there was an arrival of Ostend oysters at Marchiennes, and I meant to
send the cook with the carriage. But she was afraid of being stoned--"

They all interrupted her with a great burst of gaiety. They thought the
story very funny.

"Hush!" said M. Hennebeau, vexed, looking at the window, through which
the road could be seen. "We need not tell the whole country that we
have company this morning."

"Well, here is a slice of sausage which they shan't have," M. Grégoire
declared.

The laughter began again, but with greater restraint. Each guest made
himself comfortable, in this room upholstered with Flemish tapestry
and furnished with old oak chests. The silver shone behind the panes
of the sideboards; and there was a large hanging lamp of red copper,
whose polished surfaces reflected a palm and an aspidistra growing
in majolica pots. Outside, the December day was frozen by a keen
north-east wind. But not a breath of it entered; a green-house warmth
developed the delicate odour of the pineapple, sliced in a crystal bowl.

"Suppose we were to draw the curtains," proposed Négrel, who was amused
at the idea of frightening the Grégoires.

The housemaid, who was helping the footman, treated this as an order
and went and closed one of the curtains. This led to interminable
jokes: not a glass or a plate could be put down without precaution;
every dish was hailed as a waif escaped from the pillage in a conquered
town; and behind this forced gaiety there was a certain fear which
betrayed itself in involuntary glances towards the road, as though a
band of starvelings were watching the table from outside.

After the scrambled eggs with truffles, trout came on. The conversation
then turned to the industrial crisis, which had become aggravated
during the last eighteen months.

"It was inevitable," said Deneulin, "the excessive prosperity of recent
years was bound to bring us to it. Think of the enormous capital which
has been sunk, the railways, harbours, and canals, all the money buried
in the maddest speculations. Among us alone sugar works have been set
up as if the department could furnish three beetroot harvests. Good
heavens! and to-day money is scarce, and we have to wait to catch up
the interest of the expended millions; so there is a mortal congestion
and a final stagnation of business."

M. Hennebeau disputed this theory, but he agreed that the fortunate
years had spoilt the men.

"When I think," he exclaimed, "that these chaps in our pits used to
gain six francs a day, double what they gain now! And they lived well,
too, and acquired luxurious tastes. To-day, naturally, it seems hard to
them to go back to their old frugality."

"Monsieur Grégoire," interrupted Madame Hennebeau, "let me persuade
you, a little more trout. They are delicious, are they not?"

The manager went on:

"But, as a matter of fact, is it our fault? We, too, are cruelly
struck. Since the factories have closed, one by one, we have had a
deuce of a difficulty in getting rid of our stock; and in face of
the growing reduction in demand we have been forced to lower our net
prices. It is just this that the men won't understand."

There was silence. The footman presented roast partridge, while the
housemaid began to pour out Chambertin for the guests.

"There has been a famine in India," said Deneulin in a low voice, as
though he were speaking to himself. "America, by ceasing to order iron,
has struck a heavy blow at our furnaces. Everything holds together; a
distant shock is enough to disturb the world. And the empire, which was
so proud of this hot fever of industry!"

He attacked his partridge wing. Then, raising his voice:

"The worst is that to lower the net prices we ought logically to
produce more; otherwise the reduction bears on wages, and the worker is
right in saying that he has to pay the damage."

This confession, the outcome of his frankness, raised a discussion.
The ladies were not at all interested. Besides, all were occupied with
their plates, in the first zest of appetite. When the footman came
back, he seemed about to speak, then he hesitated.

"What is it?" asked M. Hennebeau. "If there are letters, give them to
me. I am expecting replies."

"No, sir. It is Monsieur Dansaert, who is in the hall. But he doesn't
wish to disturb you."

The manager excused himself, and had the head captain brought in. The
latter stood upright, a few paces from the table, while all turned
to look at him, huge, out of breath with the news he was bringing.
The settlements were quiet; only it had now been decided to send a
deputation. It would, perhaps, be there in a few minutes.

"Very well; thank you," said M. Hennebeau. "I want a report morning and
evening, you understand."

And as soon as Dansaert had gone, they began to joke again, and
hastened to attack the Russian salad, declaring that not a moment was
to be lost if they wished to finish it. The mirth was unbounded when
Négrel, having asked the housemaid for bread, she replied, "Yes, sir,"
in a voice as low and terrified as if she had behind her a troop ready
for murder and rape.

"You may speak," said Madame Hennebeau complacently. "They are not here
yet."

The manager, who now received a packet of letters and dispatches,
wished to read one of his letters aloud. It was from Pierron, who,
in respectful phrases, gave notice that he was obliged to go out on
strike with his comrades, in order to avoid ill-treatment; and he added
that he had not even been able to avoid taking part in the deputation,
although he blamed that step.

"So much for liberty of work!" exclaimed M. Hennebeau.

Then they returned to the strike, and asked him his opinion.

"Oh!" he replied, "we have had them before. It will be a week, or, at
most, a fortnight, of idleness, as it was last time. They will go and
wallow in the public-houses, and then, when they are hungry, they will
go back to the pits."

Deneulin shook his head:

"I'm not so satisfied; this time they appear to be better organized.
Have they not a Provident Fund?"

"Yes, scarcely three thousand francs. What do you think they can do
with that? I suspect a man called Étienne Lantier of being their
leader. He is a good workman; it would vex me to have to give him his
certificate back, as we did of old to the famous Rasseneur, who still
poisons the Voreux with his ideas and his beer. No matter, in a week
half the men will have gone down, and in a fortnight the ten thousand
will be below."

He was convinced. His only anxiety was concerning his own possible
disgrace should the directors put the responsibility of the strike on
him. For some time he had felt that he was diminishing in favour. So
leaving the spoonful of Russian salad which he had taken, he read over
again the dispatches received from Paris, endeavouring to penetrate
every word. His guests excused him; the meal was becoming a military
lunch, eaten on the field of battle before the first shots were fired.

The ladies then joined in the conversation. Madame Grégoire expressed
pity for the poor people who would suffer from hunger; and Cécile was
already making plans for distributing gifts of bread and meat. But
Madame Hennebeau was astonished at hearing of the wretchedness of
the Montsou colliers. Were they not very fortunate? People who were
lodged and warmed and cared for at the expense of the Company! In her
indifference for the herd, she only knew the lessons she had learnt,
and with which she had surprised the Parisians who came on a visit.
She believed them at last, and was indignant at the ingratitude of the
people.

Négrel, meanwhile, continued to frighten M. Grégoire. Cécile did not
displease him, and he was quite willing to marry her to be agreeable to
his aunt, but he showed no amorous fever; like a youth of experience,
who, he said, was not easily carried away now. He professed to be
a Republican, which did not prevent him from treating his men with
extreme severity, or from making fun of them in the company of the
ladies.

"Nor have I my uncle's optimism, either," he continued. "I fear
there will be serious disturbances. So I should advise you, Monsieur
Grégoire, to lock up Piolaine. They may pillage you."

Just then, still retaining the smile which illuminated his good-natured
face, M. Grégoire was going beyond his wife in paternal sentiments with
regard to the miners.

"Pillage me!" he cried, stupefied. "And why pillage me?"

"Are you not a shareholder in Montsou! You do nothing; you live on the
work of others. In fact you are an infamous capitalist, and that is
enough. You may be sure that if the revolution triumphs, it will force
you to restore your fortune as stolen money."

At once he lost his child-like tranquillity, his serene
unconsciousness. He stammered:

"Stolen money, my fortune! Did not my great-grandfather gain, and
hardly, too, the sum originally invested? Have we not run all the risks
of the enterprise, and do I today make a bad use of my income?"

Madame Hennebeau, alarmed at seeing the mother and daughter also white
with fear, hastened to intervene, saying:

"Paul is joking, my dear sir."

But M. Grégoire was carried out of himself. As the servant was passing
round the crayfish he took three of them without knowing what he was
doing and began to break their claws with his teeth.

"Ah! I don't say but what there are shareholders who abuse their
position. For instance, I have been told that ministers have received
shares in Montsou for services rendered to the Company. It is like a
nobleman whom I will not name, a duke, the biggest of our shareholders,
whose life is a scandal of prodigality, millions thrown into the street
on women, feasting, and useless luxury. But we who live quietly, like
good citizens as we are, who do not speculate, who are content to live
wholesomely on what we have, giving a part to the poor: Come, now! your
men must be mere brigands if they came and stole a pin from us!"

Négrel himself had to calm him, though amused at his anger. The
crayfish were still going round; the little crackling sound of their
carapaces could be heard, while the conversation turned to politics,
M. Grégoire, in spite of everything and though still trembling, called
himself a Liberal and regretted Louis Philippe. As for Deneulin, he was
for a strong Government; he declared that the Emperor was gliding down
the slope of dangerous concessions.

"Remember '89," he said. "It was the nobility who made the Revolution
possible, by their complicity and taste for philosophic novelties. Very
well! the middle class to-day are playing the same silly game with
their furious Liberalism, their rage for destruction, their flattery of
the people. Yes, yes, you are sharpening the teeth of the monster that
will devour us. It will devour us, rest assured!"

The ladies bade him be silent, and tried to change the conversation by
asking him news of his daughters. Lucie was at Marchiennes, where she
was singing with a friend; Jeanne was painting an old beggar's head.
But he said these things in a distracted way; he constantly looked at
the manager, who was absorbed in the reading of his dispatches and
forgetful of his guests. Behind those thin leaves he felt Paris and the
directors' orders, which would decide the strike. At last he could not
help yielding to his preoccupation.

"Well, what are you going to do?" he asked suddenly.

M. Hennebeau started; then turned off the question with a vague phrase.

"We shall see."

"No doubt you are solidly placed, you can wait," Deneulin began to
think aloud. "But as for me, I shall be done for if the strike reaches
Vandame. I shall have reinstalled Jean-Bart in vain; with a single pit,
I can only get along by constant production. Ah! I am not in a very
pleasant situation, I can assure you!"

This involuntary confession seemed to strike M. Hennebeau. He listened
and a plan formed within him: in case the strike turned out badly,
why not utilize it by letting things run down until his neighbour was
ruined, and then buy up his concession at a low price? That would be
the surest way of regaining the good graces of the directors, who for
years had dreamed of possessing Vandame.

"If Jean-Bart bothers you as much as that," said he, laughing, "why
don't you give it up to us?"

But Deneulin was already regretting his complaints. He exclaimed:

"Never, never!"

They were amused at his vigour and had already forgotten the strike
by the time the dessert appeared. An apple-charlotte meringue was
overwhelmed with praise. Afterwards the ladies discussed a recipe with
respect to the pineapple which was declared equally exquisite. The
grapes and pears completed their happy abandonment at the end of this
copious lunch. All talked excitedly at the same time, while the servant
poured out Rhine wine in place of champagne which was looked upon as
commonplace.

And the marriage of Paul and Cécile certainly made a forward step in
the sympathy produced by the dessert. His aunt had thrown such urgent
looks in his direction, that the young man showed himself very amiable,
and in his wheedling way reconquered the Grégoires, who had been cast
down by his stories of pillage. For a moment M. Hennebeau, seeing
the close understanding between his wife and his nephew, felt that
abominable suspicion again revive, as if in this exchange of looks he
had surprised a physical contact. But again the idea of the marriage,
made here before his face, reassured him.

Hippolyte was serving the coffee when the housemaid entered in a fright.

"Sir, sir, they are here!"

It was the delegates. Doors banged; a breath of terror was passing
through the neighbouring rooms.

Around the table the guests were looking at one another with uneasy
indecision. There was silence. Then they tried to resume their jokes:
they pretended to put the rest of the sugar in their pockets, and
talked of hiding the plate. But the manager remained grave; and the
laughter fell and their voices sank to a whisper, while the heavy feet
of the delegates who were being shown in tramped over the carpet of the
next room.

Madame Hennebeau said to her husband, lowering her voice:

"I hope you will drink your coffee."

"Certainly," he replied. "Let them wait."

He was nervous, listening to every sound, though apparently occupied
with his cup.

Paul and Cécile got up, and he made her venture an eye to the keyhole.
They were stifling their laughter and talking in a low voice.

"Do you see them?"

"Yes, I see a big man and two small ones behind."

"Haven't they ugly faces?"

"Not at all; they are very nice."

Suddenly M. Hennebeau left his chair, saying the coffee was too hot and
he would drink it afterwards. As he went out he put a finger to his
lips to recommend prudence. They all sat down again and remained at
table in silence, no longer daring to move, listening from afar with
intent ears jarred by these coarse male voices.

CHAPTER II

The previous day, at a meeting held at Rasseneur's, Étienne and some
comrades had chosen the delegates who were to proceed on the following
day to the manager's house. When, in the evening, Maheude learnt that
her man was one of them, she was in despair, and asked him if he
wanted them to be thrown on the street. Maheu himself had agreed with
reluctance. Both of them, when the moment of action came, in spite of
the injustice of their wretchedness fell back on the resignation of
their race, trembling before the morrow, preferring still to bend their
backs to the yoke. In the management of affairs he usually gave way to
his wife, whose advice was sound. This time, however, he grew angry at
last, all the more so since he secretly shared her fears.

