Part + 

IV + 

I + 

On that Monday the Hennebeaus had invited the Grégoires and their daughter Cécile to lunch. They had formed their plans: on rising from table, Paul Négrel was to take the ladies to a mine, Saint-Thomas, which had been luxuriously reinstalled. But this was only an amiable pretext; this party was an invention of Madame Hennebeau’s to hasten the marriage of Cécile and Paul. + 

Suddenly, on this very Monday, at four o’clock in the morning, the strike broke out. When, on the first of December, the Company had adopted the new wage system, the miners remained calm. At the end of the fortnight not one made the least protest on payday. Everybody, from the manager down to the last overseer, considered the tariff as accepted; and great was their surprise in the morning at this declaration of war, made with a tactical unity which seemed to indicate energetic leadership. + 

At five o’clock Dansaert woke M. Hennebeau to inform him that not a single man had gone down at the Voreux. The settlement of the Deux-Cent-Quarante, which he had passed through, was sleeping deeply, with closed windows and doors. And as soon as the manager had jumped out of bed, his eyes still swollen with sleep, he was overwhelmed. Every quarter of an hour messengers came in, and dispatches fell on his desk as thick as hail. At first he hoped that the revolt was limited to the Voreux; but the news became more serious every minute. There was the Mirou, the Crévecœur, the Madeleine, where only the grooms had appeared; the Victoire and Feutry-Cantel, the two best disciplined pits, where the men had been reduced by a third; Saint-Thomas alone numbered all its people, and seemed to be outside the movement. Up to nine o’clock he dictated dispatches, telegraphing in all directions, to the prefect of Lille, to the directors of the Company, warning the authorities and asking for orders. He had sent Négrel to go round the neighbouring pits to obtain precise information. + 

Suddenly M. Hennebeau recollected the lunch; and he was about to send the coachman to tell the Grégoires that the party had been put off, when a certain hesitation and lack of will stopped him⁠—the man who in a few brief phrases had just made military preparations for a field of battle. He went up to Madame Hennebeau, whose hair had just been done by her lady’s maid, in her dressing-room. + 

“Ah! they are on strike,” she said quietly, when he had told her. “Well, what has that to do with us? We are not going to leave off eating, I suppose?” + 

And she was obstinate; it was vain to tell her that the lunch would be disturbed, and that the visit to Saint-Thomas could not take place. She found an answer to everything. Why lose a lunch that was already cooking? And as to visiting the pit, they could give that up afterwards if the walk was really imprudent. + 

“Besides,” she added, when the maid had gone out, “you know that I am anxious to receive these good people. This marriage ought to affect you more than the follies of your men. I want to have it, don’t contradict me.” + 

He looked at her, agitated by a slight trembling, and the hard firm face of the man of discipline expressed the secret grief of a wounded heart. She had remained with naked shoulders, already over-mature, but still imposing and desirable, with the broad bust of a Ceres gilded by the autumn. For a moment he felt a brutal desire to seize her, and to roll his head between the breasts she was exposing in this warm room, which exhibited the private luxury of a sensual woman and had about it an irritating perfume of musk, but he recoiled; for ten years they had occupied separate rooms. + 

“Good!” he said, leaving her. “Do not make any alterations.” + 

M. Hennebeau had been born in the Ardennes. In his early life he had undergone the hardships of a poor boy thrown as an orphan on the Paris streets. After having painfully followed the courses of the École des Mines, at the age of twenty-four he had gone to the Grand’ Combe as engineer to the Sainte-Barbe mine. Three years later he became divisional engineer in the Pas-de-Calais, at the Marles mines. It was there that he married, wedding, by one of those strokes of fortune which are the rule among the Corps des Mines, the daughter of the rich owner of a spinning factory at Arras. For fifteen years they lived in the same small provincial town, and no event broke the monotony of existence, not even the birth of a child. An increasing irritation detached Madame Hennebeau, who had been brought up to respect money, and was disdainful of this husband who gained a small salary with such difficulty, and who enabled her to gratify none of the satisfactions of vanity which she had dreamed of at school. He was a man of strict honesty, who never speculated, but stood at his post like a soldier. The lack of harmony had only increased, aggravated by one of those curious misunderstandings of the flesh which freeze the most ardent; he adored his wife, she had the sensuality of a greedy blonde, and already they slept apart, ill at ease and wounded. From that time she had a lover of whom he was ignorant. At last he left the Pas-de-Calais to occupy a situation in an office at Paris, with the idea that she would be grateful to him. But Paris only completed their separation, that Paris which she had desired since her first doll, and where she washed away her provincialism in a week, becoming a woman of fashion at once, and throwing herself into all the luxurious follies of the period. The ten years which she spent there were filled by a great passion, a public intrigue with a man whose desertion nearly killed her. This time the husband had not been able to keep his ignorance, and after some abominable scenes he resigned himself, disarmed by the quiet unconsciousness of this woman who took her happiness where she found it. It was after the rupture, and when he saw that she was ill with grief, that he had accepted the management of the Montsou mines, still hoping also that she would reform down there in that desolate black country. + 

