood in the background, rather out

of countenance since his adventure with Pierronne, while the engineer

bravely looked round on the crowd with his bright little eyes, smiling

with that sneering contempt in which he enveloped men and things

generally. Hooting arose, and they disappeared. And in their place

only Souvarine's pale face was seen. He was just then on duty; he had

not left his engine for a single day since the strike began, no longer

talking, more and more absorbed by a fixed idea, which seemed to be

shining like steel in the depths of his pale eyes.

"Keep off!" repeated the captain loudly. "I wish to hear nothing. My

orders are to guard the pit, and I shall guard it. And do not press on

to my men, or I shall know how to drive you back."

In spite of his firm voice, he was growing pale with increasing

anxiety, as the flood of miners continued to swell. He would be

relieved at midday; but fearing that he would not be able to hold out

until then, he had sent a trammer from the pit to Montsou to ask for

reinforcements.

Shouts had replied to him:

"Kill the blacklegs! Kill the Borains! We mean to be masters in our own

place!"

Étienne drew back in despair. The end had come; there was nothing more

except to fight and to die. And he ceased to hold back his mates. The

mob moved up to the little troop. There were nearly four hundred of

them, and the people from the neighbouring settlements were all running

up. They all shouted the same cry. Maheu and Levaque said furiously to

the soldiers:

"Get off with you! We have nothing against you! Get off with you!"

"This doesn't concern you," said Maheude. "Let us attend to our own

affairs."

And from behind, the Levaque woman added, more violently:

"Must we eat you to get through? Just clear out of the bloody place!"

Even Lydie's shrill voice was heard. She had crammed herself in more

closely, with Bébert, and was saying, in a high voice:

"Oh, the pale-livered pigs!"

Catherine, a few paces off, was gazing and listening, stupefied by

new scenes of violence, into the midst of which ill luck seemed to be

always throwing her. Had she not suffered too much already? What fault

had she committed, then, that misfortune would never give her any rest?

The day before she had understood nothing of the fury of the strike;

she thought that when one has one's share of blows it is useless to

go and seek for more. And now her heart was swelling with hatred;

she remembered what Étienne had often told her when they used to sit

up; she tried to hear what he was now saying to the soldiers. He was

treating them as mates; he reminded them that they also belonged to the

people, and that they ought to be on the side of the people against

those who took advantage of their wretchedness.

But a tremor ran through the crowd, and an old woman rushed up. It was

Mother Brulé, terrible in her leanness, with her neck and arms in the

air, coming up at such a pace that the wisps of her grey hair blinded

her.

"Ah! by God! here I am," she stammered, out of breath; "that traitor

Pierron, who shut me up in the cellar!"

And without waiting she fell on the soldiers, her black mouth belching

abuse.

"Pack of scoundrels! dirty scum! ready to lick their masters' boots,

and only brave against poor people!"

Then the others joined her, and there were volleys of insults. A

few, indeed, cried: "Hurrah for the soldiers! to the shaft with the

officer!" but soon there was only one clamour: "Down with the red

breeches!" These men, who had listened quietly, with motionless mute

faces, to the fraternal appeals and the friendly attempts to win them

over, preserved the same stiff passivity beneath this hail of abuse.

Behind them the captain had drawn his sword, and as the crowd pressed

in on them more and more, threatening to crush them against the wall,

he ordered them to present bayonets. They obeyed, and a double row of

steel points was placed in front of the strikers' breasts.

"Ah! the bloody swine!" yelled Mother Brulé, drawing back.

But already they were coming on again, in excited contempt of death.

The women were throwing themselves forward, Maheude and the Levaque

shouting:

"Kill us! Kill us, then! We want our rights!"

Levaque, at the risk of getting cut, had seized three bayonets in his

hands, shaking and pulling them in the effort to snatch them away. He

twisted them in the strength of his fury; while Bouteloup, standing

aside, and annoyed at having followed his mate, quietly watched him.

"Just come and look here," said Maheu; "just look a bit if you are good

chaps!"

And he opened his jacket and drew aside his shirt, showing his

naked breast, with his hairy skin tattooed by coal. He pressed on

the bayonets, compelling the soldiers to draw back, terrible in his

insolence and bravado. One of them had pricked him in the chest, and he

became like a madman, trying to make it enter deeper and to hear his

ribs crack.

"Cowards, you don't dare! There are ten thousand behind us. Yes, you

can kill us; there are ten thousand more of us to kill yet."

The position of the soldiers was becoming critical, for they had

received strict orders not to make use of their weapons until the last

extremity. And how were they to prevent these furious people from

impaling themselves? Besides, the space was getting less; they were now

pushed back against the wall, and it was impossible to draw further

back. Their little troop--a mere handful of men--opposed to the rising

flood of miners, still held its own, however, and calmly executed the

brief orders given by the captain. The latter, with keen eyes and

nervously compressed lips, only feared lest they should be carried away

by this abuse. Already a young sergeant, a tall lean fellow whose thin

moustache was bristling up, was blinking his eyes in a disquieting

manner. Near him an old soldier, with tanned skin and stripes won in

twenty campaigns, had grown pale when he saw his bayonet twisted like a

straw. Another, doubtless a recruit still smelling the fields, became

very red every time he heard himself called "scum" and "riff-raff."

And the violence did not cease, the outstretched fists, the abominable

words, the shovelfuls of accusations and threats which buffeted their

faces. It required all the force of order to keep them thus, with mute

faces, in the proud, gloomy silence of military discipline.

A collision seemed inevitable, when Captain Richomme appeared from

behind the troop with his benevolent white head, overwhelmed by

emotion. He spoke out loudly:

"By God! this is idiotic! such tomfoolery can't go on!"

And he threw himself between the bayonets and the miners.

"Mates, listen to me. You know that I am an old workman, and that I

have always been one of you. Well, by God! I promise you, that if

they're not just with you, I'm the man to go and say to the bosses how

things lie. But this is too much, it does no good at all to howl bad

names at these good fellows, and try and get your bellies ripped up."

They listened, hesitating. But up above, unfortunately, little Négrel's

short profile reappeared. He feared, no doubt, that he would be accused

of sending a captain in place of venturing out himself; and he tried

to speak. But his voice was lost in the midst of so frightful a tumult

that he had to leave the window again, simply shrugging his shoulders.

Richomme then found it vain to entreat them in his own name, and to

repeat that the thing must be arranged between mates; they repelled

him, suspecting him. But he was obstinate and remained amongst them.

"By God! let them break my head as well as yours, for I don't leave you

while you are so foolish!"

Étienne, whom he begged to help him in making them hear reason, made

a gesture of powerlessness. It was too late, there were now more than

five hundred of them. And besides the madmen who were rushing up to

chase away the Borains, some came out of inquisitiveness, or to joke

and amuse themselves over the battle. In the midst of one group, at

some distance, Zacharie and Philoméne were looking on as at a theatre

so peacefully that they had brought their two children, Achille and

Désirée. Another stream was arriving from Réquillart, including Mouquet

and Mouquette. The former at once went on, grinning, to slap his friend

Zacharie on the back; while Mouquette, in a very excited condition,

rushed to the first rank of the evil-disposed.

Every minute, however, the captain looked down the Montsou road. The

desired reinforcements had not arrived, and his sixty men could hold

out no longer. At last it occurred to him to strike the imagination of

the crowd, and he ordered his men to load. The soldiers executed the

order, but the disturbance increased, the blustering, and the mockery.

"Ah! these shammers, they're going off to the target!" jeered the

women, the Brulé, the Levaque, and the others.

Maheude, with her breast covered by the little body of Estelle, who was

awake and crying, came so near that the sergeant asked her what she was

going to do with that poor little brat.

"What the devil's that to do with you?" she replied. "Fire at it if you

dare!"

The men shook their heads with contempt. None believed that they would

fire on them.

"There are no balls in their cartridges," said Levaque.

"Are we Cossacks?" cried Maheu. "You don't fire against Frenchmen, by

God!"

Others said that when people had been through the Crimean campaign they

were not afraid of lead. And all continued to thrust themselves on to

the rifles. If firing had begun at this moment the crowd would have

been mown down.