"Just leave me alone, will you?" he said, going to bed and turning his
back. "A fine thing to leave the mates now! I'm doing my duty."

She went to bed in her turn. Neither of them spoke. Then, after a long
silence, she replied:

"You're right; go. Only, poor old man, we are done for."

Midday struck while they were at lunch, for the rendezvous was at
one o'clock at the Avantage, from which they were to go together to
M. Hennebeau's. They were eating potatoes. As there was only a small
morsel of butter left, no one touched it. They would have bread and
butter in the evening.

"You know that we reckon on you to speak," said Étienne suddenly to
Maheu.

The latter was so overcome that he was silent from emotion.

"No, no! that's too much," cried Maheude. "I'm quite willing he should
go there, but I don't allow him to go at the head. Why him, more than
any one else?"

Then Étienne, with his fiery eloquence, began to explain. Maheu was
the best worker in the pit, the most liked, and the most respected;
whose good sense was always spoken of. In his mouth the miners' claims
would carry decisive weight. At first Étienne had arranged to speak,
but he had been at Montsou for too short a time. One who belonged to
the country would be better listened to. In fact, the comrades were
confiding their interests to the most worthy; he could not refuse, it
would be cowardly.

Maheude made a gesture of despair.

"Go, go, my man; go and be killed for the others. I'm willing, after
all!"

"But I could never do it," stammered Maheu. "I should say something
stupid."

Étienne, glad to have persuaded him, struck him on the shoulder.

"Say what you feel, and you won't go wrong."

Father Bonnemort, whose legs were now less swollen, was listening with
his mouth full, shaking his head. There was silence. When potatoes were
being eaten, the children were subdued and behaved well. Then, having
swallowed his mouthful, the old man muttered slowly:

"You can say what you like, and it will be all the same as if you said
nothing. Ah! I've seen these affairs, I've seen them! Forty years ago
they drove us out of the manager's house, and with sabres too! Now they
may receive you, perhaps, but they won't answer you any more than that
wall. Lord! they have money, why should they care?"

There was silence again; Maheu and Étienne rose, and left the family
in gloom before the empty plates. On going out they called for Pierron
and Levaque, and then all four went to Rasseneur's, where the delegates
from the neighbouring settlements were arriving in little groups.
When the twenty members of the deputation had assembled there, they
settled on the terms to be opposed to the Company's, and then set out
for Montsou. The keen north-east wind was sweeping the street. As they
arrived, it struck two.

At first the servant told them to wait, and shut the door on them;
then, when he came back, he introduced them into the drawing-room, and
opened the curtains. A soft daylight entered, sifted through the lace.
And the miners, when left alone, in their embarrassment did not dare
to sit; all of them very clean, dressed in cloth, shaven that morning,
with their yellow hair and moustaches. They twisted their caps between
their fingers, and looked sideways at the furniture, which was in every
variety of style, as a result of the taste for the old-fashioned: Henry
II easy-chairs, Louis XV chairs, an Italian cabinet of the seventeenth
century, a Spanish contador of the fifteenth century, with an
altar-front serving as a chimney-piece, and ancient chasuble trimming
reapplied to the curtains. This old gold and these old silks, with
their tawny tones, all this luxurious church furniture, had overwhelmed
them with respectful discomfort. The eastern carpets with their long
wool seemed to bind their feet. But what especially suffocated them was
the heat, heat like that of a hot-air stove, which surprised them as
they felt it with cheeks frozen from the wind of the road. Five minutes
passed by and their awkwardness increased in the comfort of this rich
room, so pleasantly warm. At last M. Hennebeau entered, buttoned up in
a military manner and wearing on his frock-coat the correct little bow
of his decoration. He spoke first.

"Ah! here you are! You are in rebellion, it seems."

He interrupted himself to add with polite stiffness:

"Sit down, I desire nothing better than to talk things over."

The miners turned round looking for seats. A few of them ventured
to place themselves on chairs, while the others, disturbed by the
embroidered silks, preferred to remain standing.

There was a period of silence. M. Hennebeau, who had drawn his
easy-chair up to the fireplace, was rapidly looking them over and
endeavouring to recall their faces. He had recognized Pierron, who was
hidden in the last row, and his eyes rested on Étienne who was seated
in front of him.

"Well," he asked, "what have you to say to me?"

He had expected to hear the young man speak and he was so surprised to
see Maheu come forward that he could not avoid adding:

"What! you, a good workman who have always been so sensible, one of the
old Montsou people whose family has worked in the mine since the first
stroke of the axe! Ah! it's a pity, I'm sorry that you are at the head
of the discontented."

Maheu listened with his eyes down. Then he began, at first in a low and
hesitating voice.

"It is just because I am a quiet man, sir, whom no one has anything
against, that my mates have chosen me. That ought to show you that it
isn't just a rebellion of blusterers, badly-disposed men who want to
create disorder. We only want justice, we are tired of starving, and it
seems to us that the time has come when things ought to be arranged so
that we can at least have bread every day."

His voice grew stronger. He lifted his eyes and went on, while looking
at the manager.

"You know quite well that we cannot agree to your new system. They
accuse us of bad timbering. It's true we don't give the necessary time
to the work. But if we gave it, our day's work would be still smaller,
and as it doesn't give us enough food at present, that would mean the
end of everything, the sweep of the clout that would wipe off all your
men. Pay us more and we will timber better, we will give the necessary
hours to the timbering instead of putting all our strength into the
picking, which is the only work that pays. There's no other arrangement
possible; if the work is to be done it must be paid for. And what have
you invented instead? A thing which we can't get into our heads, don't
you see? You lower the price of the tram and then you pretend to make
up for it by paying for all timbering separately. If that was true
we should be robbed all the same, for the timbering would still take
us more time. But what makes us mad is that it isn't even true; the
Company compensates for nothing at all, it simply puts two centimes a
tram into its pocket, that's all."

"Yes, yes, that's it," murmured the other deputies, noticing M.
Hennebeau make a violent movement as if to interrupt.

But Maheu cut the manager short. Now that he had set out his words
came by themselves. At times he listened to himself with surprise as
though a stranger were speaking within him. It was the things amassed
within his breast, things he did not even know were there, and which
came out in an expansion of his heart. He described the wretchedness
that was common to all of them, the hard toil, the brutal life, the
wife and little ones crying from hunger in the house. He quoted the
recent disastrous payments, the absurd fortnightly wages, eaten up by
fines and rest days and brought back to their families in tears. Was it
resolved to destroy them?

"Then, sir," he concluded, "we have come to tell you that if we've got
to starve we would rather starve doing nothing. It will be a little
less trouble. We have left the pits and we don't go down again unless
the Company agrees to our terms. The Company wants to lower the price
of the tram and to pay for the timbering separately. We ask for things
to be left as they were, and we also ask for five centimes more the
tram. Now it is for you to see if you are on the side of justice and
work."

Voices rose among the miners.

"That's it--he has said what we all feel--we only ask what's reason."

Others, without speaking, showed their approval by nodding their heads.
The luxurious room had disappeared, with its gold and its embroideries,
its mysterious piling up of ancient things; and they no longer even
felt the carpet which they crushed beneath their heavy boots.

"Let me reply, then," at last exclaimed M. Hennebeau, who was growing
angry. "First of all, it is not true that the Company gains two
centimes the tram. Let us look at the figures."

A confused discussion followed. The manager, trying to divide them,
appealed to Pierron, who hid himself, stammering. Levaque, on the
contrary, was at the head of the more aggressive, muddling up things
and affirming facts of which he was ignorant. The loud murmurs of their
voices were stifled beneath the hangings in the hot-house atmosphere.

"If you all talk at the same time," said M. Hennebeau, "we shall never
come to an understanding."

He had regained his calmness, the rough politeness, without bitterness,
of an agent who has received his instructions, and means that they
shall be respected. From the first word he never took his eye off
Étienne, and manoeuvred to draw the young man out of his obstinate
silence. Leaving the discussion about the two centimes, he suddenly
enlarged the question.

"No, acknowledge the truth: you are yielding to abominable incitations.
It is a plague which is now blowing over the workers everywhere, and
corrupting the best. Oh! I have no need for any one to confess. I can
see well that you have been changed, you who used to be so quiet. Is
it not so? You have been promised more butter than bread, and you have
been told that now your turn has come to be masters. In fact, you have
been enrolled in that famous International, that army of brigands who
dream of destroying society."

Then Étienne interrupted him.

"You are mistaken, sir. Not a single Montsou collier has yet enrolled.
But if they are driven to it, all the pits will enroll themselves. That
depends on the Company."

From that moment the struggle went on between M. Hennebeau and Étienne
as though the other miners were no longer there.

"The Company is a Providence for the men, and you are wrong to threaten
it. This year it has spent three hundred thousand francs in building
settlements which only return two per cent, and I say nothing of the
pensions which it pays, nor of the coals and medicines which it gives.
You who seem to be intelligent, and who have become in a few months
one of our most skilful workmen, would it not be better if you were
to spread these truths, rather than ruin yourself by associating with
people of bad reputation? Yes, I mean Rasseneur, whom we had to turn
off in order to save our pits from socialistic corruption. You are
constantly seen with him, and it is certainly he who has induced you
to form this Provident Fund, which we would willingly tolerate if it
were merely a means of saving, but which we feel to be a weapon turned
against us, a reserve fund to pay the expenses of the war. And in this
connection I ought to add that the Company means to control that fund."

Étienne allowed him to continue, fixing his eyes on him, while a slight
nervous quiver moved his lips. He smiled at the last remark, and simply
replied:

"Then that is a new demand, for until now, sir, you have neglected
to claim that control. Unfortunately, we wish the Company to occupy
itself less with us, and instead of playing the part of Providence
to be merely just with us, giving us our due, the profits which
it appropriates. Is it honest, whenever a crisis comes, to leave
the workers to die with hunger in order to save the shareholders'
dividends? Whatever you may say, sir, the new system is a disguised
reduction of wages, and that is what we are rebelling against, for if
the Company wants to economize it acts very badly by only economizing
on the men."

"Ah! there we are!" cried M. Hennebeau. "I was expecting that--the
accusation of starving the people and living by their sweat. How can
you talk such folly, you who ought to know the enormous risks which
capital runs in industry--in the mines, for example? A well-equipped
pit today costs from fifteen hundred thousand francs to two millions;
and it is difficult enough to get a moderate interest on the vast sum
that is thus swallowed. Nearly half the mining companies in France are
bankrupt. Besides, it is stupid to accuse those who succeed of cruelty.
When their workers suffer, they suffer themselves. Can you believe that
the Company has not as much to lose as you have in the present crisis?
It does not govern wages; it obeys competition under pain of ruin.
Blame the facts, not the Company. But you don't wish to hear, you don't
wish to understand."

"Yes," said the young man, "we understand very well that our lot will
never be bettered as long as things go on as they are going; and that
is the reason why some day or another the workers will end by arranging
that things shall go differently."

This sentence, so moderate in form, was pronounced in a low voice,
but with such conviction, tremulous in its menace, that a deep
silence followed. A certain constraint, a breath of fear passed
through the polite drawing-room. The other delegates, though scarcely
understanding, felt that their comrade had been demanding their share
of this comfort; and they began to cast sidelong looks over the warm
hangings, the comfortable seats, all this luxury of which the least
knick-knack would have bought them soup for a month.

At last M. Hennebeau, who had remained thoughtful, rose as a sign for
them to depart. All imitated him. Étienne had lightly pushed Maheu's
elbow, and the latter, his tongue once more thick and awkward, again
spoke.

"Then, sir, that is all that you reply? We must tell the others that
you reject our terms."

"I, my good fellow!" exclaimed the manager, "I reject nothing. I am
paid just as you are. I have no more power in the matter than the
smallest of your trammers. I receive my orders, and my only duty is
to see that they are executed. I have told you what I thought I ought
to tell you, but it is not for me to decide. You have brought me your
demands. I will make them known to the directors, then I will tell you
their reply."

He spoke with the correct air of a high official avoiding any
passionate interest in the matter, with the courteous dryness of a
simple instrument of authority. And the miners now looked at him with
distrust, asking themselves what interest he might have in lying, and
what he would get by thus putting himself between them and the real
masters. A schemer, perhaps, this man who was paid like a worker, and
who lived so well!

Étienne ventured to intervene again.

"You see, sir, how unfortunate it is that we cannot plead our cause in
person. We could explain many things, and bring forward many reasons of
which you could know nothing, if we only knew where we ought to go."

M. Hennebeau was not at all angry. He even smiled.

"Ah! it gets complicated as soon as you have no confidence in me; you
will have to go over there."

The delegates had followed the vague gesture of his hand toward one
of the windows. Where was it, over there? Paris, no doubt. But they
did not know exactly; it seemed to fall back into a terrible distance,
in an inaccessible religious country, where an unknown god sat on his
throne, crouching down at the far end of his tabernacle. They would
never see him; they only felt him as a force far off, which weighed on
the ten thousand colliers of Montsou. And when the director spoke he
had that hidden force behind him delivering oracles.

They were overwhelmed with discouragement; Étienne himself signified
by a shrug of the shoulders that it would be best to go; while M.
Hennebeau touched Maheu's arm in a friendly way and asked after Jeanlin.