The Hennebeaus, since they had lived at Montsou, returned to the irritated boredom of their early married days. At first she seemed consoled by the great quiet, soothed by the flat monotony of the immense plain; she buried herself in it as a woman who has done with the world; she affected a dead heart, so detached from life that she did not even mind growing stout. Then, beneath this indifference a final fever declared itself, the need to live once more, and she deluded herself for six months by organizing and furnishing to her taste the little villa belonging to the management. She said it was frightful, and filled it with upholstery, bric-a-brac, and all sorts of artistic luxuries which were talked of as far as Lille. Now the country exasperated her, those stupid fields spread out to infinity, those eternal black roads without a tree, swarming with a horrid population which disgusted and frightened her. Complaints of exile began; she accused her husband of having sacrificed her to a salary of forty thousand francs, a trifle which hardly sufficed to keep the house up. Why could he not imitate others, demand a part for himself, obtain shares, succeed in something at last? And she insisted with the cruelty of an heiress who had brought her own fortune. He, always restrained, and taking refuge in the deceptive coldness of a man of business, was torn by desire for this creature, one of those late desires which are so violent and which increase with age. He had never possessed her as a lover; he was haunted by a continual image, to have her once to himself as she had given herself to another. Every morning he dreamed of winning her in the evening; then, when she looked at him with her cold eyes, and when he felt that everything within her denied itself to him, he even avoided touching her hand. It was a suffering without possible cure, hidden beneath the stiffness of his attitude, the suffering of a tender nature in secret anguish at the lack of domestic happiness. At the end of six months, when the house, being definitely furnished, no longer occupied Madame Hennebeau, she fell into the languor of boredom, a victim who was being killed by exile, and who said that she was glad to die of it. + 

Just then Paul Négrel arrived at Montsou. His mother, the widow of a Provence captain, living at Avignon on a slender income, had had to content herself with bread and water to enable him to reach the École Polytechnique. He had come out low in rank, and his uncle, M. Hennebeau, had enabled him to leave by offering to take him as engineer at the Voreux. From that time he was treated as one of the family; he even had his room there, his meals there, lived there, and was thus enabled to send to his mother half his salary of three thousand francs. To disguise this kindness M. Hennebeau spoke of the embarrassment to a young man of setting up a household in one of those little villas reserved for the mine engineers. Madame Hennebeau had at once taken the part of a good aunt, treating her nephew with familiarity and watching over his comfort. During the first months, especially, she exhibited an overwhelming maternity with her advice regarding the smallest subjects. But she remained a woman, however, and slid into personal confidences. This lad, so young and so practical, with his unscrupulous intelligence, professing a philosopher’s theory of love, amused her with the vivacity of the pessimism which had sharpened his thin face and pointed nose. One evening he naturally found himself in her arms, and she seemed to give herself up out of kindness, while saying to him that she had no heart left, and wished only to be his friend. In fact, she was not jealous; she joked him about the putters, whom he declared to be abominable, and she almost sulked because he had no young man’s pranks to narrate to her. Then she was carried away by the idea of getting him married; she dreamed of sacrificing herself and of finding a rich girl for him. Their relations continued a plaything, a recreation, in which she felt the last tenderness of a lazy woman who had done with the world. + 

Two years had passed by. One night M. Hennebeau had a suspicion when he heard naked feet passing his door. But this new adventure revolted him, in his own house, between this mother and this son! And besides, on the following day his wife spoke to him about the choice of Cécile Grégoire which she had made for her nephew. She occupied herself over this marriage with such ardour that he blushed at his own monstrous imagination. He only felt gratitude towards the young man who, since his arrival, had made the house less melancholy. + 

As he came down from the dressing-room, M. Hennebeau found that Paul, who had just returned, was in the vestibule. He seemed to be quite amused by the story of this strike. + 

“Well?” asked his uncle. + 

“Well, I’ve been round the settlements. They seem to be quite sensible in there. I think they will first send you a deputation.” + 

But at that moment Madame Hennebeau’s voice called from the first story: + 

“Is that you, Paul? Come up, then, and tell me the news. How queer they are to make such a fuss, these people who are so happy!” + 

And the manager had to renounce further information, since his wife had taken his messenger. He returned and sat before his desk, on which a new packet of dispatches was placed. + 