In the front rank Mouquette was choking with fury, thinking that the

soldiers were going to gash the women's skins. She had spat out all

her coarse words at them, and could find no vulgarity low enough, when

suddenly, having nothing left but that mortal offence with which to

bombard the faces of the troop, she exhibited her backside. With both

hands she raised her skirts, bent her back, and expanded the enormous

rotundity.

"Here, that's for you! and it's a lot too clean, you dirty blackguards!"

She ducked and butted so that each might have his share, repeating

after each thrust:

"There's for the officer! there's for the sergeant! there's for the

soldiers!"

A tempest of laughter arose; Bébert and Lydie were in convulsions;

Étienne himself, in spite of his sombre expectation, applauded this

insulting nudity. All of them, the banterers as well as the infuriated,

were now hooting the soldiers as though they had seen them stained by

a splash of filth; Catherine only, standing aside on some old timber,

remained silent with the blood at her heart, slowly carried away by the

hatred that was rising within her.

But a hustling took place. To calm the excitement of his men, the

captain decided to make prisoners. With a leap Mouquette escaped,

saving herself between the legs of her comrades. Three miners, Levaque

and two others, were seized among the more violent, and kept in sight

at the other end of the captains' room. Négrel and Dansaert, above,

were shouting to the captain to come in and take refuge with them. He

refused; he felt that these buildings with their doors without locks

would be carried by assault, and that he would undergo the shame of

being disarmed. His little troop was already growling with impatience;

it was impossible to flee before these wretches in sabots. The sixty,

with their backs to the wall and their rifles loaded, again faced the

mob.

At first there was a recoil, followed by deep silence; the strikers

were astonished at this energetic stroke. Then a cry arose calling for

the prisoners, demanding their immediate release. Some voices said that

they were being murdered in there. And without any attempt at concerted

action, carried away by the same impulse, by the same desire for

revenge, they all ran to the piles of bricks which stood near, those

bricks for which the marly soil supplied the clay, and which were baked

on the spot. The children brought them one by one, and the women filled

their skirts with them. Every one soon had her ammunition at her feet,

and the battle of stones began.

It was Mother Brulé who set to first. She broke the bricks on the

sharp edge of her knee, and with both hands she discharged the two

fragments. The Levaque woman was almost putting her shoulders out,

being so large and soft that she had to come near to get her aim, in

spite of Bouteloup's entreaties, and he dragged her back in the hope of

being able to lead her away now that her husband had been taken off.

They all grew excited, and Mouquette, tired of making herself bleed

by breaking the bricks on her overfat thighs, preferred to throw them

whole. Even the youngsters came into line, and Bébert showed Lydie how

the brick ought to be sent from under the elbow. It was a shower of

enormous hailstones, producing low thuds. And suddenly, in the midst

of these furies, Catherine was observed with her fists in the air also

brandishing half-bricks and throwing them with all the force of her

little arms. She could not have said why, she was suffocating, she was

dying of the desire to kill everybody. Would it not soon be done with,

this cursed life of misfortune? She had had enough of it, beaten and

driven away by her man, wandering about like a lost dog in the mud of

the roads, without being able to ask a crust from her father, who was

starving like herself. Things never seemed to get better; they were

getting worse ever since she could remember. And she broke the bricks

and threw them before her with the one idea of sweeping everything

away, her eyes so blinded that she could not even see whose jaws she

might be crushing.

Étienne, who had remained in front of the soldiers, nearly had his

skull broken. His ear was grazed, and turning round he started when he

realized that the brick had come from Catherine's feverish hands; but

at the risk of being killed he remained where he was, gazing at her.

Many others also forgot themselves there, absorbed in the battle, with

empty hands. Mouquet criticized the blows as though he were looking

on at a game of _bouchon_. Oh, that was well struck! and that

other, no luck! He joked, and with his elbow pushed Zacharie, who was

squabbling with Philoméne because he had boxed Achille's and Désirée's

ears, refusing to put them on his back so that they could see. There

were spectators crowded all along the road. And at the top of the slope

near the entrance to the settlement, old Bonnemort appeared, resting on

his stick, motionless against the rust-coloured sky.

As soon as the first bricks were thrown, Captain Richomme had again

placed himself between the soldiers and the miners. He was entreating

the one party, exhorting the other party, careless of danger, in such

despair that large tears were flowing from his eyes. It was impossible

to hear his words in the midst of the tumult; only his large grey

moustache could be seen moving.

But the hail of bricks came faster; the men were joining in, following

the example of the women.

Then Maheude noticed that Maheu was standing behind with empty hands

and sombre air.

"What's up with you?" she shouted. "Are you a coward? Are you going to

let your mates be carried off to prison? Ah! if only I hadn't got this

child, you should see!"

Estelle, who was clinging to her neck, screaming, prevented her from

joining Mother Brulé and the others. And as her man did not seem to

hear, she kicked some bricks against his legs.

"By God! will you take that? Must I spit in your face before people to

get your spirits up?"

Becoming very red, he broke some bricks and threw them. She lashed

him on, dazing him, shouting behind him cries of death, stifling her

daughter against her breast with the spasm of her arms; and he still

moved forward until he was opposite the guns.

Beneath this shower of stones the little troop was disappearing.

Fortunately they struck too high, and the wall was riddled. What was

to be done? The idea of going in, of turning their backs for a moment

turned the captain's pale face purple; but it was no longer possible,

they would be torn to pieces at the least movement. A brick had just

broken the peak of his cap, drops of blood were running down his

forehead. Several of his men were wounded; and he felt that they were

losing self-control in that unbridled instinct of self-defence when

obedience to leaders ceases. The sergeant had uttered a "By God!" for

his left shoulder had nearly been put out, and his flesh bruised by a

shock like the blow of a washerwoman's beetle against linen. Grazed

twice over, the recruit had his thumb smashed, while his right knee was

grazed. Were they to let themselves be worried much longer? A stone

having bounded back and struck the old soldier with the stripes beneath

the belly, his cheeks turned green, and his weapon trembled as he

stretched it out at the end of his lean arms. Three times the captain

was on the point of ordering them to fire. He was choked by anguish;

an endless struggle for several seconds set at odds in his mind all

ideas and duties, all his beliefs as a man and as a soldier. The rain

of bricks increased, and he opened his mouth and was about to shout

"Fire!" when the guns went off of themselves three shots at first,

then five, then the roll of a volley, then one by itself, some time

afterwards, in the deep silence.

There was stupefaction on all sides. They had fired, and the gaping

crowd stood motionless, as yet unable to believe it. But heart-rending

cries arose while the bugle was sounding to cease firing. And here was

a mad panic, the rush of cattle filled with grapeshot, a wild flight

through the mud. Bébert and Lydie had fallen one on top of the other

at the first three shots, the little girl struck in the face, the boy

wounded beneath the left shoulder. She was crushed, and never stirred

again. But he moved, seized her with both arms in the convulsion of his

agony, as if he wanted to take her again, as he had taken her at the

bottom of the black hiding-place where they had spent the past night.

And Jeanlin, who just then ran up from Réquillart still half asleep,

kicking about in the midst of the smoke, saw him embrace his little

wife and die.

The five other shots had brought down Mother Brulé and Captain

Richomme. Struck in the back as he was entreating his mates, he had

fallen on to his knees, and slipping on to one hip he was groaning on

the ground with eyes still full of tears. The old woman, whose breast

had been opened, had fallen back stiff and crackling, like a bundle of

dry faggots, stammering one last oath in the gurgling of blood.

But then the volley swept the field, mowing down the inquisitive groups

who were laughing at the battle a hundred paces off. A ball entered

Mouquet's mouth and threw him down with fractured skull at the feet of

Zacharie and Philoméne, whose two youngsters were splashed with red

drops. At the same moment Mouquette received two balls in the belly.

She had seen the soldiers take aim, and in an instinctive movement of

her good nature she had thrown herself in front of Catherine, shouting

out to her to take care; she uttered a loud cry and fell on to her

back overturned by the shock. Étienne ran up, wishing to raise her and

take her away; but with a gesture she said it was all over. Then she

groaned, but without ceasing to smile at both of them, as though she

were glad to see them together now that she was going away.