"That is a severe lesson now, and it is you who defend bad timbering.
You must reflect, my friends; you must realize that a strike would be
a disaster for everybody. Before a week you would die of hunger. What
would you do? I count on your good sense, anyhow; and I am convinced
that you will go down on Monday, at the latest."

They all left, going out of the drawing-room with the tramping of
a flock and rounded backs, without replying a word to this hope of
submission. The manager, who accompanied them, was obliged to continue
the conversation. The Company, on the one side, had its new tariff; the
workers, on the other, their demand for an increase of five centimes
the tram. In order that they might have no illusions, he felt he ought
to warn them that their terms would certainly be rejected by the
directors.

"Reflect before committing any follies," he repeated, disturbed at
their silence.

In the porch Pierron bowed very low, while Levaque pretended to adjust
his cap. Maheu was trying to find something to say before leaving, when
Étienne again touched his elbow. And they all left in the midst of this
threatening silence. The door closed with a loud bang.

When M. Hennebeau re-entered the dining-room he found his guests
motionless and silent before the liqueurs. In two words he told his
story to Deneulin, whose face grew still more gloomy. Then, as he
drank his cold coffee, they tried to speak of other things. But the
Grégoires themselves returned to the subject of the strike, expressing
their astonishment that no laws existed to prevent workmen from leaving
their work. Paul reassured Cécile, stating that they were expecting the
police.

At last Madame Hennebeau called the servant:

"Hippolyte, before we go into the drawing-room just open the windows
and let in a little air."

A fortnight had passed, and on the Monday of the third week the lists
sent up to the managers showed a fresh decrease in the number of the
miners who had gone down. It was expected that on that morning work
would be resumed, but the obstinacy of the directors in not yielding
exasperated the miners. The Voreux, Crévecoeur, Mirou, and Madeleine
were not the only pits resting; at the Victoire and at Feutry-Cantel
only about a quarter of the men had gone down; even Saint-Thomas was
affected. The strike was gradually becoming general.

At the Voreux a heavy silence hung over the pit-mouth. It was a dead
workshop, these great empty abandoned Yards where work was sleeping.
In the grey December sky, along the high foot-bridges three or four
empty trams bore witness to the mute sadness of things. Underneath,
between the slender posts of the platforms, the stock of coal was
diminishing, leaving the earth bare and black; while the supplies of
wood were mouldering beneath the rain. At the quay on the canal a barge
was moored, half-laden, lying drowsily in the murky water; and on the
deserted pit-bank, in which the decomposed sulphates smoked in spite of
the rain, a melancholy cart showed its shafts erect. But the buildings
especially were growing torpid, the screening-shed with closed
shutters, the steeple in which the rumbling of the receiving-room no
more arose, and the machine-room grown cold, and the giant chimney too
large for the occasional smoke. The winding-engine was only heated
in the morning. The grooms sent down fodder for the horses, and the
captains worked alone at the bottom, having become labourers again,
watching over the damages that took place in the passages as soon as
they ceased to be repaired; then, after nine o'clock the rest of the
service was carried on by the ladders. And above these dead buildings,
buried in their garment of black dust, there was only heard the
escapement of the pumping-engine, breathing with its thick, long breath
all that was left of the life of the pit, which the water would destroy
if that breathing should cease.

On the plain opposite, the settlement of the Deux-Cent-Quarante seemed
also to be dead. The prefect of Lille had come in haste and the
police had tramped all the roads; but in face of the calmness of the
strikers, prefect and police had decided to go home again. Never had
the settlement given so splendid an example in the vast plain. The
men, to avoid going to the public-house, slept all day long; the women
while dividing the coffee became reasonable, less anxious to gossip and
quarrel; and even the troops of children seemed to understand it all,
and were so good that they ran about with naked feet, smacking each
other silently. The word of command had been repeated and circulated
from mouth to mouth; they wished to be sensible.

There was, however, a continuous coming and going of people in the
Maheus' house. Étienne, as secretary, had divided the three thousand
francs of the Provident Fund among the needy families; afterwards
from various sides several hundred francs had arrived, yielded by
subscriptions and collections. But now all their resources were
exhausted; the miners had no more money to keep up the strike, and
hunger was there, threatening them. Maigrat, after having promised
credit for a fortnight, had suddenly altered his mind at the end of
a week and cut off provisions. He usually took his orders from the
Company; perhaps the latter wished to bring the matter to an end by
starving the settlements. He acted besides like a capricious tyrant,
giving or refusing bread according to the look of the girl who was
sent by her parents for provisions; and he especially closed his door
spitefully to Maheude, wishing to punish her because he had not been
able to get Catherine. To complete their misery it was freezing very
hard, and the women watched their piles of coal diminish, thinking
anxiously that they could no longer renew them at the pits now that the
men were not going down. It was not enough to die of hunger, they must
also die of cold.

Among the Maheus everything was already running short. The Levaques
could still eat on the strength of a twenty-franc piece lent by
Bouteloup. As to the Pierrons, they always had money; but in order
to appear as needy as the others, for fear of loans, they got their
supplies on credit from Maigrat, who would have thrown his shop at
Pierronne if she had held out her petticoat to him. Since Saturday many
families had gone to bed without supper, and in face of the terrible
days that were beginning not a complaint was heard, all obeyed the word
of command with quiet courage. There was an absolute confidence in
spite of everything, a religious faith, the blind gift of a population
of believers. Since an era of justice had been promised to them they
were willing to suffer for the conquest of universal happiness. Hunger
exalted their heads; never had the low horizon opened a larger beyond
to these people in the hallucination of their misery. They saw again
over there, when their eyes were dimmed by weakness, the ideal city
of their dream, but now growing near and seeming to be real, with its
population of brothers, its golden age of labour and meals in common.
Nothing overcame their conviction that they were at last entering it.
The fund was exhausted; the Company would not yield; every day must
aggravate the situation; and they preserved their hope and showed a
smiling contempt for facts. If the earth opened beneath them a miracle
would save them. This faith replaced bread and warmed their stomachs.
When the Maheus and the others had too quickly digested their soup,
made with clear water, they thus rose into a state of semi-vertigo,
that ecstasy of a better life which has flung martyrs to the wild
beasts.

Étienne was henceforth the unquestioned leader. In the evening
conversations he gave forth oracles, in the degree to which study
had refined him and made him able to enter into difficult matters.
He spent the nights reading, and received a large number of letters;
he even subscribed to the _Vengeur_, a Belgian Socialist paper,
and this journal, the first to enter the settlement, gained for him
extraordinary consideration among his mates. His growing popularity
excited him more every day. To carry on an extensive correspondence, to
discuss the fate of the workers in the four corners of the province,
to give advice to the Voreux miners, especially to become a centre and
to feel the world rolling round him--continually swelled the vanity
of the former engine-man, the pikeman with greasy black hands. He
was climbing a ladder, he was entering this execrated middle class,
with a satisfaction to his intelligence and comfort which he did not
confess to himself. He had only one trouble, the consciousness of
his lack of education, which made him embarrassed and timid as soon
as he was in the presence of a gentleman in a frock-coat. If he went
on instructing himself, devouring everything, the lack of method
would render assimilation very slow, and would produce such confusion
that at last he would know much more than he could understand. So at
certain hours of good sense he experienced a restlessness with regard
to his mission--a fear that he was not the man for the task. Perhaps
it required a lawyer, a learned man, able to speak and act without
compromising the mates? But an outcry soon restored his assurance. No,
no; no lawyers! They are all rascals; they profit by their knowledge to
fatten on the people. Let things turn out how they will, the workers
must manage their own affairs. And his dream of popular leadership
again soothed him: Montsou at his feet, Paris in the misty distance,
who knows? The elections some day, the tribune in a gorgeous hall,
where he could thunder against the middle class in the first speech
pronounced by a workman in a parliament.

During the last few days Étienne had been perplexed. Pluchart wrote
letter after letter, offering to come to Montsou to quicken the zeal
of the strikers. It was a question of organizing a private meeting
over which the mechanic would preside; and beneath this plan lay the
idea of exploiting the strike, to gain over to the International these
miners who so far had shown themselves suspicious. Étienne feared a
disturbance, but he would, however, have allowed Pluchart to come if
Rasseneur had not violently blamed this proceeding. In spite of his
power, the young man had to reckon with the innkeeper, whose services
were of older date, and who had faithful followers among his clients.
So he still hesitated, not knowing what to reply.

On this very Monday, towards four o'clock, a new letter came from Lille
as Étienne was alone with Maheude in the lower room. Maheu, weary of
idleness, had gone fishing; if he had the luck to catch a fine fish
under the sluice of the canal, they could sell it to buy bread. Old
Bonnemort and little Jeanlin had just gone off to try their legs,
which were now restored; while the children had departed with Alzire,
who spent hours on the pit-bank collecting cinders. Seated near the
miserable fire, which they no longer dared to keep up, Maheude, with
her dress unbuttoned and one breast hanging out of her dress and
falling to her belly, was suckling Estelle.

When the young man had folded the letter, she questioned him:

"Is the news good? Are they going to send us any money?"

He shook his head, and she went on:

"I don't know what we shall do this week. However, we'll hold on all
the same. When one has right on one's side, don't you think it gives
you heart, and one ends always by being the strongest?"

At the present time she was, to a reasonable extent, in favour of the
strike. It would have been better to force the Company to be just
without leaving off work. But since they had left it they ought not
to go back to it without obtaining justice. On this point she was
relentless. Better to die than to show oneself in the wrong when one
was right!

"Ah!" exclaimed Étienne, "if a fine old cholera was to break out, that
would free us of all these Company exploiters."

"No, no," she replied, "we must not wish any one dead. That wouldn't
help us at all; plenty more would spring up. Now I only ask that they
should get sensible ideas, and I expect they will, for there are worthy
people everywhere. You know I'm not at all for your politics."

In fact she always blamed his violent language, and thought him
aggressive. It was good that they should want their work paid for at
what it was worth, but why occupy oneself with such things as the
bourgeois and Government? Why mix oneself up with other people's
affairs, when one would get nothing out of it but hard knocks? And she
kept her esteem for him because he did not get drunk, and regularly
paid his forty-five francs for board and lodging. When a man behaves
well one can forgive him the rest.

Étienne then talked about the Republic, which would give bread to
everybody. But Maheude shook her head, for she remembered 1848, an
awful year, which had left them as bare as worms, her and her man, in
their early housekeeping years. She forgot herself in describing its
horrors, in a mournful voice, her eyes lost in space, her breast open;
while her infant, Estelle, without letting it go, had fallen asleep on
her knees. And Étienne, also absorbed in thought, had his eyes fixed on
this enormous breast, of which the soft whiteness contrasted with the
muddy yellowish complexion of her face.

"Not a farthing," she murmured, "nothing to put between one's teeth,
and all the pits stopped. Just the same destruction of poor people as
to-day."

But at that moment the door opened, and they remained mute with
surprise before Catherine, who then came in. Since her flight with
Chaval she had not reappeared at the settlement. Her emotion was so
great that, trembling and silent, she forgot to shut the door. She
expected to find her mother alone, and the sight of the young man put
out of her head the phrases she had prepared on the way.

"What on earth have you come here for?" cried Maheude, without even
moving from her chair. "I don't want to have anything more to do with
you; get along."

Then Catherine tried to find words:

"Mother, it's some coffee and sugar; yes, for the children. I've been
thinking of them and done overtime."

She drew out of her pockets a pound of coffee and a pound of sugar,
and took courage to place them on the table. The strike at the Voreux
troubled her while she was working at Jean-Bart, and she had only been
able to think of this way of helping her parents a little, under the
pretext of caring for the little ones. But her good nature did not
disarm her mother, who replied:

"Instead of bringing us sweets, you would have done better to stay and
earn bread for us."

She overwhelmed her with abuse, relieving herself by throwing in her
daughter's face all that she had been saying against her for the past
month. To go off with a man, to hang on to him at sixteen, when the
family was in want! Only the most degraded of unnatural children could
do it. One could forgive a folly, but a mother never forgot a trick
like that. There might have been some excuse if they had been strict
with her. Not at all; she was as free as air, and they only asked her
to come in to sleep.

"Tell me, what have you got in your skin, at your age?"

Catherine, standing beside the table, listened with lowered head. A
quiver shook her thin under-developed girlish body, and she tried to
reply in broken words:

"Oh! if it was only me, and the amusement that I get! It's him. What
he wants I'm obliged to want too, aren't I? because, you see, he's the
strongest. How can one tell how things are going to turn out? Anyhow
it's done and can't be undone; it may as well be him as another now.
He'll have to marry me."

She defended herself without a struggle, with the passive resignation
of a girl who has submitted to the male at an early age. Was it not the
common lot? She had never dreamed of anything else; violence behind
the pit-bank, a child at sixteen, and then a wretched household if her
lover married her. And she did not blush with shame; she only quivered
like this at being treated like a slut before this lad, whose presence
oppressed her to despair.