At eleven o’clock the Grégoires arrived, and were astonished when Hippolyte, the footman, who was placed as sentinel, hustled them in after an anxious glance at the two ends of the road. The drawing-room curtains were drawn, and they were taken at once into the study, where M. Hennebeau apologized for their reception; but the drawing-room looked over the street and it was undesirable to seem to offer provocations. + 

“What! you don’t know?” he went on, seeing their surprise. + 

M. Grégoire, when he heard that the strike had at last broken out, shrugged his shoulders in his placid way. Bah! it would be nothing, the people were honest. With a movement of her chin, Madame Grégoire approved his confidence in the everlasting resignation of the colliers; while Cécile, who was very cheerful that day, feeling that she looked well in her capuchin cloth costume, smiled at the word “strike,” which reminded her of visits to the settlements and the distribution of charities. + 

Madame Hennebeau now appeared in black silk, followed by Négrel. + 

“Ah! isn’t it annoying!” she said, at the door. “As if they couldn’t wait, those men! You know that Paul refuses to take us to Saint-Thomas.” + 

“We can stay here,” said M. Grégoire, obligingly. “We shall be quite pleased.” + 

Paul had contented himself with formally saluting Cécile and her mother. Angry at this lack of demonstrativeness, his aunt sent him with a look to the young girl; and when she heard them laughing together she enveloped them in a maternal glance. + 

M. Hennebeau, however, finished reading his dispatches and prepared a few replies. They talked near him; his wife explained that she had not done anything to this study, which, in fact, retained its faded old red paper, its heavy mahogany furniture, its cardboard files, scratched by use. Three-quarters of an hour passed and they were about to seat themselves at table when the footman announced M. Deneulin. He entered in an excited way and bowed to Madame Hennebeau. + 

“Ah! you here!” he said, seeing the Grégoires. + 

And he quickly spoke to the manager: + 

“It has come, then? I’ve just heard of it through my engineer. With me, all the men went down this morning. But the thing may spread. I’m not at all at ease. How is it with you?” + 

He had arrived on horseback, and his anxiety betrayed itself in his loud speech and abrupt gestures, which made him resemble a retired cavalry officer. + 

M. Hennebeau was beginning to inform him regarding the precise situation, when Hippolyte opened the dining-room door. Then he interrupted himself to say: + 

“Lunch with us. I will tell you more at dessert.” + 

“Yes, as you please,” replied Deneulin, so full of his thoughts that he accepted without ceremony. + 

He was, however, conscious of his impoliteness and turned towards Madame Hennebeau with apologies. She was very charming, however. When she had had a seventh plate laid she placed her guests: Madame Grégoire and Cécile by her husband, then M. Grégoire and Deneulin at her own right and left; then Paul, whom she put between the young girl and her father. As they attacked the hors d’ouvre she said, with a smile: + 

“You must excuse me; I wanted to give you oysters. On Monday, you know, there was an arrival of Ostend oysters at Marchiennes, and I meant to send the cook with the carriage. But she was afraid of being stoned⁠—” + 

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

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

“Well, here is a slice of sausage which they shan’t have,” M. Grégoire declared. + 

The laughter began again, but with greater restraint. Each guest made himself comfortable, in this room upholstered with Flemish tapestry and furnished with old oak chests. The silver shone behind the panes of the sideboards; and there was a large hanging lamp of red copper, whose polished surfaces reflected a palm and an aspidistra growing in majolica pots. Outside, the December day was frozen by a keen northeast wind. But not a breath of it entered; a greenhouse 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 today 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. Today, 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 childlike 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 today 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. + 

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 anyone 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 northeast 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 chimneypiece, 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 hothouse 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 anyone 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 percent, 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 knickknack 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 reentered 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.” + 

III + 

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, Crévecœur, 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 footbridges 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 anyone 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 today.” + 

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 underdeveloped 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. + 

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 ballroom 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 nonappearance 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 ballroom. 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 forever 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 anyone 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 anyone 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 ballroom 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 ballroom 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 newcomers 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 shipload 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. + 

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 forever, 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 Crévecœur 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 anyone 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: + 

“Tomorrow 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. + 

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 tomorrow. 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 tonight, sure enough; tomorrow, 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 passersby. + 

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. + 

“Blast it all! haven’t we got to the end yet?” he grumbled, with aching back and out of breath. + 

They were there. At the end of a kilometre the tube enlarged, they reached a part of the gallery which was admirably preserved. It was the end of the old haulage passage cut across the bed like a natural grotto. He was obliged to stop, he saw the child afar, placing his candle between two stones, and putting himself at ease with the quiet and relieved air of a man who is glad to be at home again. This gallery-end was completely changed into a comfortable dwelling. In a corner on the ground a pile of hay made a soft couch; on some old planks, placed like a table, there were bread, potatoes, and bottles of gin already opened; it was a real brigand’s cavern, with booty piled up for weeks, even useless booty like soap and blacking, stolen for the pleasure of stealing. And the child, quite alone in the midst of this plunder, was enjoying it like a selfish brigand. + 