All seemed to be over, and the hurricane of balls was lost in the

distance as far as the frontages of the settlement, when the last

shot, isolated and delayed, was fired. Maheu, struck in the heart,

turned round and fell with his face down into a puddle black with coal.

Maheude leant down in stupefaction.

"Eh! old man, get up. It's nothing, is it?"

Her hands were engaged with Estelle, whom she had to put under one arm

in order to turn her man's head.

"Say something! where are you hurt?"

His eyes were vacant, and his mouth was slavered with bloody foam. She

understood: he was dead. Then she remained seated in the mud with her

daughter under her arm like a bundle, gazing at her old man with a

besotted air.

The pit was free. With a nervous movement the captain had taken off

and then put on his cap, struck by a stone; he preserved his pallid

stiffness in face of the disaster of his life, while his men with mute

faces were reloading. The frightened faces of Négrel and Dansaert could

be seen at the window of the receiving-room. Souvarine was behind them

with a deep wrinkle on his forehead, as though the nail of his fixed

idea had printed itself there threateningly. On the other side of the

horizon, at the edge of the plain, Bonnemort had not moved, supported

by one hand on his stick, the other hand up to his brows to see better

the murder of his people below. The wounded were howling, the dead were

growing cold, in twisted postures, muddy with the liquid mud of the

thaw, here and there forming puddles among the inky patches of coal

which reappeared beneath the tattered snow. And in the midst of these

human corpses, all small, poor and lean in their wretchedness, lay

Trompette's carcass, a monstrous and pitiful mass of dead flesh.

Étienne had not been killed. He was still waiting beside Catherine, who

had fallen from fatigue and anguish, when a sonorous voice made him

start. It was Abbé Ranvier, who was coming back after saying mass, and

who, with both arms in the air, with the inspired fury of a prophet,

was calling the wrath of God down on the murderers. He foretold the era

of justice, the approaching extermination of the middle class by fire

from heaven, since it was bringing its crimes to a climax by massacring

the workers and the disinherited of the world.

PART SEVEN

CHAPTER I

The shots fired at Montsou had reached as far as Paris with a

formidable echo. For four days all the opposition journals had been

indignant, displaying atrocious narratives on their front pages:

twenty-five wounded, fourteen dead, including three women and two

children. And there were prisoners taken as well; Levaque had become a

sort of hero, and was credited with a reply of antique sublimity to the

examining magistrate. The empire, hit in mid career by these few balls,

affected the calm of omnipotence, without itself realizing the gravity

of its wound. It was simply an unfortunate collision, something lost

over there in the black country, very far from the Parisian boulevards

which formed public opinion; it would soon be forgotten. The Company

had received official intimation to hush up the affair, and to put

an end to a strike which from its irritating duration was becoming a

social danger.

So on Wednesday morning three of the directors appeared at Montsou. The

little town, sick at heart, which had not dared hitherto to rejoice

over the massacre, now breathed again, and tasted the joy of being

saved. The weather, too, had become fine; there was a bright sun--one

of those first February days which, with their moist warmth, tip the

lilac shoots with green. All the shutters had been flung back at the

administration building, the vast structure seemed alive again. And

cheering rumours were circulating; it was said that the directors,

deeply affected by the catastrophe, had rushed down to open their

paternal arms to the wanderers from the settlements. Now that the

blow had fallen--a more vigorous one doubtless than they had wished

for--they were prodigal in their task of relief, and decreed measures

that were excellent though tardy. First of all they sent away the

Borains, and made much of this extreme concession to their workmen.

Then they put an end to the military occupation of the pits, which

were no longer threatened by the crushed strikers. They also obtained

silence regarding the sentinel who had disappeared from the Voreux;

the district had been searched without finding either the gun or the

corpse, and although there was a suspicion of crime, it was decided

to consider the soldier a deserter. In every way they thus tried to

attenuate matters, trembling with fear for the morrow, judging it

dangerous to acknowledge the irresistible savagery of a crowd set free

amid the falling structure of the old world. And besides, this work of

conciliation did not prevent them from bringing purely administrative

affairs to a satisfactory conclusion; for Deneulin had been seen to

return to the administration buildings, where he met M. Hennebeau.

The negotiations for the purchase of Vandame continued, and it was

considered certain that Deneulin would accept the Company's offers.

But what particularly stirred the country were the great yellow posters

which the directors had stuck up in profusion on the walls. On them

were to be read these few lines, in very large letters: "Workers of

Montsou! We do not wish that the errors of which you have lately seen

the sad effects should deprive sensible and willing workmen of their

livelihood. We shall therefore reopen all the pits on Monday morning,

and when work is resumed we shall examine with care and consideration

those cases in which there may be room for improvement. We shall, in

fact, do all that is just or possible to do." In one morning the ten

thousand colliers passed before these placards. Not one of them spoke,

many shook their heads, others went away with trailing steps, without

changing one line in their motionless faces.

Up till now the settlement of the Deux-Cent-Quarante had persisted in

its fierce resistance. It seemed that the blood of their mates, which

had reddened the mud of the pit, was barricading the road against

the others. Scarcely a dozen had gone down, merely Pierron and some

sneaks of his sort, whose departure and arrival were gloomily watched

without a gesture or a threat. Therefore a deep suspicion greeted the

placard stuck on to the church. Nothing was said about the returned

certificates in that. Would the Company refuse to take them on again?

and the fear of retaliations, the fraternal idea of protesting against

the dismissal of the more compromised men, made them all obstinate

still. It was dubious; they would see. They would return to the pit

when these gentlemen were good enough to put things plainly. Silence

crushed the low houses. Hunger itself seemed nothing; all might die now

that violent death had passed over their roofs.

But one house, that of the Maheus, remained especially black and mute

in its overwhelming grief. Since she had followed her man to the

cemetery, Maheude kept her teeth clenched. After the battle, she had

allowed Étienne to bring back Catherine muddy and half dead; and as she

was undressing her, before the young man, in order to put her to bed,

she thought for a moment that her daughter also had received a ball

in the belly, for the chemise was marked with large patches of blood.

But she soon understood that it was the flood of puberty, which was

at last breaking out in the shock of this abominable day. Ah! another

piece of luck, that wound! A fine present, to be able to make children

for the gendarmes to kill; and she never spoke to Catherine, nor did

she, indeed, talk to Étienne. The latter slept with Jeanlin, at the

risk of being arrested, seized by such horror at the idea of going back

to the darkness of Réquillart that he would have preferred a prison.

A shudder shook him, the horror of the night after all those deaths,

an unacknowledged fear of the little soldier who slept down there

underneath the rocks. Besides, he dreamed of a prison as of a refuge

in the midst of the torment of his defeat; but they did not trouble

him, and he dragged on his wretched hours, not knowing how to weary out

his body. Only at times Maheude looked at both of them, at him and her

daughter, with a spiteful air, as though she were asking them what they

were doing in her house.

Once more they were all snoring in a heap. Father Bonnemort occupied

the former bed of the two youngsters, who slept with Catherine now

that poor Alzire no longer dug her hump into her big sister's ribs. It

was when going to bed that the mother felt the emptiness of the house

by the coldness of her bed, which was now too large. In vain she took

Estelle to fill the vacancy; that did not replace her man, and she wept

quietly for hours. Then the days began to pass by as before, always

without bread, but without the luck to die outright; things picked up

here and there rendered to the wretches the poor service of keeping

them alive. Nothing had changed in their existence, only her man was

gone.