Étienne had risen, however, and was pretending to stir up the nearly
extinct fire in order not to interrupt the explanation. But their looks
met; he found her pale and exhausted; pretty, indeed, with her clear
eyes in the face which had grown tanned, and he experienced a singular
feeling; his spite had vanished; he simply desired that she should
be happy with this man whom she had preferred to him. He felt the
need to occupy himself with her still, a longing to go to Montsou and
force the other man to his duty. But she only saw pity in his constant
tenderness; he must feel contempt for her to gaze at her like that.
Then her heart contracted so that she choked, without being able to
stammer any more words of excuse.

"That's it, you'd best hold your tongue," began the implacable Maheude.
"If you come back to stay, come in; else get along with you at once,
and think yourself lucky that I'm not free just now, or I should have
put my foot into you somewhere before now."

As if this threat had suddenly been realized, Catherine received a
vigorous kick right behind, so violent that she was stupefied with
surprise and pain. It was Chaval who had leapt in through the open door
to give her this lunge of a vicious beast. For a moment he had watched
her from outside.

"Ah! slut," he yelled, "I've followed you. I knew well enough you were
coming back here to get him to fill you. And it's you that pay him, eh?
You pour coffee down him with my money!"

Maheude and Étienne were stupefied, and did not stir. With a furious
movement Chaval chased Catherine towards the door.

"Out you go, by God!"

And as she took refuge in a corner he turned on her mother.

"A nice business, keeping watch while your whore of a daughter is
kicking her legs upstairs!"

At last he caught Catherine's wrist, shaking her and dragging her out.
At the door he again turned towards Maheude, who was nailed to her
chair. She had forgotten to fasten up her breast. Estelle had gone to
sleep, and her face had slipped down into the woollen petticoat; the
enormous breast was hanging free and naked like the udder of a great
cow.

"When the daughter is not at it, it's the mother who gets herself
plugged," cried Chaval. "Go on, show him your meat! He isn't
disgusted--your dirty lodger!"

At this Étienne was about to strike his mate. The fear of arousing the
settlement by a fight had kept him back from snatching Catherine from
Chaval's hands. But rage was now carrying him away, and the two men
were face to face with inflamed eyes. It was an old hatred, a jealousy
long unacknowledged, which was breaking out. One of them now must do
for the other.

"Take care!" stammered Étienne, with clenched teeth. "I'll do for you."

"Try!" replied Chaval.

They looked at one another for some seconds longer, so close that
their hot breaths burnt each other's faces. And it was Catherine who
suppliantly took her lover's hand again to lead him away. She dragged
him out of the settlement, fleeing without turning her head.

"What a brute!" muttered Étienne, banging the door, and so shaken by
anger that he was obliged to sit down.

Maheude, in front of him, had not stirred. She made a vague gesture,
and there was silence, a silence which was painful and heavy with
unspoken things. In spite of an effort his gaze again returned to her
breast, that expanse of white flesh, the brilliance of which now made
him uncomfortable. No doubt she was forty, and had lost her shape, like
a good female who had produced too much; but many would still desire
her, strong and solid, with the large long face of a woman who had once
been beautiful. Slowly and quietly she was putting back her breast with
both hands. A rosy corner was still obstinate, and she pushed it back
with her finger, and then buttoned herself up, and was now quite black
and shapeless in her old gown.

"He's a filthy beast," she said at last. "Only a filthy beast could
have such nasty ideas. I don't care a hang what he says; it isn't worth
notice."

Then in a frank voice she added, fixing her eyes on the young man:

"I have my faults, sure enough, but not that one. Only two men have
touched me--a putter, long ago, when I was fifteen, and then Maheu. If
he had left me like the other, Lord! I don't quite know what would have
happened; and I don't pride myself either on my good conduct with him
since our marriage, because, when one hasn't gone wrong, it's often
because one hasn't the chance. Only I say things as they are, and I
know neighbours who couldn't say as much, don't you think?"

"That's true enough," replied Étienne.

And he rose and went out, while she decided to light the fire again,
after having placed the sleeping Estelle on two chairs. If the father
caught and sold a fish they could manage to have some soup.

Outside, night was already coming on, a frosty night; and with lowered
head Étienne walked along, sunk in dark melancholy. It was no longer
anger against the man, or pity for the poor ill-treated girl. The
brutal scene was effaced and lost, and he was thrown back on to the
sufferings of all, the abominations of wretchedness. He thought of the
settlement without bread, these women and little ones who would not
eat that evening, all this struggling race with empty bellies. And
the doubt which sometimes touched him awoke again in the frightful
melancholy of the twilight, and tortured him with a discomfort which he
had never felt so strongly before. With what a terrible responsibility
he had burdened himself! Must he still push them on in obstinate
resistance, now that there was neither money nor credit? And what
would be the end of it all if no help arrived, and starvation came to
beat down their courage? He had a sudden vision of disaster; of dying
children and sobbing mothers, while the men, lean and pale, went down
once more into the pits. He went on walking, his feet stumbling against
the stones, and the thought that the Company would be found strongest,
and that he would have brought misfortune on his comrades, filled him
with insupportable anguish.

When he raised his head he saw that he was in front of the Voreux. The
gloomy mass of buildings looked sombre beneath the growing darkness.
The deserted square, obstructed by great motionless shadows, seemed
like the corner of an abandoned fortress. As soon as the winding-engine
stopped, the soul left the place. At this hour of the night nothing was
alive, not a lantern, not a voice; and the sound of the pump itself
was only a distant moan, coming one could not say whence, in this
annihilation of the whole pit.

As Étienne gazed the blood flowed back to his heart. If the workers
were suffering hunger, the Company was encroaching on its millions. Why
should it prove the stronger in this war of labour against gold? In any
case, the victory would cost it dear. They would have their corpses to
count. He felt the fury of battle again, the fierce desire to have done
with misery, even at the price of death. It would be as well for the
settlement to die at one stroke as to go on dying in detail of famine
and injustice. His ill-digested reading came back to him, examples of
nations who had burnt their towns to arrest the enemy, vague histories
of mothers who had saved their children from slavery by crushing their
heads against the pavement, of men who had died of want rather than
eat the bread of tyrants. His head became exalted, a red gaiety arose
out of his crisis of black sadness, chasing away doubt, and making
him ashamed of this passing cowardice of an hour. And in this revival
of his faith, gusts of pride reappeared and carried him still higher;
the joy of being leader, of seeing himself obeyed, even to sacrifice,
the enlarged dream of his power, the evening of triumph. Already he
imagined a scene of simple grandeur, his refusal of power, authority
placed in the hands of the people, when it would be master.

But he awoke and started at the voice of Maheu, who was narrating his
luck, a superb trout which he had fished up and sold for three francs.

They would have their soup. Then he left his mate to return alone to
the settlement, saying that he would follow him; and he entered and
sat down in the Avantage, awaiting the departure of a client to tell
Rasseneur decisively that he should write to Pluchart to come at once.
His resolution was taken; he would organize a private meeting, for
victory seemed to him certain if the Montsou colliers adhered in a mass
to the International.

CHAPTER IV

It was at the Bon-Joyeux, Widow Désir's, that the private meeting was
organized for Thursday at two o'clock. The widow, incensed at the
miseries inflicted on her children the colliers, was in a constant
state of anger, especially as her inn was emptying. Never had there
been a less thirsty strike; the drunkards had shut themselves up at
home for fear of disobeying the sober word of command. Thus Montsou,
which swarmed with people on feast-days, now exhibited its wide street
in mute and melancholy desolation. No beer flowed from counters or
bellies, the gutters were dry. On the pavement at the Casimir Bar and
the Estaminet du Progrés one only saw the pale faces of the landladies,
looking inquiringly into the street; then in Montsou itself the
deserted doors extended from the Estaminet Lenfant to the Estaminet
Tison, passing by the Estaminet Piquette and the Tête-Coupée Bar; only
the Estaminet Saint-Éloi, which was frequented by captains, still drew
occasional glasses; the solitude even extended to the Volcan, where the
ladies were resting for lack of admirers, although they had lowered
their price from ten sous to five in view of the hard times. A deep
mourning was breaking the heart of the entire country.

"By God!" exclaimed Widow Désir, slapping her thighs with both hands,
"it's the fault of the gendarmes! Let them run me in, devil take them,
if they like, but I must plague them."

For her, all authorities and masters were gendarmes; it was a term of
general contempt in which she enveloped all the enemies of the people.
She had greeted Étienne's request with transport; her whole house
belonged to the miners, she would lend her ball-room gratuitously,
and would herself issue the invitations since the law required it.
Besides, if the law was not pleased, so much the better! She would give
them a bit of her mind. Since yesterday the young man had brought her
some fifty letters to sign; he had them copied by neighbours in the
settlement who knew how to write, and these letters were sent around
among the pits to delegates and to men of whom they were sure. The
avowed order of the day was a discussion regarding the continuation of
the strike; but in reality they were expecting Pluchart, and reckoning
on a discourse from him which would cause a general adhesion to the
International.

On Thursday morning Étienne was disquieted by the non-appearance of his
old foreman, who had promised by letter to arrive on Wednesday evening.
What, then, was happening? He was annoyed that he would not be able to
come to an understanding with him before the meeting. At nine o'clock
he went to Montsou, with the idea that the mechanic had, perhaps, gone
there direct without stopping at the Voreux.

"No, I've not seen your friend," replied Widow Désir. "But everything
is ready. Come and see."

She led him into the ball-room. The decorations were the same, the
garlands which supported at the ceiling a crown of painted paper
flowers, and the gilt cardboard shields in a line along the wall with
the names of saints, male and female. Only the musicians' platform had
been replaced by a table and three chairs in one corner; and the room
was furnished with forms ranged along the floor.

"It's perfect," Étienne declared.

"And you know," said the widow, "that you're at home here. Yell as much
as you like. The gendarmes will have to pass over my body if they do
come!"

In spite of his anxiety, he could not help smiling when he looked at
her, so vast did she appear, with a pair of breasts so huge that one
alone would require a man to embrace it, which now led to the saying
that of her six weekday lovers she had to take two every evening on
account of the work.

But Étienne was astonished to see Rasseneur and Souvarine enter; and as
the widow left them all three in the large empty hall he exclaimed:

"What! you here already!"

Souvarine, who had worked all night at the Voreux, the engine-men not
being on strike, had merely come out of curiosity. As to Rasseneur, he
had seemed constrained during the last two days, and his fat round face
had lost its good-natured laugh.

"Pluchart has not arrived, and I am very anxious," added Étienne.

The innkeeper turned away his eyes, and replied between his teeth:

"I'm not surprised; I don't expect him."

"What!"

Then he made up his mind, and looking the other man in the face bravely:

"I, too, have sent him a letter, if you want me to tell you; and in
that letter I have begged him not to come. Yes, I think we ought to
manage our own affairs ourselves, without turning to strangers."

Étienne, losing his self-possession and trembling with anger, turned
his eyes on his mate's and stammered:

"You've done that, you've done that?"

"I have done that, certainly! and you know that I trust Pluchart; he's
a knowing fellow and reliable, one can get on with him. But you see I
don't care a damn for your ideas, I don't! Politics, Government, and
all that, I don't care a damn for it! What I want is for the miner to
be better treated. I have worked down below for twenty years, I've
sweated down there with fatigue and misery, and I've sworn to make it
easier for the poor beggars who are there still; and I know well enough
you'll never get anything with all your ideas, you'll only make the
men's fate more miserable still. When they are forced by hunger to go
down again, they will be more crushed than ever; the Company will pay
them with strokes of the stick, like a runaway dog who is brought back
to his kennel. That's what I want to prevent, do you see!"

He raised his voice, protruding his belly and squarely planted on his
big legs. The man's whole patient, reasonable nature was revealed in
clear phrases, which flowed abundantly without an effort. Was it not
absurd to believe that with one stroke one could change the world,
putting the workers in the place of the masters and dividing gold as
one divides an apple? It would, perhaps, take thousands and thousands
of years for that to be realized. There, hold your tongue, with your
miracles! The most sensible plan was, if one did not wish to break
one's nose, to go straight forward, to demand possible reforms, in
short, to improve the lot of the workers on every occasion. He did
his best, so far as he occupied himself with it, to bring the Company
to better terms; if not, damn it all! they would only starve by being
obstinate.

Étienne had let him speak, his own speech cut short by indignation.
Then he cried:

"Haven't you got any blood in your veins, by God?"

At one moment he would have struck him, and to resist the temptation
he rushed about the hall with long strides, venting his fury on the
benches through which he made a passage.

"Shut the door, at all events," Souvarine remarked. "There is no need
to be heard."

Having himself gone to shut it, he quietly sat down in one of the
office chairs. He had rolled a cigarette, and was looking at the other
two men with his mild subtle eye, his lips drawn by a slight smile.

"You won't get any farther by being angry," said Rasseneur judiciously.
"I believed at first that you had good sense. It was sensible to
recommend calmness to the mates, to force them to keep indoors, and to
use your power to maintain order. And now you want to get them into a
mess!"

At each turn in his walks among the benches, Étienne returned towards
the innkeeper, seizing him by the shoulders, shaking him, and shouting
out his replies in his face.