On the afternoon of the fifth day, Étienne, made miserable by the sight

of this silent woman, left the room, and walked slowly along the paved

street of the settlement. The inaction which weighed on him impelled

him to take constant walks, with arms swinging idly and lowered head,

always tortured by the same thought. He tramped thus for half an hour,

when he felt, by an increase in his discomfort, that his mates were

coming to their doors to look at him. His little remaining popularity

had been driven to the winds by that fusillade, and he never passed

now without meeting fiery looks which pursued him. When he raised his

head there were threatening men there, women drawing aside the curtains

from their windows; and beneath this still silent accusation and the

restrained anger of these eyes, enlarged by hunger and tears, he became

awkward and could scarcely walk straight. These dumb reproaches seemed

to be always increasing behind him. He became so terrified, lest he

should hear the entire settlement come out to shout its wretchedness at

him, that he returned shuddering. But at the Maheus' the scene which

met him still further agitated him. Old Bonnemort was near the cold

fireplace, nailed to his chair ever since two neighbours, on the day

of the slaughter, had found him on the ground, with his stick broken,

struck down like an old thunder-stricken tree. And while Lénore and

Henri, to beguile their hunger, were scraping, with deafening noise, an

old saucepan in which cabbages had been boiled the day before, Maheude,

after having placed Estelle on the table, was standing up threatening

Catherine with her fist.

"Say that again, by God! Just dare to say that again!"

Catherine had declared her intention to go back to the Voreux. The

idea of not gaining her bread, of being thus tolerated in her mother's

house, like a useless animal that is in the way, was becoming every

day more unbearable; and if it had not been for the fear of Chaval she

would have gone down on Tuesday.

She said again, stammering:

"What would you have? We can't go on doing nothing. We should get

bread, anyhow."

Maheude interrupted her.

"Listen to me: the first one of you who goes to work, I'll do for you.

No, that would be too much, to kill the father and go on taking it out

of the children! I've had enough of it; I'd rather see you all put in

your coffins, like him that's gone already."

And her long silence broke out into a furious flood of words. A fine

sum Catherine would bring her! hardly thirty sous, to which they might

add twenty sous if the bosses were good enough to find work for that

brigand Jeanlin. Fifty sous, and seven mouths to feed! The brats were

only good to swallow soup. As to the grandfather, he must have broken

something in his brain when he fell, for he seemed imbecile; unless it

had turned his blood to see the soldiers firing at his mates.

"That's it, old man, isn't it? They've quite done for you. It's no good

having your hands still strong; you're done for."

Bonnemort looked at her with his dim eyes without understanding. He

remained for hours with fixed gaze, having no intelligence now except

to spit into a plate filled with ashes, which was put beside him for

cleanliness.

"And they've not settled his pension, either," she went on. "And I'm

sure they won't give it, because of our ideas. No! I tell you that

we've had too much to do with those people who bring ill luck."

"But," Catherine ventured to say, "they promise on the placard--"

"Just let me alone with your damned placard! More birdlime for catching

us and eating us. They can be mighty kind now that they have ripped us

open."

"But where shall we go, mother? They won't keep us at the settlement,

sure enough."

Maheude made a vague, terrified gesture. Where should they go to? She

did not know at all; she avoided thinking, it made her mad. They would

go elsewhere--somewhere. And as the noise of the saucepan was becoming

unbearable, she turned round on Lénore and Henri and boxed their ears.

The fall of Estelle, who had been crawling on all fours, increased the

disturbance. The mother quieted her with a push--a good thing if it had

killed her! She spoke of Alzire; she wished the others might have that

child's luck. Then suddenly she burst out into loud sobs, with her head

against the wall.

Étienne, who was standing by, did not dare to interfere. He no longer

counted for anything in the house, and even the children drew back from

him suspiciously. But the unfortunate woman's tears went to his heart,

and he murmured:

"Come, come! courage! we must try to get out of it."

She did not seem to hear him, and was bemoaning herself now in a low

continuous complaint.

"Ah! the wretchedness! is it possible? Things did go on before these

horrors. We ate our bread dry, but we were all together; and what has

happened, good God! What have we done, then, that we should have such

troubles--some under the earth, and the others with nothing left but

to long to get there too? It's true enough that they harnessed us

like horses to work, and it's not at all a just sharing of things to

be always getting the stick and making rich people's fortunes bigger

without hope of ever tasting the good things. There's no pleasure in

life when hope goes. Yes, that couldn't have gone on longer; we had to

breathe a bit. If we had only known! Is it possible to make oneself so

wretched through wanting justice?"

Sighs swelled her breast, and her voice choked with immense sadness.

"Then there are always some clever people there who promise you that

everything can be arranged by just taking a little trouble. Then one

loses one's head, and one suffers so much from things as they are that

one asks for things that can't be. Now, I was dreaming like a fool; I

seemed to see a life of good friendship with everybody; I went off into

the air, my faith! into the clouds. And then one breaks one's back when

one tumbles down into the mud again. It's not true; there's nothing

over there of the things that people tell of. What there is, is only

wretchedness, ah! wretchedness, as much as you like of it, and bullets

into the bargain."

Étienne listened to this lamentation, and every tear struck him with

remorse. He knew not what to say to calm Maheude, broken by her

terrible fall from the heights of the ideal. She had come back to the

middle of the room, and was now looking at him; she addressed him with

contemptuous familiarity in a last cry of rage:

"And you, do you talk of going back to the pit, too, after driving us

out of the bloody place! I've nothing to reproach you with; but if I

were in your shoes I should be dead of grief by now after causing such

harm to the mates."

He was about to reply, but then shrugged his shoulders in despair. What

was the good of explaining, for she would not understand in her grief?

And he went away, for he was suffering too much, and resumed his wild

walk outside.

There again he found the settlement apparently waiting for him, the

men at the doors, the women at the windows. As soon as he appeared

growls were heard, and the crowd increased. The breath of gossip,

which had been swelling for four days, was breaking out in a universal

malediction. Fists were stretched towards him, mothers spitefully

pointed him out to their boys, old men spat as they looked at him. It

was the change which follows on the morrow of defeat, the fatal reverse

of popularity, an execration exasperated by all the suffering endured

without result. He had to pay for famine and death.

Zacharie, who came up with Philoméne, hustled Étienne as he went out,

grinning maliciously.

"Well, he gets fat. It's filling, then, to live on other people's

deaths?"

The Levaque woman had already come to her door with Bouteloup. She

spoke of Bébert, her youngster, killed by a bullet, and cried:

"Yes, there are cowards who get children murdered! Let him go and look

for mine in the earth if he wants to give it me back!"

She was forgetting her man in prison, for the household was going on

since Bouteloup remained; but she thought of him, however, and went on

in a shrill voice:

"Get along! rascals may walk about while good people are put away!"

In avoiding her, Étienne tumbled on to Pierronne, who was running

up across the gardens. She had regarded her mother's death as a

deliverance, for the old woman's violence threatened to get them

hanged; nor did she weep over Pierron's little girl, that street-walker

Lydie--a good riddance. But she joined in with her neighbours with the

idea of getting reconciled with them.

"And my mother, eh, and the little girl? You were seen; you were hiding

yourself behind them when they caught the lead instead of you!"

What was to be done? Strangle Pierronne and the others, and fight the

whole settlement? Étienne wanted to do so for a moment. The blood was

throbbing in his head, he now looked upon his mates as brutes, he was

irritated to see them so unintelligent and barbarous that they wanted

to revenge themselves on him for the logic of facts. How stupid it all

was! and he felt disgust at his powerlessness to tame them again; and

satisfied himself with hastening his steps as though he were deaf to

abuse. Soon it became a flight; every house hooted him as he passed,

they hastened on his heels, it was a whole nation cursing him with a

voice that was becoming like thunder in its overwhelming hatred. It

was he, the exploiter, the murderer, who was the sole cause of their

misfortune. He rushed out of the settlement, pale and terrified, with

this yelling crowd behind his back. When he at last reached the main

road most of them left him; but a few persisted, until at the bottom

of the slope before the Avantage he met another group coming from the

Voreux.

Old Mouque and Chaval were there. Since the death of his daughter

Mouquette, and of his son Mouquet, the old man had continued to act

as groom without a word of regret or complaint. Suddenly, when he saw

Étienne, he was shaken by fury, tears broke out from his eyes, and a

flood of coarse words burst from his mouth, black and bleeding from his

habit of chewing tobacco.

"You devil! you bloody swine! you filthy snout! Wait, you've got to pay

me for my poor children; you'll have to come to it!"