"But, blast it all! I mean to be calm. Yes, I have imposed order on
them! Yes, I do advise them still not to stir! only it doesn't do to be
made a joke of after all! You are lucky to remain cool. Now there are
hours when I feel that I am losing my head."

This was a confession on his part. He railed at his illusions of a
novice, his religious dream of a city in which justice would soon
reign among the men who had become brothers. A fine method truly!
to cross one's arms and wait, if one wished to see men eating each
other to the end of the world like wolves. No! one must interfere, or
injustice would be eternal, and the rich would for ever suck the blood
of the poor. Therefore he could not forgive himself the stupidity
of having said formerly that politics ought to be banished from the
social question. He knew nothing then; now he had read and studied,
his ideas were ripe, and he boasted that he had a system. He explained
it badly, however, in confused phrases which contained a little of
all the theories he had successively passed through and abandoned.
At the summit Karl Marx's idea remained standing: capital was the
result of spoliation, it was the duty and the privilege of labour
to reconquer that stolen wealth. In practice he had at first, with
Proudhon, been captured by the chimera of a mutual credit, a vast bank
of exchange which suppressed middlemen; then Lassalle's cooperative
societies, endowed by the state, gradually transforming the earth into
a single industrial town, had aroused his enthusiasm until he grew
disgusted in face of the difficulty of controlling them; and he had
arrived recently at collectivism, demanding that all the instruments
of production should be restored to the community. But this remained
vague; he knew not how to realize this new dream, still hindered by
scruples of reason and good sense, not daring to risk the secretary's
absolute affirmations. He simply said that it was a question of getting
possession of the government first of all. Afterwards they would see.

"But what has taken you? Why are you going over to the bourgeois?" he
continued violently, again planting himself before the innkeeper. "You
said yourself it would have to burst up!"

Rasseneur blushed slightly.

"Yes, I said so. And if it does burst up, you will see that I am no
more of a coward than any one else. Only I refuse to be among those who
increase the mess in order to fish out a position for themselves."

Étienne blushed in his turn. The two men no longer shouted, having
become bitter and spiteful, conquered by the coldness of their rivalry.
It was at bottom that which always strains systems, making one man
revolutionary in the extreme, pushing the other to an affectation of
prudence, carrying them, in spite of themselves, beyond their true
ideas into those fatal parts which men do not choose for themselves.
And Souvarine, who was listening, exhibited on his pale, girlish face
a silent contempt--the crushing contempt of the man who was willing
to yield his life in obscurity without even gaining the splendour of
martyrdom.

"Then it's to me that you're saying that?" asked Étienne; "you're
jealous!"

"Jealous of what?" replied Rasseneur. "I don't pose as a big man; I'm
not trying to create a section at Montsou for the sake of being made
secretary."

The other man wanted to interrupt him, but he added:

"Why don't you be frank? You don't care a damn for the International;
you're only burning to be at our head, the gentleman who corresponds
with the famous Federal Council of the Nord!"

There was silence. Étienne replied, quivering:

"Good! I don't think I have anything to reproach myself with. I always
asked your advice, for I knew that you had fought here long before me.
But since you can't endure any one by your side, I'll act alone in
future. And first I warn you that the meeting will take place even if
Pluchart does not come, and the mates will join in spite of you."

"Oh! join!" muttered the innkeeper; "that's not enough. You'll have to
get them to pay their subscriptions."

"Not at all. The International grants time to workers on strike. It
will at once come to our help, and we shall pay later on."

Rasseneur was carried beyond himself.

"Well, we shall see. I belong to this meeting of yours, and I shall
speak. I shall not let you turn our friends' heads, I shall let them
know where their real interests lie. We shall see whom they mean to
follow--me, whom they have known for thirty years, or you, who have
turned everything upside down among us in less than a year. No, no!
damn it all! We shall see which of us is going to crush the other."

And he went out, banging the door. The garlands of flowers swayed from
the ceiling, and the gilt shields jumped against the walls. Then the
great room fell back into its heavy calm.

Souvarine was smoking in his quiet way, seated before the table.
After having paced for a moment in silence, Étienne began to relieve
his feelings at length. Was it his fault if they had left that fat
lazy fellow to come to him? And he defended himself from having ought
popularity. He knew not even how it had happened, this friendliness
of the settlement, the confidence of the miners, the power which he
now had over them. He was indignant at being accused of wishing to
bring everything to confusion out of ambition; he struck his chest,
protesting his brotherly feelings.

Suddenly he stopped before Souvarine and exclaimed:

"Do you know, if I thought I should cost a drop of blood to a friend, I
would go off at once to America!"

The engine-man shrugged his shoulders, and a smile again came on his
lips.

"Oh! blood!" he murmured. "What does that matter? The earth has need of
it."

Étienne, growing calm, took a chair, and put his elbows on the other
side of the table. This fair face, with the dreamy eyes, which
sometimes grew savage with a red light, disturbed him, and exercised
a singular power over his will. In spite of his comrade's silence,
conquered even by that silence, he felt himself gradually absorbed.

"Well," he asked, "what would you do in my place? Am I not right to act
as I do? Isn't it best for us to join this association?"

Souvarine, after having slowly ejected a jet of smoke, replied by his
favourite word:

"Oh, foolery! but meanwhile it's always so. Besides, their
International will soon begin to move. He has taken it up."

"Who, then?"

"He!"

He had pronounced this word in a whisper, with religious fervour,
casting a glance towards the east. He was speaking of the master,
Bakunin the destroyer.

"He alone can give the thunderclap," he went on, "while your learned
men, with their evolution, are mere cowards. Before three years are
past, the International, under his orders, will crush the old world."

Étienne pricked up his ears in attention. He was burning to gain
knowledge, to understand this worship of destruction, regarding which
the engine-man only uttered occasional obscure words, as though he kept
certain mysteries to himself.

"Well, but explain to me. What is your aim?"

"To destroy everything. No more nations, no more governments, no more
property, no more God nor worship."

"I quite understand. Only what will that lead you to?"

"To the primitive formless commune, to a new world, to the renewal of
everything."

"And the means of execution? How do you reckon to set about it?"

"By fire, by poison, by the dagger. The brigand is the true hero, the
popular avenger, the revolutionary in action, with no phrases drawn
out of books. We need a series of tremendous outrages to frighten the
powerful and to arouse the people."

As he talked, Souvarine grew terrible. An ecstasy raised him on his
chair, a mystic flame darted from his pale eyes, and his delicate hands
gripped the edge of the table almost to breaking. The other man looked
at him in fear, and thought of the stories of which he had received
vague intimation, of mines charged beneath the tsar's palace, of chiefs
of police struck down by knives like wild boars, of his mistress, the
only woman he had loved, hanged at Moscow one rainy morning, while in
the crowd he kissed her with his eyes for the last time.

"No! no!" murmured Étienne, as with a gesture he pushed away these
abominable visions, "we haven't got to that yet over here. Murder and
fire, never! It is monstrous, unjust, all the mates would rise and
strangle the guilty one!"

And besides, he could not understand; the instincts of his race refused
to accept this sombre dream of the extermination of the world, mown
level like a rye-field. Then what would they do afterwards? How would
the nations spring up again? He demanded a reply.

"Tell me your programme. We like to know where we are going to."

Then Souvarine concluded peacefully, with his gaze fixed on space:

"All reasoning about the future is criminal, because it prevents pure
destruction, and interferes with the progress of revolution."

This made Étienne laugh, in spite of the cold shiver which passed over
his flesh. Besides, he willingly acknowledged that there was something
in these ideas, which attracted him by their fearful simplicity. Only
it would be playing into Rasseneur's hands if he were to repeat such
things to his comrades. It was necessary to be practical.

Widow Désir proposed that they should have lunch. They agreed, and
went into the inn parlour, which was separated from the ball-room on
weekdays by a movable partition. When they had finished their omelette
and cheese, the engine-man proposed to depart, and as the other tried
to detain him:

"What for? To listen to you talking useless foolery? I've seen enough
of it. Good day."

He went off in his gentle, obstinate way, with a cigarette between his
lips.

Étienne's anxiety increased. It was one o'clock, and Pluchart was
decidedly breaking his promise. Towards half-past one the delegates
began to appear, and he had to receive them, for he wished to see
who entered, for fear that the Company might send its usual spies.
He examined every letter of invitation, and took note of those who
entered; many came in without a letter, as they were admitted provided
he knew them. As two o'clock struck Rasseneur entered, finishing
his pipe at the counter, and chatting without haste. This provoking
calmness still further disturbed Étienne, all the more as many had come
merely for fun--Zacharie, Mouquet, and others. These cared little about
the strike, and found it a great joke to do nothing. Seated at tables,
and spending their last two sous on drink, they grinned and bantered
their mates, the serious ones, who had come to make fools of themselves.

Another quarter of an hour passed; there was impatience in the hall.
Then Étienne, in despair, made a gesture of resolution. And he decided
to enter, when Widow Désir, who was putting her head outside, exclaimed:

"But here he is, your gentleman!"

It was, in fact, Pluchart. He came in a cab drawn by a broken-winded
horse. He jumped at once on to the pavement, a thin, insipidly handsome
man, with a large square head;--in his black cloth frock-coat he had
the Sunday air of a well-to-do workman. For five years he had not done
a stroke with the file, and he took care of his appearance, especially
combing his hair in a correct manner, vain of his successes on the
platform; but his limbs were still stiff, and the nails of his large
hands, eaten by the iron, had not grown again. Very active, he worked
out his ambitions, scouring the province unceasingly in order to place
his ideas.

"Ah! don't be angry with me," he said, anticipating questions and
reproaches. "Yesterday, lecture at Preuilly in the morning, meeting in
the evening at Valencay. Today, lunch at Marchiennes with Sauvagnat.
Then I had to take a cab. I'm worn out; you can tell by my voice. But
that's nothing; I shall speak all the same."

He was on the threshold of the Bon-Joyeux, when he bethought himself.

"By jingo! I'm forgetting the tickets. We should have been in a fine
fix!"

He went back to the cab, which the cabman drew up again, and he pulled
out a little black wooden box, which he carried off under his arm.

Étienne walked radiantly in his shadow, while Rasseneur, in
consternation, did not dare to offer his hand. But the other was
already pressing it, and saying a rapid word or two about the letter.
What a rum idea! Why not hold this meeting? One should always hold a
meeting when possible. Widow Désir asked if he would take anything,
but he refused. No need; he spoke without drinking. Only he was in
a hurry, because in the evening he reckoned on pushing as far as
Joiselle, where he wished to come to an understanding with Legoujeux.
Then they all entered the ball-room together. Maheu and Levaque, who
had arrived late, followed them. The door was then locked, in order to
be in privacy. This made the jokers laugh even more, Zacharie shouting
to Mouquet that perhaps they were going to get them all with child in
there.

About a hundred miners were waiting on the benches in the close air of
the room, with the warm odours of the last ball rising from the floor.
Whispers ran round and all heads turned, while the new-comers sat down
in the empty places. They gazed at the Lille gentleman, and the black
frock-coat caused a certain surprise and discomfort.

But on Étienne's proposition the meeting was at once constituted. He
gave out the names, while the others approved by lifting their hands.
Pluchart was nominated chairman, and Maheu and Étienne himself were
voted stewards. There was a movement of chairs and the officers were
installed; for a moment they watched the chairman disappear beneath the
table under which he slid the box, which he had not let go. When he
reappeared he struck lightly with his fist to call for attention; then
he began in a hoarse voice:

"Citizens!"

A little door opened and he had to stop. It was Widow Désir who, coming
round by the kitchen, brought in six glasses on a tray.

"Don't put yourselves out," she said. "When one talks one gets thirsty."

Maheu relieved her of the tray and Pluchart was able to go on. He said
how very touched he was at his reception by the Montsou workers, he
excused himself for his delay, mentioning his fatigue and his sore
throat, then he gave place to Citizen Rasseneur, who wished to speak.

Rasseneur had already planted himself beside the table near the
glasses. The back of a chair served him as a rostrum. He seemed very
moved, and coughed before starting in a loud voice:

"Mates!"

What gave him his influence over the workers at the pit was the
facility of his speech, the good-natured way in which he could go
on talking to them by the hour without ever growing weary. He never
ventured to gesticulate, but stood stolid and smiling, drowning them
and dazing them, until they all shouted: "Yes, yes, that's true enough,
you're right!" However, on this day, from the first word, he felt that
there was a sullen opposition. This made him advance prudently. He
only discussed the continuation of the strike, and waited for applause
before attacking the International. Certainly honour prevented them
from yielding to the Company's demands; but how much misery! what
a terrible future if it was necessary to persist much longer! and
without declaring for submission he damped their courage, he showed
them the settlements dying of hunger, he asked on what resources the
partisans of resistance were counting. Three or four friends tried to
applaud him, but this accentuated the cold silence of the majority,
and the gradually rising disapprobation which greeted his phrases.
Then, despairing of winning them over, he was carried away by anger,
he foretold misfortune if they allowed their heads to be turned at
the instigation of strangers. Two-thirds of the audience had risen
indignantly, trying to silence him, since he insulted them by treating
them like children unable to act for themselves. But he went on
speaking in spite of the tumult, taking repeated gulps of beer, and
shouting violently that the man was not born who would prevent him from
doing his duty.