He picked up a brick, broke it, and threw both pieces.

"Yes! yes! clear him off!" shouted Chaval, who was grinning in

excitement, delighted at this vengeance. "Every one gets his turn; now

you're up against the wall, you dirty hound!"

And he also attacked Étienne with stones. A savage clamour arose; they

all took up bricks, broke them, and threw them, to rip him open, as

they would like to have done to the soldiers. He was dazed and could

not flee; he faced them, trying to calm them with phrases. His old

speeches, once so warmly received, came back to his lips. He repeated

the words with which he had intoxicated them at the time when he could

keep them in hand like a faithful flock; but his power was dead, and

only stones replied to him. He had just been struck on the left arm,

and was drawing back, in great peril, when he found himself hemmed in

against the front of the Avantage.

For the last few moments Rasseneur had been at his door.

"Come in," he said simply.

Étienne hesitated; it choked him to take refuge there.

"Come in; then I'll speak to them."

He resigned himself, and took refuge at the other end of the parlour,

while the innkeeper filled up the doorway with his broad shoulders.

"Look here, my friends, just be reasonable. You know very well that

I've never deceived you. I've always been in favour of quietness, and

if you had listened to me, you certainly wouldn't be where you are now."

Rolling his shoulders and belly, he went on at length, allowing his

facile eloquence to flow with the lulling gentleness of warm water. And

all his old success came back; he regained his popularity, naturally

and without an effort, as if he had never been hooted and called a

coward a month before. Voices arose in approval: "Very good! we are

with you! that is the way to put it!" Thundering applause broke out.

Étienne, in the background, grew faint, and there was bitterness at his

heart. He recalled Rasseneur's prediction in the forest, threatening

him with the ingratitude of the mob. What imbecile brutality! What an

abominable forgetfulness of old services! It was a blind force which

constantly devoured itself. And beneath his anger at seeing these

brutes spoil their own cause, there was despair at his own fall and

the tragic end of his ambition. What! was it already done for! He

remembered hearing beneath the beeches three thousand hearts beating

to the echo of his own. On that day he had held his popularity in both

hands. Those people belonged to him; he felt that he was their master.

Mad dreams had then intoxicated him. Montsou at his feet, Paris beyond,

becoming a deputy perhaps, crushing the middle class in a speech, the

first speech ever pronounced by a workman in a parliament. And it

was all over! He awakened, miserable and detested; his people were

dismissing him by flinging bricks.

Rasseneur's voice rose higher:

"Never will violence succeed; the world can't be remade in a day. Those

who have promised you to change it all at one stroke are either making

fun of you or they are rascals!"

"Bravo! bravo!" shouted the crowd.

Who then was the guilty one? And this question which Étienne put to

himself overwhelmed him more than ever. Was it in fact his fault, this

misfortune which was making him bleed, the wretchedness of some, the

murder of others, these women, these children, lean, and without bread?

He had had that lamentable vision one evening before the catastrophe.

But then a force was lifting him, he was carried away with his mates.

Besides, he had never led them, it was they who led him, who obliged

him to do things which he would never have done if it were not for the

shock of that crowd pushing behind him. At each new violence he had

been stupefied by the course of events, for he had neither foreseen

nor desired any of them. Could he anticipate, for instance, that his

followers in the settlement would one day stone him? These infuriated

people lied when they accused him of having promised them an existence

all fodder and laziness. And in this justification, in this reasoning,

in which he tried to fight against his remorse, was hidden the anxiety

that he had not risen to the height of his task; it was the doubt of

the half-cultured man still perplexing him. But he felt himself at the

end of his courage, he was no longer at heart with his mates; he feared

this enormous mass of the people, blind and irresistible, moving like a

force of nature, sweeping away everything, outside rules and theories.

A certain repugnance was detaching him from them--the discomfort of his

new tastes, the slow movement of all his being towards a superior class.

At this moment Rasseneur's voice was lost in the midst of enthusiastic

shouts:

"Hurrah for Rasseneur! he's the fellow! Bravo, bravo!"

The innkeeper shut the door, while the band dispersed; and the two men

looked at each other in silence. They both shrugged their shoulders.

They finished up by having a drink together.

On the same day there was a great dinner at Piolaine; they were

celebrating the betrothal of Négrel and Cécile. Since the previous

evening the Grégoires had had the dining-room waxed and the

drawing-room dusted. Mélanie reigned in the kitchen, watching over the

roasts and stirring the sauces, the odour of which ascended to the

attics. It had been decided that Francis, the coachman, should help

Honorine to wait. The gardener's wife would wash up, and the gardener

would open the gate. Never had the substantial, patriarchal old house

been in such a state of gaiety.

Everything went off beautifully, Madame Hennebeau was charming with

Cécile, and she smiled at Négrel when the Montsou lawyer gallantly

proposed the health of the future household. M. Hennebeau was also very

amiable. His smiling face struck the guests. The report circulated that

he was rising in favour with the directors, and that he would soon be

made an officer of the Legion of Honour, on account of the energetic

manner in which he had put down the strike. Nothing was said about

recent events; but there was an air of triumph in the general joy,

and the dinner became the official celebration of a victory. At last,

then, they were saved, and once more they could begin to eat and sleep

in peace. A discreet allusion was made to those dead whose blood the

Voreux mud had yet scarcely drunk up. It was a necessary lesson: and

they were all affected when the Grégoires added that it was now the

duty of all to go and heal the wounds in the settlements. They had

regained their benevolent placidity, excusing their brave miners, whom

they could already see again at the bottom of the mines, giving a good

example of everlasting resignation. The Montsou notables, who had now

left off trembling, agreed that this question of the wage system ought

to be studied, cautiously. The roasts came on; and the victory became

complete when M. Hennebeau read a letter from the bishop announcing

Abbé Ranvier's removal. The middle class throughout the province

had been roused to anger by the story of this priest who treated

the soldiers as murderers. And when the dessert appeared the lawyer

resolutely declared that he was a free-thinker.

Deneulin was there with his two daughters. In the midst of the joy, he

forced himself to hide the melancholy of his ruin. That very morning he

had signed the sale of his Vandame concession to the Montsou Company.

With the knife at his throat he had submitted to the directors'

demands, at last giving up to them that prey they had been on the

watch for so long, scarcely obtaining from them the money necessary

to pay off his creditors. He had even accepted, as a lucky chance, at

the last moment, their offer to keep him as divisional engineer, thus

resigning himself to watch, as a simple salaried servant, over that pit

which had swallowed up his fortune. It was the knell of small personal

enterprises, the approaching disappearance of the masters, eaten up,

one by one, by the ever-hungry ogre of capital, drowned in the rising

flood of great companies. He alone paid the expenses of the strike;

he understood that they were drinking to his disaster when they drank

to M. Hennebeau's rosette. And he only consoled himself a little when

he saw the fine courage of Lucie and Jeanne, who looked charming in

their done-up toilettes, laughing at the downfall, like happy tomboys

disdainful of money.

When they passed into the drawing-room for coffee, M. Grégoire drew his

cousin aside and congratulated him on the courage of his decision.

"What would you have? Your real mistake was to risk the million of your

Montsou denier over Vandame. You gave yourself a terrible wound, and it

has melted away in that dog's labour, while mine, which has not stirred

from my drawer, still keeps me comfortably doing nothing, as it will

keep my grandchildren's children."

CHAPTER II

On Sunday Étienne escaped from the settlement at nightfall. A very

clear sky, sprinkled with stars, lit up the earth with the blue haze

of twilight. He went down towards the canal, and followed the bank

slowly, in the direction of Marchiennes. It was his favourite walk,

a grass-covered path two leagues long, passing straight beside this

geometrical water-way, which unrolled itself like an endless ingot

of molten silver. He never met any one there. But on this day he was

vexed to see a man come up to him. Beneath the pale starlight, the two

solitary walkers only recognized each other when they were face to face.

"What! is it you?" said Étienne.

Souvarine nodded his head without replying. For a moment they remained

motionless, then side by side they set out towards Marchiennes. Each of

them seemed to be continuing his own reflections, as though they were

far away from each other.

"Have you seen in the paper about Pluchart's success at Paris?" asked

Étienne, at length. "After that meeting at Belleville, they waited for

him on the pavement, and gave him an ovation. Oh! he's afloat now, in

spite of his sore throat. He can do what he likes in the future."

The engine-man shrugged his shoulders. He felt contempt for fine

talkers, fellows who go into politics as one goes to the bar, to get an

income out of phrases.

Étienne was now studying Darwin. He had read fragments, summarized

and popularized in a five-sou volume; and out of this ill-understood

reading he had gained for himself a revolutionary idea of the struggle

for existence, the lean eating the fat, the strong people devouring the

pallid middle class. But Souvarine furiously attacked the stupidity

of the Socialists who accept Darwin, that apostle of scientific

inequality, whose famous selection was only good for aristocratic

philosophers. His mate persisted, however, wishing to reason out the

matter, and expressing his doubts by an hypothesis: supposing the old

society were no longer to exist, swept away to the crumbs; well, was

it not to be feared that the new world would grow up again, slowly

spoilt by the same injustices, some sick and others flourishing, some

more skilful and intelligent, fattening on everything, and others

imbecile and lazy, becoming slaves again? But before this vision of

eternal wretchedness, the engine-man shouted out fiercely that if

justice was not possible with man, then man must disappear. For every

rotten society there must be a massacre, until the last creature was

exterminated. And there was silence again.

For a long time, with sunken head, Souvarine walked over the short

grass, so absorbed that he kept to the extreme edge, by the water, with

the quiet certainty of a sleep-walker on a roof. Then he shuddered

causelessly, as though he had stumbled against a shadow. His eyes

lifted and his face was very pale; he said softly to his companion:

"Did I ever tell you how she died?"

"Whom do you mean?"

"My wife, over there, in Russia."

Étienne made a vague gesture, astonished at the tremor in his voice and

at the sudden desire for confidence in this lad, who was usually so

impassive in his stoical detachment from others and from himself. He

only knew that the woman was his mistress, and that she had been hanged

at Moscow.

"The affair hadn't gone off," Souvarine said, with eyes still vacantly

following the white stream of the canal between the bluish colonnades

of tall trees. "We had been a fortnight at the bottom of a hole

undermining the railway, and it was not the imperial train that was

blown up, it was a passenger train. Then they arrested Annutchka. She

brought us bread every evening, disguised as a peasant woman. She lit

the fuse, too, because a man might have attracted attention. I followed

the trial, hidden in the crowd, for six days."

His voice became thick, and he coughed as though he were choking.

"Twice I wanted to cry out, and to rush over the people's heads to join

her. But what was the good? One man less would be one soldier less; and

I could see that she was telling me not to come, when her large eyes

met mine."

He coughed again.

"On the last day in the square I was there. It was raining; they

stupidly lost their heads, put out by the falling rain. It took twenty

minutes to hang the other four; the cord broke, they could not finish

the fourth. Annutchka was standing up waiting. She could not see me,

she was looking for me in the crowd. I got on to a post and she saw me,

and our eyes never turned from each other. When she was dead she was

still looking at me. I waved my hat; I came away."

There was silence again. The white road of the canal unrolled to the

far distance, and they both walked with the same quiet step as though

each had fallen back into his isolation. At the horizon, the pale water

seemed to open the sky with a little hole of light.

"It was our punishment," Souvarine went on roughly. "We were guilty to

love each other. Yes, it is well that she is dead; heroes will be born

from her blood, and I no longer have any cowardice at my heart. Ah!

nothing, neither parents, nor wife, nor friend! Nothing to make my hand

tremble on the day when I must take others' lives or give up my own."

Étienne had stopped, shuddering in the cool night. He discussed no

more, he simply said:

"We have gone far; shall we go back?"

They went back towards the Voreux slowly, and he added, after a few

paces:

"Have you seen the new placards?"

The Company had that morning put up some more large yellow posters.

They were clearer and more conciliatory, and the Company undertook

to take back the certificates of those miners who went down on the

following day. Everything would be forgotten, and pardon was offered

even to those who were most implicated.

"Yes, I've seen," replied the engine-man.

"Well, what do you think of it?"

"I think that it's all up. The flock will go down again. You are all

too cowardly."

Étienne feverishly excused his mates: a man may be brave, a mob which

is dying of hunger has no strength. Step by step they were returning to

the Voreux; and before the black mass of the pit he continued swearing

that he, at least, would never go down; but he could forgive those

who did. Then, as the rumour ran that the carpenters had not had time

to repair the tubbing, he asked for information. Was it true? Had the

weight of the soil against the timber which formed the internal skirt

of scaffolding to the shaft so pushed it in that the winding-cages

rubbed as they went down for a length of over fifty metres?

Souvarine, who once more became uncommunicative, replied briefly. He

had been working the day before, and the cage did, in fact, jar; the

engine-men had even had to double the speed to pass that spot. But all

the bosses received any observations with the same irritating remark:

it was coal they wanted; that could be repaired later on.

"You see that will smash up!" Étienne murmured. "It will be a fine

time!"

With eyes vaguely fixed on the pit in the shadow, Souvarine quietly

concluded:

"If it does smash up, the mates will know it, since you advise them to

go down again."

Nine o'clock struck at the Montsou steeple; and his companion having

said that he was going to bed, he added, without putting out his hand:

"Well, good-bye. I'm going away."

"What! you're going away?"

"Yes, I've asked for my certificate back. I'm going elsewhere."

Étienne, stupefied and affected, looked at him. After walking for two

hours he said that to him! And in so calm a voice, while the mere

announcement of this sudden separation made his own heart ache. They

had got to know each other, they had toiled together; that always makes

one sad, the idea of not seeing a person again.

"You're going away! And where do you go?"

"Over there--I don't know at all."

"But I shall see you again?"

"No, I think not."

They were silent and remained for a moment facing each other without

finding anything to say.

"Then good-bye."

"Good-bye."

While Étienne ascended toward the settlement, Souvarine turned and

again went along the canal bank; and there, now alone, he continued to

walk, with sunken head, so lost in the darkness that he seemed merely

a moving shadow of the night. Now and then he stopped, he counted the

hours that struck afar. When he heard midnight strike he left the bank

and turned towards the Voreux.

At that time the pit was empty, and he only met a sleepy-eyed captain.

It was not until two o'clock that they would begin to get up steam to

resume work. First he went to take from a cupboard a jacket which he

pretended to have forgotten. Various tools--a drill armed with its

screw, a small but very strong saw, a hammer, and a chisel--were rolled

up in this jacket. Then he left. But instead of going out through the

shed he passed through the narrow corridor which led to the ladder

passage. With his jacket under his arm he quietly went down without a

lamp, measuring the depth by counting the ladders. He knew that the

cage jarred at three hundred and seventy-four metres against the fifth

row of the lower tubbing. When he had counted fifty-four ladders he

put out his hand and was able to feel the swelling of the planking.

It was there. Then, with the skill and coolness of a good workman who

has been reflecting over his task for a long time, he set to work. He

began by sawing a panel in the brattice so as to communicate with the

winding-shaft. With the help of matches, quickly lighted and blown out,

he was then able to ascertain the condition of the tubbing and of the

recent repairs.

Between Calais and Valenciennes the sinking of mine shafts was

surrounded by immense difficulties on account of the masses of

subterranean water in great sheets at the level of the lowest valleys.

Only the construction of tubbings, frameworks jointed like the stays

of a barrel, could keep out the springs which flow in and isolate the

shafts in the midst of the lakes, which with deep obscure waves beat

against the walls. It had been necessary in sinking the Voreux to

establish two tubbings: that of the upper level, in the shifting sands

and white clays bordering the chalky stratum, and fissured in every

part, swollen with water like a sponge; then that of the lower level,

immediately above the coal stratum, in a yellow sand as fine as flour,

flowing with liquid fluidity; it was here that the Torrent was to be

found, that subterranean sea so dreaded in the coal pits of the Nord,

a sea with its storms and its shipwrecks, an unknown and unfathomable

sea, rolling its dark floods more than three hundred metres beneath the

daylight. Usually the tubbings resisted the enormous pressure; the only

thing to be dreaded was the piling up of the neighbouring soil, shaken

by the constant movement of the old galleries which were filling up.