Pluchart had risen. As he had no bell he struck his fist on the table,
repeating in his hoarse voice:

"Citizens, citizens!"

At last he obtained a little quiet and the meeting, when consulted,
brought Rasseneur's speech to an end. The delegates who had represented
the pits in the interview with the manager led the others, all enraged
by starvation and agitated by new ideas. The voting was decided in
advance.

"You don't care a damn, you don't! you can eat!" yelled Levaque,
thrusting out his fist at Rasseneur.

Étienne leaned over behind the chairman's back to appease Maheu, who
was very red, and carried out of himself by this hypocritical discourse.

"Citizens!" said Pluchart, "allow me to speak!"

There was deep silence. He spoke. His voice sounded painful and hoarse;
but he was used to it on his journeys, and took his laryngitis about
with him like his programme. Gradually his voice expanded and he
produced pathetic effects with it. With open arms and accompanying his
periods with a swaying of his shoulders, he had an eloquence which
recalled the pulpit, a religious fashion of sinking the ends of his
sentences whose monotonous roll at last carried conviction.

His discourse centred on the greatness and the advantages of the
International; it was that with which he always started in every new
locality. He explained its aim, the emancipation of the workers; he
showed its imposing structure--below the commune, higher the province,
still higher the nation, and at the summit humanity. His arms moved
slowly, piling up the stages, preparing the immense cathedral of the
future world. Then there was the internal administration: he read the
statutes, spoke of the congresses, pointed out the growing importance
of the work, the enlargement of the programme, which, starting from the
discussion of wages, was now working towards a social liquidation, to
have done with the wage system. No more nationalities. The workers of
the whole world would be united by a common need for justice, sweeping
away the middle-class corruption, founding, at last, a free society,
in which he who did not work should not reap! He roared; his breath
startled the flowers of painted paper beneath the low smoky ceiling
which sent back the sound of his voice.

A wave passed through the audience. Some of them cried:

"That's it! We're with you."

He went on. The world would be conquered before three years. And he
enumerated the nations already conquered. From all sides adhesions were
raining in. Never had a young religion counted so many disciples. Then,
when they had the upper hand they would dictate terms to the masters,
who, in their turn, would have a fist at their throats.

"Yes, yes! they'll have to go down!"

With a gesture he enforced silence. Now he was entering on the strike
question. In principle he disapproved of strikes; it was a slow method,
which aggravated the sufferings of the worker. But before better things
arrived, and when they were inevitable, one must make up one's mind
to them, for they had the advantage of disorganizing capital. And in
this case he showed the International as providence for strikers, and
quoted examples: in Paris, during the strike of the bronze-workers, the
masters had granted everything at once, terrified at the news that the
International was sending help; in London it had saved the miners at a
colliery, by sending back, at its own expense, a ship-load of Belgians
who had been brought over by the coal-owner. It was sufficient to join
and the companies trembled, for the men entered the great army of
workers who were resolved to die for one another rather than to remain
the slaves of a capitalistic society.

Applause interrupted him. He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief,
at the same time refusing a glass which Maheu passed to him. When he
was about to continue fresh applause cut short his speech.

"It's all right," he said rapidly to Étienne. "They've had enough.
Quick! the cards!"

He had plunged beneath the table, and reappeared with the little black
wooden box.

"Citizens!" he shouted, dominating the disturbance, "here are the cards
of membership. Let your delegates come up, and I will give them to them
to be distributed. Later on we can arrange everything."

Rasseneur rushed forward and again protested. Étienne was also
agitated; having to make a speech. Extreme confusion followed. Levaque
jumped up with his fists out, as if to fight. Maheu was up and
speaking, but nobody could distinguish a single word. In the growing
tumult the dust rose from the floor, a floating dust of former balls,
poisoning the air with a strong odour of putters and trammers.

Suddenly the little door opened, and Widow Désir filled it with her
belly and breast, shouting in a thundering voice:

"For God's sake, silence! The gendarmes!"

It was the commissioner of the district, who had arrived rather late
to prepare a report and to break up the meeting. Four gendarmes
accompanied him. For five minutes the widow had delayed them at the
door, replying that she was at home, and that she had a perfect right
to entertain her friends. But they had hustled her away, and she had
rushed in to warn her children.

"Must clear out through here," she said again. "There's a dirty
gendarme guarding the court. It doesn't matter; my little wood-house
opens into the alley. Quick, then!" The commissioner was already
knocking with his fist, and as the door was not opened, he threatened
to force it. A spy must have talked, for he cried that the meeting was
illegal, a large number of miners being there without any letter of
invitation.

In the hall the trouble was growing. They could not escape thus; they
had not even voted either for adhesion or for the continuation of the
strike. All persisted in talking at the same time. At last the chairman
suggested a vote by acclamation. Arms were raised, and the delegates
declared hastily that they would join in the name of their absent
mates. And it was thus that the ten thousand colliers of Montsou became
members of the International. Meanwhile, the retreat began. In order to
cover it, Widow Désir had propped herself up against the door, which
the butt-ends of the gendarmes' muskets were forcing at her back. The
miners jumped over the benches, and escaped, one by one, through the
kitchen and the wood-yard. Rasseneur disappeared among the first, and
Levaque followed him, forgetful of his abuse, and planning how he could
get an offer of a glass to pull himself together. Étienne, after having
seized the little box, waited with Pluchart and Maheu, who considered
it a point of honour to emerge last. As they disappeared the lock gave,
and the commissioner found himself in the presence of the widow, whose
breast and belly still formed a barricade.

"It doesn't help you much to smash everything in my house," she said.
"You can see there's nobody here."

The commissioner, a slow man who did not care for scenes, simply
threatened to take her off to prison. And he then went away with his
four gendarmes to prepare a report, beneath the jeers of Zacharie and
Mouquet, who were full of admiration for the way in which their mates
had humbugged this armed force, for which they themselves did not care
a hang.

In the alley outside, Étienne, embarrassed by the box, was rushing
along, followed by the others. He suddenly thought of Pierron, and
asked why he had not turned up. Maheu, also running, replied that he
was ill--a convenient illness, the fear of compromising himself. They
wished to retain Pluchart, but, without stopping, he declared that
he must set out at once for Joiselle, where Legoujeux was awaiting
orders. Then, as they ran, they shouted out to him their wishes for a
pleasant journey, and rushed through Montsou with their heels in the
air. A few words were exchanged, broken by the panting of their chests.
Étienne and Maheu were laughing confidently, henceforth certain of
victory. When the International had sent help, it would be the Company
that would beg them to resume work. And in this burst of hope, in
this gallop of big boots sounding over the pavement of the streets,
there was something else also, something sombre and fierce, a gust of
violence which would inflame the settlements in the four corners of the
country.

CHAPTER V

Another fortnight had passed by. It was the beginning of January and
cold mists benumbed the immense plain. The misery had grown still
greater, and the settlements were in agony from hour to hour beneath
the increasing famine. Four thousand francs sent by the International
from London had scarcely supplied bread for three days, and then
nothing had come. This great dead hope was beating down their courage.
On what were they to count now since even their brothers had abandoned
them? They felt themselves separated from the world and lost in the
midst of this deep winter.

On Tuesday no resources were left in the Deux-Cent-Quarante
settlement. Étienne and the delegates had multiplied their energies.
New subscriptions were opened in the neighbouring towns, and even in
Paris; collections were made and lectures organized. These efforts
came to nothing. Public opinion, which had at first been moved, grew
indifferent now that the strike dragged on for ever, and so quietly,
without any dramatic incidents. Small charities scarcely sufficed to
maintain the poorer families. The others lived by pawning their clothes
and selling up the household piece by piece. Everything went to the
brokers, the wool of the mattresses, the kitchen utensils, even the
furniture. For a moment they thought themselves saved, for the small
retail shopkeepers of Montsou, killed out by Maigrat, had offered
credit to try and get back their custom; and for a week Verdonck, the
grocer, and the two bakers, Carouble and Smelten, kept open shop, but
when their advances were exhausted all three stopped. The bailiffs
were rejoicing; there only resulted a piling up of debts which would
for a long time weigh upon the miners. There was no more credit to be
had anywhere and not an old saucepan to sell; they might lie down in a
corner to die like mangy dogs.

Étienne would have sold his flesh. He had given up his salary and had
gone to Marchiennes to pawn his trousers and cloth coat, happy to set
the Maheus' pot boiling once more. His boots alone remained, and he
retained these to keep a firm foothold, he said. His grief was that
the strike had come on too early, before the Provident Fund had had
time to swell. He regarded this as the only cause of the disaster, for
the workers would surely triumph over the masters on the day when they
had saved enough money to resist. And he recalled Souvarine's words
accusing the Company of pushing forward the strike to destroy the fund
at the beginning.

The sight of the settlement and of these poor people without bread or
fire overcame him. He preferred to go out and to weary himself with
distant walks. One evening, as he was coming back and passing near
Réquillart, he perceived an old woman who had fainted by the roadside.
No doubt she was dying of hunger; and having raised her he began to
shout to a girl whom he saw on the other side of the paling.

"Why! is it you?" he said, recognizing Mouquette. "Come and help me
then, we must give her something to drink."

Mouquette, moved to tears, quickly went into the shaky hovel which her
father had set up in the midst of the ruins. She came back at once with
gin and a loaf. The gin revived the old woman, who without speaking bit
greedily into the bread. She was the mother of a miner who lived at a
settlement on the Cougny side, and she had fallen there on returning
from Joiselle, where she had in vain attempted to borrow half a franc
from a sister. When she had eaten she went away dazed.

Étienne stood in the open field of Réquillart, where the crumbling
sheds were disappearing beneath the brambles.

"Well, won't you come in and drink a little glass?" asked Mouquette
merrily.

And as he hesitated:

"Then you're still afraid of me?"

He followed her, won by her laughter. This bread, which she had given
so willingly, moved him. She would not take him into her father's room,
but led him into her own room, where she at once poured out two little
glasses of gin. The room was very neat and he complimented her on it.
Besides, the family seemed to want for nothing; the father continued
his duties as a groom at the Voreux while she, saying that she could
not live with folded arms, had become a laundress, which brought her in
thirty sous a day. One may amuse oneself with men but one isn't lazy
for all that.

"I say," she murmured, all at once coming and putting her arms round
him prettily, "why don't you like me?"

He could not help laughing, she had done this in so charming a way.

"But I like you very much," he replied.

"No, no, not like I mean. You know that I am dying of longing. Come, it
would give me so much pleasure."

It was true, she had desired him for six months. He still looked at her
as she clung to him, pressing him with her two tremulous arms, her face
raised with such supplicating love that he was deeply moved. There was
nothing beautiful in her large round face, with its yellow complexion
eaten by the coal; but her eyes shone with flame, a charm rose from
her skin, a trembling of desire which made her rosy and young. In face
of this gift which was so humble and so ardent he no longer dared to
refuse.

"Oh! you are willing," she stammered, delighted. "Oh! you are willing!"

And she gave herself up with the fainting awkwardness of a virgin, as
if it was for the first time, and she had never before known a man.
Then when he left her, it was she who was overcome with gratitude; she
thanked him and kissed his hands.

Étienne remained rather ashamed of this good fortune. Nobody boasted
of having had Mouquette. As he went away he swore that it should not
occur again, but he preserved a friendly remembrance of her; she was a
capital girl.

When he got back to the settlement, he found serious news which made
him forget the adventure. The rumour was circulating that the Company
would, perhaps, agree to make a concession if the delegates made
a fresh attempt with the manager. At all events some captains had
spread this rumour. The truth was, that in this struggle the mine
was suffering even more than the miners. On both sides obstinacy was
piling up ruin: while labour was dying of hunger, capital was being
destroyed. Every day of rest carried away hundreds of thousands of
francs. Every machine which stops is a dead machine. Tools and material
are impaired, the money that is sunk melts away like water drunk by
the sand. Since the small stock of coal at the surface of the pits was
exhausted, customers talked of going to Belgium, so that in future they
would be threatened from that quarter. But what especially frightened
the Company, although the matter was carefully concealed, was the
increasing damage to the galleries and workings. The captains could
not cope with the repairs, the timber was falling everywhere, and
landslips were constantly taking place. Soon the disasters became so
serious that long months would be needed for repairs before hewing
could be resumed. Already stories were going about the country: at
Crévecoeur three hundred metres of road had subsided in a mass,
stopping up access to the Cinq-Paumes; at Madeleine the Maugrétout seam
was crumbling away and filling with water. The management refused to
admit this, but suddenly two accidents, one after the other, had forced
them to avow it. One morning, near Piolaine, the ground was found
cracked above the north gallery of Mirou which had fallen in the day
before; and on the following day the ground subsided within the Voreux,
shaking a corner of a suburb to such an extent that two houses nearly
disappeared.

Étienne and the delegates hesitated to risk any steps without knowing
the directors' intentions. Dansaert, whom they questioned, avoided
replying: certainly, the misunderstanding was deplored, and everything
would be done to bring about an agreement; but he could say nothing
definitely. At last, they decided that they would go to M. Hennebeau
in order to have reason on their side; for they did not wish to be
accused, later on, of having refused the Company an opportunity of
acknowledging that it had been in the wrong. Only they vowed to yield
nothing and to maintain, in spite of everything, their terms, which
were alone just.