In this descent of the rocks lines of fracture were sometimes produced

which slowly extended as far as the scaffolding, at last perforating

it and pushing it into the shaft; and there was the great danger of a

landslip and a flood filling the pit with an avalanche of earth and a

deluge of springs.

Souvarine, sitting astride in the opening he had made, discovered a

very serious defect in the fifth row of tubbing. The wood was bellied

out from the framework; several planks had even come out of their

shoulder-pieces. Abundant filtrations, _pichoux_ the miners call

them, were jetting out of the joints through the tarred oakum with

which they were caulked. The carpenters, pressed for time, had been

content to place iron squares at the angles, so carelessly that not all

the screws were put in. A considerable movement was evidently going on

behind in the sand of the Torrent.

Then with his wimble he unscrewed the squares so that another push

would tear them all off. It was a foolhardy task, during which he

frequently only just escaped from falling headlong down the hundred and

eighty metres which separated him from the bottom. He had been obliged

to seize the oak guides, the joists along which the cages slid; and

suspended over the void he traversed the length of the cross-beams with

which they were joined from point to point, slipping along, sitting

down, turning over, simply buttressing himself on an elbow or a knee,

with tranquil contempt of death. A breath would have sent him over,

and three times he caught himself up without a shudder. First he felt

with his hand and then worked, only lighting a match when he lost

himself in the midst of these slimy beams. After loosening the screws

he attacked the wood itself, and the peril became still greater. He

had sought for the key, the piece which held the others; he attacked

it furiously, making holes in it, sawing it, thinning it so that it

lost its resistance; while through the holes and the cracks the water

which escaped in small jets blinded him and soaked him in icy rain.

Two matches were extinguished. They all became damp and then there was

night, the bottomless depth of darkness.

From this moment he was seized by rage. The breath of the invisible

intoxicated him, the black horror of this rain-beaten hole urged him

to mad destruction. He wreaked his fury at random against the tubbing,

striking where he could with his wimble, with his saw, seized by the

desire to bring the whole thing at once down on his head. He brought

as much ferocity to the task as though he had been digging a knife

into the skin of some execrated living creature. He would kill the

Voreux at last, that evil beast with ever-open jaws which had swallowed

so much human flesh! The bite of his tools could be heard, his spine

lengthened, he crawled, climbed down, then up again, holding on by a

miracle, in continual movement, the flight of a nocturnal bird amid the

scaffolding of a belfry.

But he grew calm, dissatisfied with himself. Why could not things be

done coolly? Without haste he took breath, and then went back into

the ladder passage, stopping up the hole by replacing the panel which

he had sawn. That was enough; he did not wish to raise the alarm by

excessive damage which would have been repaired immediately. The beast

was wounded in the belly; we should see if it was still alive at night.

And he had left his mark; the frightened world would know that the

beast had not died a natural death. He took his time in methodically

rolling up his tools in his jacket, and slowly climbed up the ladders.

Then, when he had emerged from the pit without being seen, it did not

even occur to him to go and change his clothes. Three o'clock struck.

He remained standing on the road waiting.

At the same hour Étienne, who was not asleep, was disturbed by a slight

sound in the thick night of the room. He distinguished the low breath

of the children, and the snoring of Bonnemort and Maheude; while

Jeanlin near him was breathing with a prolonged flute-like whistle.

No doubt he had dreamed, and he was turning back when the noise began

again. It was the creaking of a palliasse, the stifled effort of

someone who is getting up. Then he imagined that Catherine must be ill.

"I say, is it you? What is the matter?" he asked in a low voice.

No one replied, and the snoring of the others continued. For five

minutes nothing stirred. Then there was fresh creaking. Feeling certain

this time that he was not mistaken, he crossed the room, putting his

hands out into the darkness to feel the opposite bed. He was surprised

to find the young girl sitting up, holding in her breath, awake and on

the watch.

"Well! why don't you reply? What are you doing, then?"

At last she said:

"I'm getting up."

"Getting up at this hour?"

"Yes, I'm going back to work at the pit."

Étienne felt deeply moved, and sat down on the edge of the palliasse,

while Catherine explained her reasons to him. She suffered too much by

living thus in idleness, feeling continual looks of reproach weighing

on her; she would rather run the risk of being knocked about down there

by Chaval. And if her mother refused to take her money when she brought

it, well! she was big enough to act for herself and make her own soup.

"Go away; I want to dress. And don't say anything, will you, if you

want to be kind?"

But he remained near her; he had put his arms round her waist in a

caress of grief and pity. Pressed one against the other in their

shirts, they could feel the warmth of each other's naked flesh, at

the edge of this bed, still moist with the night's sleep. She had at

first tried to free herself; then she began to cry quietly, in her

turn taking him by the neck to press him against her in a despairing

clasp. And they remained, without any further desires, with the past of

their unfortunate love, which they had not been able to satisfy. Was

it, then, done with for ever? Would they never dare to love each other

some day, now that they were free? It only needed a little happiness

to dissipate their shame--that awkwardness which prevented them from

coming together because of all sorts of ideas which they themselves

could not read clearly.

"Go to bed again," she whispered. "I don't want to light up, it would

wake mother. It is time; leave me."

He could not hear; he was pressing her wildly, with a heart drowned

in immense sadness. The need for peace, an irresistible need for

happiness, was carrying him away; and he saw himself married, in a neat

little house, with no other ambition than to live and to die there,

both of them together. He would be satisfied with bread; and if there

were only enough for one, she should have it. What was the good of

anything else? Was there anything in life worth more?

But she was unfolding her naked arms.

"Please, leave me."

Then, in a sudden impulse, he said in her ear:

"Wait, I'm coming with you."

And he was himself surprised at what he had said. He had sworn never

to go down again; whence then came this sudden decision, arising from

his lips without thought of his, without even a moment's discussion?

There was now such calm within him, so complete a cure of his doubts,

that he persisted like a man saved by chance, who has at last found the

only harbour from his torment. So he refused to listen to her when she

became alarmed, understanding that he was devoting himself for her and

fearing the ill words which would greet him at the pit. He laughed at

everything; the placards promised pardon and that was enough.

"I want to work; that's my idea. Let us dress and make no noise."

They dressed themselves in the darkness, with a thousand precautions.

She had secretly prepared her miner's clothes the evening before; he

took a jacket and breeches from the cupboard; and they did not wash

themselves for fear of knocking the bowl. All were asleep, but they had

to cross the narrow passage where the mother slept. When they started,

as ill luck would have it, they stumbled against a chair. She woke and

asked drowsily:

"Eh! what is it?"

Catherine had stopped, trembling, and violently pressing Étienne's hand.

"It's me; don't trouble yourself," he said. "I feel stifled and am

going outside to breathe a bit."

"Very well."

And Maheude fell asleep again. Catherine dared not stir. At last she

went down into the parlour and divided a slice of bread-and-butter

which she had reserved from a loaf given by a Montsou lady. Then they

softly closed the door and went away.

Souvarine had remained standing near the Avantage, at the corner of the

road. For half an hour he had been looking at the colliers who were

returning to work in the darkness, passing by with the dull tramp of

a herd. He was counting them, as a butcher counts his beasts at the

entrance to the slaughter-house, and he was surprised at their number;

even his pessimism had not foreseen that the number of cowards would

have been so great. The stream continued to pass by, and he grew stiff,

very cold, with clenched teeth and bright eyes.

But he started. Among the men passing by, whose faces he could not

distinguish, he had just recognized one by his walk. He came forward

and stopped him.

"Where are you going to?"

Étienne, in surprise, instead of replying, stammered:

"What! you've not set out yet!"

Then he confessed he was going back to the pit. No doubt he had sworn;

only it could not be called life to wait with folded arms for things

which would perhaps happen in a hundred years; and, besides, reasons of

his own had decided him.

Souvarine had listened to him, shuddering. He seized him by the

shoulder, and pushed him towards the settlement.