The interview took place on Tuesday morning, when the settlement was
sinking into desperate wretchedness. It was less cordial than the
first interview. Maheu was still the speaker, and he explained that
their mates had sent them to ask if these gentlemen had anything new
to say. At first M. Hennebeau affected surprise: no order had reached
him, nothing could be changed so long as the miners persisted in their
detestable rebellion; and this official stiffness produced the worst
effects, so that if the delegates had gone out of their way to offer
conciliation, the way in which they were received would only have
served to make them more obstinate. Afterwards the manager tried to
seek a basis of mutual concession; thus, if the men would accept the
separate payment for timbering, the Company would raise that payment
by the two centimes which they were accused of profiting by. Besides,
he added that he would take the offer on himself, that nothing was
settled, but that he flattered himself he could obtain this concession
from Paris. But the delegates refused, and repeated their demands: the
retention of the old system, with a rise of five centimes a tram. Then
he acknowledged that he could treat with them at once, and urged them
to accept in the name of their wives and little ones dying of hunger.
And with eyes on the ground and stiff heads they said no, always no,
with fierce vigour. They separated curtly. M. Hennebeau banged the
doors. Étienne, Maheu, and the others went off stamping with their
great heels on the pavement in the mute rage of the vanquished pushed
to extremes.

Towards two o'clock the women of the settlement, on their side, made
an application to Maigrat. There was only this hope left, to bend this
man and to wrench from him another week's credit. The idea originated
with Maheude, who often counted too much on people's good-nature. She
persuaded the Brulé and the Levaque to accompany her; as to Pierronne,
she excused herself, saying that she could not leave Pierron, whose
illness still continued. Other women joined the band till they numbered
quite twenty. When the inhabitants of Montsou saw them arrive, gloomy
and wretched, occupying the whole width of the road, they shook their
heads anxiously. Doors were closed, and one lady hid her plate. It was
the first time they had been seen thus, and there could not be a worse
sign: usually everything was going to ruin when the women thus took to
the roads. At Maigrat's there was a violent scene. At first, he had
made them go in, jeering and pretending to believe that they had come
to pay their debts: that was nice of them to have agreed to come and
bring the money all at once. Then, as soon as Maheude began to speak he
pretended to be enraged. Were they making fun of people? More credit!
Then they wanted to turn him into the street? No, not a single potato,
not a single crumb of bread! And he told them to be off to the grocer
Verdonck, and to the bakers Carouble and Smelten, since they now dealt
with them. The women listened with timid humility, apologizing, and
watching his eyes to see if he would relent. He began to joke, offering
his shop to the Brulé if she would have him as a lover. They were all
so cowardly that they laughed at this; and the Levaque improved on it,
declaring that she was willing, she was. But he at once became abusive,
and pushed them towards the door. As they insisted, suppliantly, he
treated one brutally. The others on the pavement shouted that he had
sold himself to the Company, while Maheude, with her arms in the air,
in a burst of avenging indignation, cried out for his death, exclaiming
that such a man did not deserve to eat.

The return to the settlement was melancholy. When the women came back
with empty hands, the men looked at them and then lowered their heads.
There was nothing more to be done, the day would end without a spoonful
of soup; and the other days extended in an icy shadow, without a ray
of hope. They had made up their minds to it, and no one spoke of
surrender. This excess of misery made them still more obstinate, mute
as tracked beasts, resolved to die at the bottom of their hole rather
than come out. Who would dare to be first to speak of submission?
They had sworn with their mates to hold together, and hold together
they would, as they held together at the pit when one of them was
beneath a landslip. It was as it ought to be; it was a good school
for resignation down there. They might well tighten their belts for
a week, when they had been swallowing fire and water ever since they
were twelve years of age; and their devotion was thus augmented by the
pride of soldiers, of men proud of their profession, who in their daily
struggle with death had gained a pride in sacrifice.

With the Maheus it was a terrible evening. They were all silent, seated
before the dying fire in which the last cinders were smoking. After
having emptied the mattresses, handful by handful, they had decided
the day before to sell the clock for three francs and the room seemed
bare and dead now that the familiar tick-tack no longer filled it with
sound. The only object of luxury now, in the middle of the sideboard,
was the rose cardboard box, an old present from Maheu, which Maheude
treasured like a jewel. The two good chairs had gone; Father Bonnemort
and the children were squeezed together on an old mossy bench brought
in from the garden. And the livid twilight now coming on seemed to
increase the cold.

"What's to be done?" repeated Maheude, crouching down in the corner by
the oven.

Étienne stood up, looking at the portraits of the Emperor and Empress
stuck against the wall. He would have torn them down long since if
the family had not preserved them for ornament. So he murmured, with
clenched teeth:

"And to think that we can't get two sous out of these damned idiots,
who are watching us starve!"

"If I were to take the box?" said the woman, very pale, after some
hesitation.

Maheu, seated on the edge of the table, with his legs dangling and his
head on his chest, sat up.

"No! I won't have it!"

Maheude painfully rose and walked round the room. Good God! was it
possible that they were reduced to such misery? The cupboard without
a crumb, nothing more to sell, no notion where to get a loaf! And the
fire, which was nearly out! She became angry with Alzire, whom she had
sent in the morning to glean on the pit-bank, and who had come back
with empty hands, saying that the Company would not allow gleaning. Did
it matter a hang what the Company wanted? As if they were robbing any
one by picking up the bits of lost coal! The little girl, in despair,
told how a man had threatened to hit her; then she promised to go back
next day, even if she was beaten.

"And that imp, Jeanlin," cried the mother; "where is he now, I should
like to know? He ought to have brought the salad; we can browse on
that like beasts, at all events! You will see, he won't come back.
Yesterday, too, he slept out. I don't know what he's up to; the rascal
always looks as though his belly were full."

"Perhaps," said Étienne, "he picks up sous on the road."

She suddenly lifted both fists furiously.

"If I knew that! My children beg! I'd rather kill them and myself too."

Maheu had again sunk down on the edge of the table. Lénore and Henri,
astonished that they had nothing to eat, began to moan; while old
Bonnemort, in silence, philosophically rolled his tongue in his mouth
to deceive his hunger. No one spoke any more; all were becoming
benumbed beneath this aggravation of their evils; the grandfather,
coughing and spitting out the black phlegm, taken again by rheumatism
which was turning to dropsy; the father asthmatic, and with knees
swollen with water; the mother and the little ones scarred by scrofula
and hereditary anaemia. No doubt their work made this inevitable; they
only complained when the lack of food killed them off; and already they
were falling like flies in the settlement. But something must be found
for supper. My God! where was it to be found, what was to be done?

Then, in the twilight, which made the room more and more gloomy with
its dark melancholy, Étienne, who had been hesitating for a moment, at
last decided with aching heart.

"Wait for me," he said. "I'll go and see somewhere."

And he went out. The idea of Mouquette had occurred to him. She would
certainly have a loaf, and would give it willingly. It annoyed him to
be thus forced to return to Réquillart; this girl would kiss his hands
with her air of an amorous servant; but one did not leave one's friends
in trouble; he would still be kind with her if need be.

"I will go and look round, too," said Maheude, in her turn. "It's too
stupid."

She reopened the door after the young man and closed it violently,
leaving the others motionless and mute in the faint light of a
candle-end which Alzire had just lighted. Outside she stopped and
thought for a moment. Then she entered the Levaque's house.

"Tell me: I lent you a loaf the other day. Could you give it me back?"

But she stopped herself. What she saw was far from encouraging; the
house spoke of misery even more than her own.

The Levaque woman, with fixed eyes, was gazing into her burnt-out fire,
while Levaque, made drunk on his empty stomach by some nail-makers,
was sleeping on the table. With his back to the wall, Bouteloup was
mechanically rubbing his shoulders with the amazement of a good-natured
fellow who has eaten up his savings, and is astonished at having to
tighten his belt.

"A loaf! ah! my dear," replied the Levaque woman, "I wanted to borrow
another from you!"

Then, as her husband groaned with pain in his sleep, she pushed his
face against the table.

"Hold your row, bloody beast! So much the better if it burns your guts!
Instead of getting people to pay for your drinks, you ought to have
asked twenty sous from a friend."

She went on relieving herself by swearing, in the midst of this dirty
household, already abandoned so long that an unbearable smell was
exhaling from the floor. Everything might smash up, she didn't care a
hang! Her son, that rascal Bébert, had also disappeared since morning,
and she shouted that it would be a good riddance if he never came back.
Then she said that she would go to bed. At least she could get warm.
She hustled Bouteloup.

"Come along, up we go. The fire's out. No need to light the candle to
see the empty plates. Well, are you coming, Louis? I tell you that we
must go to bed. We can cuddle up together there, that's a comfort. And
let this damned drunkard die here of cold by himself!"

When she found herself outside again, Maheude struck resolutely across
the gardens towards Pierron's house. She heard laughter. As she knocked
there was sudden silence. It was a full minute before the door was
opened.

"What! is it you?" exclaimed Pierronne with affected surprise. "I
thought it was the doctor."

Without allowing her to speak, she went on, pointing to Pierron, who
was seated before a large coal fire:

"Ah! he makes no progress, he makes no progress at all. His face looks
all right; it's in his belly that it takes him. Then he must have
warmth. We burn all that we've got."

Pierron, in fact, looked very well; his complexion was good and his
flesh fat. It was in vain that he breathed hard in order to play the
sick man. Besides, as Maheude came in she perceived a strong smell
of rabbit; they had certainly put the dish out of the way. There
were crumbs strewed over the table, and in the very midst she saw a
forgotten bottle of wine.

"Mother has gone to Montsou to try and get a loaf," said Pierronne
again. "We are cooling our heels waiting for her."

But her voice choked; she had followed her neighbour's glance, and
her eyes also fell on the bottle. Immediately she began again, and
narrated the story. Yes, it was wine; the Piolaine people had brought
her that bottle for her man, who had been ordered by the doctor to take
claret. And her thankfulness poured forth in a stream. What good people
they were! The young lady especially; she was not proud, going into
workpeople's houses and distributing her charities herself.

"I see," said Maheude; "I know them."

Her heart ached at the idea that the good things always go to the least
poor. It was always so, and these Piolaine people had carried water to
the river. Why had she not seen them in the settlement? Perhaps, all
the same, she might have got something out of them.

"I came," she confessed at last, "to know if there was more going with
you than with us. Have you just a little vermicelli by way of loan?"

Pierronne expressed her grief noisily.

"Nothing at all, my dear. Not what you can call a grain of semolina. If
mother hasn't come back, it's because she hasn't succeeded. We must go
to bed supperless."

At this moment crying was heard from the cellar, and she grew angry and
struck her fist against the door. It was that gadabout Lydie, whom she
had shut up, she said, to punish her for not having returned until five
o'clock, after having been roaming about the whole day. One could no
longer keep her in order; she was constantly disappearing.

Maheude, however, remained standing; she could not make up her mind to
leave. This large fire filled her with a painful sensation of comfort;
the thought that they were eating there enlarged the void in her
stomach. Evidently they had sent away the old woman and shut up the
child, to blow themselves out with their rabbit. Ah! whatever people
might say, when a woman behaved ill, that brought luck to her house.

"Good night," she said, suddenly.

Outside night had come on, and the moon behind the clouds was lighting
up the earth with a dubious glow. Instead of traversing the gardens
again, Maheude went round, despairing, afraid to go home again.
But along the dead frontages all the doors smelled of famine and
sounded hollow. What was the good of knocking? There was wretchedness
everywhere. For weeks since they had had nothing to eat. Even the odour
of onion had gone, that strong odour which revealed the settlement from
afar across the country; now there was nothing but the smell of old
vaults, the dampness of holes in which nothing lives. Vague sounds were
dying out, stifled tears, lost oaths; and in the silence which slowly
grew heavier one could hear the sleep of hunger coming on, the collapse
of bodies thrown across beds in the nightmares of empty bellies.

As she passed before the church she saw a shadow slip rapidly by. A
gleam of hope made her hasten, for she had recognized the Montsou
priest, Abbé Joire, who said mass on Sundays at the settlement chapel.
No doubt he had just come out of the sacristy, where he had been called
to settle some affair. With rounded back he moved quickly on, a fat
meek man, anxious to live at peace with everybody. If he had come at
night it must have been in order not to compromise himself among the
miners. It was said, too, that he had just obtained promotion. He had
even been seen walking about with his successor, a lean man, with eyes
like live coals.

"Sir, sir!" stammered Maheude.

But he would not stop.

"Good night, good night, my good woman."

She found herself before her own door. Her legs would no longer carry
her, and she went in.

No one had stirred. Maheu still sat dejected on the edge of the table.
Old Bonnemort and the little ones were huddled together on the bench
for the sake of warmth. And they had not said a word, and the candle
had burnt so low that even light would soon fail them. At the sound of
the door the children turned their heads; but seeing that their mother
brought nothing back, they looked down on the ground again, repressing
the longing to cry, for fear of being scolded. Maheude fell back into
her place near the dying fire. They asked her no questions, and the
silence continued. All had understood, and they thought it useless to
weary themselves more by talking; they were now waiting, despairing and
without courage, in the last expectation that perhaps Étienne would
unearth help somewhere. The minutes went by, and at last they no longer
reckoned on this.