"Go home again; I want you to. Do you understand?"

But Catherine having approached, he recognized her also. Étienne

protested, declaring that he allowed no one to judge his conduct. And

the engine-man's eyes went from the young girl to her companion, while

he stepped back with a sudden, relinquishing movement. When there was a

woman in a man's heart, that man was done for; he might die. Perhaps he

saw again in a rapid vision his mistress hanging over there at Moscow,

that last link cut from his flesh, which had rendered him free of the

lives of others and of his own life. He said simply:

"Go."

Étienne, feeling awkward, was delaying, and trying to find some

friendly word, so as not to separate in this manner.

"Then you're still going?"

"Yes."

"Well, give me your hand, old chap. A pleasant journey, and no ill

feeling."

The other stretched out an icy hand. Neither friend nor wife.

"Good-bye for good this time."

"Yes, good-bye."

And Souvarine, standing motionless in the darkness, watched Étienne and

Catherine entering the Voreux.

CHAPTER III

At four o'clock the descent began. Dansaert, who was personally

installed at the marker's office in the lamp cabin, wrote down the name

of each worker who presented himself and had a lamp given to him. He

took them all, without remark, keeping to the promise of the placards.

When, however, he noticed Étienne and Catherine at the wicket, he

started and became very red, and was opening his mouth to refuse their

names; then, he contented himself with the triumph, and a jeer. Ah! ah!

so the strong man was thrown? The Company was, then, in luck since the

terrible Montsou wrestler had come back to it to ask for bread? Étienne

silently took his lamp and went towards the shaft with the putter.

But it was there, in the receiving-room, that Catherine feared the

mates' bad words. At the very entrance she recognized Chaval, in the

midst of some twenty miners, waiting till a cage was free. He came

furiously towards her, but the sight of Étienne stopped him. Then he

affected to sneer with an offensive shrug of the shoulders.

Very good! he didn't care a hang, since the other had come to occupy

the place that was still warm; good riddance! It only concerned the

gentleman if he liked the leavings; and beneath the exhibition of this

contempt he was again seized by a tremor of jealousy, and his eyes

flamed. For the rest, the mates did not stir, standing silent, with

eyes lowered. They contented themselves with casting a sidelong look

at the new-comers; then, dejected and without anger, they again stared

fixedly at the mouth of the shaft, with their lamps in their hands,

shivering beneath their thin jackets, in the constant draughts of this

large room. At last the cage was wedged on to the keeps, and they were

ordered to get in. Catherine and Étienne were squeezed in one tram,

already containing Pierron and two pikemen. Beside them, in the other

tram, Chaval was loudly saying to Father Mouque that the directors had

made a mistake in not taking advantage of the opportunity to free the

pits of the blackguards who were corrupting them; but the old groom,

who had already fallen back into the dog-like resignation of his

existence, no longer grew angry over the death of his children, and

simply replied by a gesture of conciliation.

The cage freed itself and slipped down into the darkness. No one spoke.

Suddenly, when they were in the middle third of the descent, there was

a terrible jarring. The iron creaked, and the men were thrown on to

each other.

"By God!" growled Étienne, "are they going to flatten us? We shall end

by being left here for good, with their confounded tubbing. And they

talk about having repaired it!"

The cage had, however, cleared the obstacle. It was now descending

beneath so violent a rain, like a storm, that the workmen anxiously

listened to the pouring. A number of leaks must then have appeared in

the caulking of the joints.

Pierron, who had been working for several days, when asked about it did

not like to show his fear, which might be considered as an attack on

the management, so he only replied:

"Oh, no danger! it's always like that. No doubt they've not had time to

caulk the leaks."

The torrent was roaring over their heads, and they at last reached the

pit-eye beneath a veritable waterspout. Not one of the captains had

thought of climbing up the ladders to investigate the matter. The pump

would be enough, the carpenters would examine the joints the following

night. The reorganization of work in the galleries gave considerable

trouble. Before allowing the pikemen to return to their hewing cells,

the engineer had decided that for the first five days all the men

should execute certain works of consolidation which were extremely

urgent. Landslips were threatening everywhere; the passages had

suffered to such an extent that the timbering had to be repaired along

a length of several hundred metres. Gangs of ten men were therefore

formed below, each beneath the control of a captain. Then they were set

to work at the most damaged spots. When the descent was complete, it

was found that three hundred and twenty-two miners had gone down, about

half of those who worked there when the pit was in full swing.

Chaval belonged to the same gang as Catherine and Étienne. This was

not by chance; he had at first hidden behind his mates, and had then

forced the captain's hand. This gang went to the end of the north

gallery, nearly three kilometres away, to clear out a landslip which

was stopping up a gallery in the Dix-Huit-Pouces seam. They attacked

the fallen rocks with shovel and pick. Étienne, Chaval, and five others

cleared away the rubbish while Catherine, with two trammers, wheeled

the earth up to the upbrow. They seldom spoke, and the captain never

left them. The putter's two lovers, however, were on the point of

coming to blows. While growling that he had had enough of this trollop,

Chaval was still thinking of her, and slyly hustling her about, so that

Étienne had threatened to settle him if he did not leave her alone.

They eyed each other fiercely, and had to be separated.

Towards eight o'clock Dansaert passed to give a glance at the work. He

appeared to be in a very bad humour, and was furious with the captain;

nothing had gone well, what was the meaning of such work, the planking

would everywhere have to be done over again! And he went away declaring

that he would come back with the engineer. He had been waiting for

Négrel since morning, and could not understand the cause of this delay.

Another hour passed by. The captain had stopped the removal of the

rubbish to employ all his people in supporting the roof. Even the

putter and the two trammers left off wheeling to prepare and bring

pieces of timber. At this end of the gallery the gang formed a sort

of advance guard at the very extremity of the mine, now without

communication with the other stalls. Three or four times strange

noises, distant rushes, made the workers turn their heads to listen.

What was it, then? One would have said that the passages were being

emptied and the mates already returning at a running pace. But the

sound was lost in the deep silence, and they set to wedging their wood

again, dazed by the loud blows of the hammer. At last they returned to

the rubbish, and the wheeling began once more. Catherine came back from

her first journey in terror, saying that no one was to be found at the

upbrow.

"I called, but there was no reply. They've all cleared out of the

place."

The bewilderment was so great that the ten men threw down their tools

to rush away. The idea that they were abandoned, left alone at the

bottom of the mine, so far from the pit-eye, drove them wild. They only

kept their lamps and ran in single file--the men, the boys, the putter;

the captain himself lost his head and shouted out appeals, more and

more frightened at the silence in this endless desert of galleries.

What then had happened that they did not meet a soul? What accident

could thus have driven away their mates? Their terror was increased

by the uncertainty of the danger, this threat which they felt there

without knowing what it was.

When they at last came near the pit-eye, a torrent barred their road.

They were at once in water to the knees, and were no longer able to

run, laboriously fording the flood with the thought that one minute's

delay might mean death.

"By God! it's the tubbing that's given way," cried Étienne. "I said we

should be left here for good."

Since the descent Pierron had anxiously observed the increase of the

deluge which fell from the shaft. As with two others he loaded the

trams he raised his head, his face covered with large drops, and his

ears ringing with the roar of the tempest above. But he trembled

especially when he noticed that the sump beneath him, that pit ten

metres deep, was filling; the water was already spurting through the

floor and covering the metal plates. This showed that the pump was

no longer sufficient to fight against the leaks. He heard it panting

with the groan of fatigue. Then he warned Dansaert, who swore angrily,

replying that they must wait for the engineer. Twice he returned to the

charge without extracting anything else but exasperated shrugs of the

shoulder. Well! the water was rising; what could he do?

Mouque appeared with Bataille, whom he was leading to work, and he had

to hold him with both hands, for the sleepy old horse had suddenly

reared up, and, with a shrill neigh, was stretching his head towards

the shaft.

"Well, philosopher, what troubles you? Ah! it's because it rains. Come

along, that doesn't concern you."

But the beast quivered all over his skin, and Mouque forcibly drew him

to the haulage gallery.