When Étienne reappeared, he held a cloth containing a dozen potatoes,
cooked but cold.

"That's all that I've found," he said.

With Mouquette also bread was wanting; it was her dinner which she had
forced him to take in this cloth, kissing him with all her heart.

"Thanks," he said to Maheude, who offered him his share; "I've eaten
over there."

It was not true, and he gloomily watched the children throw themselves
on the food. The father and mother also restrained themselves, in order
to leave more; but the old man greedily swallowed everything. They had
to take a potato away from him for Alzire.

Then Étienne said that he had heard news. The Company, irritated by the
obstinacy of the strikers, talked of giving back their certificates
to the compromised miners. Certainly, the Company was for war. And a
more serious rumour circulated: they boasted of having persuaded a
large number of men to go down again. On the next day the Victoire and
Feutry-Cantel would be complete; even at Madeleine and Mirou there
would be a third of the men. The Maheus were furious.

"By God!" shouted the father, "if there are traitors, we must settle
their account."

And standing up, yielding to the fury of his suffering:

"To-morrow evening, to the forest! Since they won't let us come to an
understanding at the Bon-Joyeux, we can be at home in the forest!"

This cry had aroused old Bonnemort, who had grown drowsy after his
gluttony. It was the old rallying-cry, the rendezvous where the miners
of old days used to plot their resistance to the king's soldiers.

"Yes, yes, to Vandame! I'm with you if you go there!"

Maheude made an energetic gesture.

"We will all go. That will finish these injustices and treacheries."

Étienne decided that the rendezvous should be announced to all the
settlements for the following evening. But the fire was dead, as with
the Levaques, and the candle suddenly went out. There was no more coal
and no more oil; they had to feel their way to bed in the intense cold
which contracted the skin. The little ones were crying.

CHAPTER VI

Jeanlin was now well and able to walk; but his legs had united so badly
that he limped on both the right and left sides, and moved with the
gait of a duck, though running as fast as formerly with the skill of a
mischievous and thieving animal.

On this evening, in the dusk on the Réquillart road, Jeanlin,
accompanied by his inseparable friends, Bébert and Lydie, was on the
watch. He had taken ambush in a vacant space, behind a paling opposite
an obscure grocery shop, situated at the corner of a lane. An old woman
who was nearly blind displayed there three or four sacks of lentils
and haricots, black with dust; and it was an ancient dried codfish,
hanging by the door and stained with fly-blows, to which his eyes were
directed. Twice already he had sent Bébert to unhook it. But each time
someone had appeared at the bend in the road. Always intruders in the
way, one could not attend to one's affairs.

A gentleman went by on horseback, and the children flattened themselves
at the bottom of the paling, for they recognized M. Hennebeau. Since
the strike he was often thus seen along the roads, riding alone amid
the rebellious settlements, ascertaining, with quiet courage, the
condition of the country. And never had a stone whistled by his ears;
he only met men who were silent and slow to salute him; most often he
came upon lovers, who cared nothing for politics and took their fill
of pleasure in holes and corners. He passed by on his trotting mare
with head directed straight forward, so as to disturb nobody, while his
heart was swelling with an unappeased desire amid this gormandizing of
free love. He distinctly saw these small rascals, the little boys on
the little girl in a heap. Even the youngsters were already amusing
themselves in their misery! His eyes grew moist, and he disappeared,
sitting stiffly on his saddle, with his frock-coat buttoned up in a
military manner.

"Damned luck!" said Jeanlin. "This will never finish. Go on, Bébert!
Hang on to its tail!"

But two men once more appeared, and the child again stifled an oath
when he heard the voice of his brother Zacharie narrating to Mouquet
how he had discovered a two-franc piece sewn into one of his wife's
petticoats. They both grinned with satisfaction, slapping each other on
the shoulder. Mouquet proposed a game of crosse for the next day; they
would leave the Avantage at two o'clock, and go to the Montoire side,
near Marchiennes. Zacharie agreed. What was the good of bothering over
the strike? as well amuse oneself, since there's nothing to do. And
they turned the corner of the road, when Étienne, who was coming along
the canal, stopped them and began to talk.

"Are they going to bed here?" said Jeanlin, in exasperation. "Nearly
night; the old woman will be taking in her sacks."

Another miner came down towards Réquillart. Étienne went off with him,
and as they passed the paling the child heard them speak of the forest;
they had been obliged to put off the rendezvous to the following
day, for fear of not being able to announce it in one day to all the
settlements.

"I say, there," he whispered to his two mates, "the big affair is for
to-morrow. We'll go, eh? We can get off in the afternoon."

And the road being at last free, he sent Bébert off.

"Courage! hang on to its tail. And look out! the old woman's got her
broom."

Fortunately the night had grown dark. Bébert, with a leap, hung on to
the cod so that the string broke. He ran away, waving it like a kite,
followed by the two others, all three galloping. The woman came out
of her shop in astonishment, without understanding or being able to
distinguish this band now lost in the darkness.

These scoundrels had become the terror of the country. They gradually
spread themselves over it like a horde of savages. At first they had
been satisfied with the yard at the Voreux, tumbling into the stock of
coal, from which they would emerge looking like Negroes, playing at
hide-and-seek amid the supply of wood, in which they lost themselves
as in the depths of a virgin forest. Then they had taken the pit-bank
by assault; they would seat themselves on it and slide down the bare
portions still boiling with interior fires; they glided among the
briers in the older parts, hiding for the whole day, occupied in the
quiet little games of mischievous mice. And they were constantly
enlarging their conquests, scuffling among the piles of bricks until
blood came, running about the fields and eating without bread all sorts
of milky herbs, searching the banks of the canals to take fish from the
mud and swallow them raw and pushing still farther, they travelled for
kilometres as far as the thickets of Vandame, under which they gorged
themselves with strawberries in the spring, with nuts and bilberries in
summer. Soon the immense plain belonged to them.

What drove them thus from Montsou to Marchiennes, constantly on the
roads with the eyes of young wolves, was the growing love of plunder.
Jeanlin remained the captain of these expeditions, leading the troop
on to all sorts of prey, ravaging the onion fields, pillaging the
orchards, attacking shop windows. In the country, people accused the
miners on strike, and talked of a vast organized band. One day, even,
he had forced Lydie to steal from her mother, and made her bring him
two dozen sticks of barley-sugar, which Pierronne kept in a bottle
on one of the boards in her window; and the little girl, who was
well beaten, had not betrayed him because she trembled so before his
authority. The worst was that he always gave himself the lion's share.
Bébert also had to bring him the booty, happy if the captain did not
hit him and keep it all.

For some time Jeanlin had abused his authority. He would beat Lydie as
one beats one's lawful wife, and he profited by Bébert's credulity to
send him on unpleasant adventures, amused at making a fool of this big
boy, who was stronger than himself, and could have knocked him over
with a blow of his fist. He felt contempt for both of them and treated
them as slaves, telling them that he had a princess for his mistress
and that they were unworthy to appear before her. And, in fact, during
the past week he would suddenly disappear at the end of a road or a
turning in a path, no matter where it might be, after having ordered
them with a terrible air to go back to the settlement. But first he
would pocket the booty.

This was what happened on the present occasion.

"Give it up," he said, snatching the cod from his mate's hands when
they stopped, all three, at a bend in the road near Réquillart.

Bébert protested.

"I want some, you know. I took it."

"Eh! what!" he cried. "You'll have some if I give you some. Not
to-night, sure enough; to-morrow, if there's any left."

He pushed Lydie, and placed both of them in line like soldiers
shouldering arms. Then, passing behind them:

"Now, you must stay there five minutes without turning. By God! if you
do turn, there will be beasts that will eat you up. And then you will
go straight back, and if Bébert touches Lydie on the way, I shall know
it and I shall hit you."

Then he disappeared in the shadow, so lightly that the sound of his
naked feet could not be heard. The two children remained motionless
for the five minutes without looking round, for fear of receiving a
blow from the invisible. Slowly a great affection had grown up between
them in their common terror. He was always thinking of taking her and
pressing her very tight between his arms, as he had seen others do and
she, too, would have liked it, for it would have been a change for
her to be so nicely caressed. But neither of them would have allowed
themselves to disobey. When they went away, although the night was very
dark, they did not even kiss each other; they walked side by side,
tender and despairing, certain that if they touched one another the
captain would strike them from behind.

Étienne, at the same hour, had entered Réquillart. The evening before
Mouquette had begged him to return, and he returned, ashamed, feeling
an inclination which he refused to acknowledge, for this girl who
adored him like a Christ. It was, besides, with the intention of
breaking it off. He would see her, he would explain to her that she
ought no longer to pursue him, on account of the mates. It was not a
time for pleasure; it was dishonest to amuse oneself thus when people
were dying of hunger. And not having found her at home, he had decided
to wait and watch the shadows of the passers-by.

Beneath the ruined steeple the old shaft opened, half blocked up.
Above the black hole a beam stood erect, and with a fragment of roof
at the top it had the profile of a gallows; in the broken walling of
the curbs stood two trees--a mountain ash and a plane--which seemed
to grow from the depths of the earth. It was a corner of abandoned
wildness, the grassy and fibrous entry of a gulf, embarrassed with old
wood, planted with hawthorns and sloe-trees, which were peopled in the
spring by warblers in their nests. Wishing to avoid the great expense
of keeping it up, the Company, for the last ten years, had proposed to
fill up this dead pit; but they were waiting to install an air-shaft
in the Voreux, for the ventilation furnace of the two pits, which
communicated, was placed at the foot of Réquillart, of which the former
winding-shaft served as a conduit. They were content to consolidate the
tubbing by beams placed across, preventing extraction, and they had
neglected the upper galleries to watch only over the lower gallery, in
which blazed the furnace, the enormous coal fire, with so powerful a
draught that the rush of air produced the wind of a tempest from one
end to the other of the neighbouring mine. As a precaution, in order
that they could still go up and down, the order had been given to
furnish the shaft with ladders; only, as no one took charge of them,
the ladders were rotting with dampness, and in some places had already
given way. Above, a large brier stopped the entry of the passage, and,
as the first ladder had lost some rungs, it was necessary, in order to
reach it, to hang on to a root of the mountain ash, and then to take
one's chance and drop into the blackness.

Étienne was waiting patiently, hidden behind a bush, when he heard a
long rustling among the branches. He thought at first that it was the
scared flight of a snake. But the sudden gleam of a match astonished
him, and he was stupefied on recognizing Jeanlin, who was lighting a
candle and burying himself in the earth. He was seized with curiosity,
and approached the hole; the child had disappeared, and a faint gleam
came from the second ladder. Étienne hesitated a moment, and then let
himself go, holding on to the roots. He thought for a moment that he
was about to fall down the whole five hundred and eighty metres of
the mine, but at last he felt a rung, and descended gently. Jeanlin
had evidently heard nothing. Étienne constantly saw the light sinking
beneath him, while the little one's shadow, colossal and disturbing,
danced with the deformed gait of his distorted limbs. He kicked his
legs about with the skill of a monkey, catching on with hands, feet,
or chin where the rungs were wanting. Ladders, seven metres in length,
followed one another, some still firm, others shaky, yielding and
almost broken; the steps were narrow and green, so rotten that one
seemed to walk in moss; and as one went down the heat grew suffocating,
the heat of an oven proceeding from the air-shaft which was,
fortunately, not very active now the strike was on, or when the furnace
devoured its five thousand kilograms of coal a day, one could not have
risked oneself here without scorching one's hair.

"What a dammed little toad!" exclaimed Étienne in a stifled voice;
"where the devil is he going to?"

Twice he had nearly fallen. His feet slid on the damp wood. If he had
only had a candle like the child! but he struck himself every minute;
he was only guided by the vague gleam that fled beneath him. He had
already reached the twentieth ladder, and the descent still continued.
Then he counted them: twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, and he
still went down and down. His head seemed to be swelling with the heat,
and he thought that he was falling into a furnace. At last he reached a
landing-place, and he saw the candle going off along a gallery. Thirty
ladders, that made about two hundred and ten metres.

"Is he going to drag me about long?" he thought. "He must be going to
bury himself in the stable."

But on the left, the path which led to the stable was closed by a
landslip. The journey began again, now more painful and more dangerous.
Frightened bats flew about and clung to the roof of the gallery. He
had to hasten so as not to lose sight of the light; only where the
child passed with ease, with the suppleness of a serpent, he could
not glide through without bruising his limbs. This gallery, like all
the older passages, was narrow, and grew narrower every day from the
constant fall of soil; at certain places it was a mere tube which would
eventually be effaced. In this strangling labour the torn and broken
wood became a peril, threatening to saw into his flesh, or to run him
through with the points of splinters, sharp as swords. He could only
advance with precaution, on his knees or belly, feeling in the darkness
before him. Suddenly a band of rats stamped over him, running from his
neck to his feet in their galloping flight.