“I say, then, is this how you make fun of people?” cried Étienne, when he had breathed for a moment. “You come and gorge yourself here, when we are dying of hunger up above?” + 

Jeanlin, astounded, was trembling. But recognizing the young man, he quickly grew calm. + 

“Will you come and dine with me?” he said at last. “Eh? a bit of grilled cod? You shall see.” + 

He had not let go his cod, and he began to scrape off the fly-blows properly with a fine new knife, one of those little dagger knives, with bone handles, on which mottoes are inscribed. This one simply bore the word “Amour.” + 

“You have a fine knife,” remarked Étienne. + 

“It’s a present from Lydie,” replied Jeanlin, who neglected to add that Lydie had stolen it, by his orders, from a huckster at Montsou, stationed before the Tête-Coupée Bar. + 

Then, as he still scraped, he added proudly: + 

“Isn’t it comfortable in my house? It’s a bit warmer than up above, and it feels a lot better!” + 

Étienne had seated himself, and was amused in making him talk. He was no longer angry, he felt interested in this debauched child, who was so brave and so industrious in his vices. And, in fact, he tasted a certain comfort in the bottom of this hole; the heat was not too great, an equal temperature reigned here at all seasons, the warmth of a bath, while the rough December wind was chapping the skins of the miserable people on the earth. As they grew old, the galleries became purified from noxious gases, all the firedamp had gone, and one only smelled now the odour of old fermented wood, a subtle ethereal odour, as if sharpened with a dash of cloves. This wood, besides, had become curious to look at, with a yellowish pallor of marble, fringed with whitish thread lace, flaky vegetations which seemed to drape it with an embroidery of silk and pearls. In other places the timber was bristling with toadstools. And there were flights of white butterflies, snowy flies and spiders, a decolorized population forever ignorant of the sun. + 

“Then you’re not afraid?” asked Étienne. + 

Jeanlin looked at him in astonishment. + 

“Afraid of what? I am quite alone.” + 

But the cod was at last scraped. He lighted a little fire of wood, brought out the pan and grilled it. Then he cut a loaf into two. It was a terribly salt feast, but exquisite all the same for strong stomachs. + 

Étienne had accepted his share. + 

“I am not astonished you get fat, while we are all growing lean. Do you know that it is beastly to stuff yourself like this? And the others? you don’t think of them!” + 

“Oh! why are the others such fools?” + 

“Well, you’re right to hide yourself, for if your father knew you stole he would settle you.” + 

“What! when the bourgeois are stealing from us! It’s you who are always saying so. If I nabbed this loaf at Maigrat’s you may be pretty sure it’s a loaf he owed us.” + 

The young man was silent, with his mouth full, and felt troubled. He looked at him, with his muzzle, his green eyes, his large ears, a degenerate abortion, with an obscure intelligence and savage cunning, slowly slipping back into the animality of old. The mine which had made him had just finished him by breaking his legs. + 

“And Lydie?” asked Étienne again; “do you bring her here sometimes?” + 

Jeanlin laughed contemptuously. + 

“The little one? Ah, no, not I; women blab.” + 

And he went on laughing, filled with immense disdain for Lydie and Bébert. Who had ever seen such boobies? To think that they swallowed all his humbug, and went away with empty hands while he ate the cod in this warm place, tickled his sides with amusement. Then he concluded, with the gravity of a little philosopher: + 

“Much better be alone, then there’s no falling out.” + 

Étienne had finished his bread. He drank a gulp of the gin. For a moment he asked himself if he ought not to make a bad return for Jeanlin’s hospitality by bringing him up to daylight by the ear, and forbidding him to plunder any more by the threat of telling everything to his father. But as he examined this deep retreat, an idea occurred to him. Who knows if there might not be need for it, either for mates or for himself, in case things should come to the worst up above! He made the child swear not to sleep out, as had sometimes happened when he forgot himself in his hay, and taking a candle-end, he went away first, leaving him to pursue quietly his domestic affairs. + 

Mouquette, seated on a beam in spite of the great cold, had grown desperate in waiting for him. When she saw him she leapt on to his neck; and it was as though he had plunged a knife into her heart when he said that he wished to see her no more. Good God! why? Did she not love him enough? Fearing to yield to the desire to enter with her, he drew her towards the road, and explained to her as gently as possible that she was compromising him in the eyes of his mates, that she was compromising the political cause. She was astonished; what had that got to do with politics? At last the thought occurred to her that he blushed at being seen with her. She was not wounded, however; it was quite natural; and she proposed that he should rebuff her before people, so as to seem to have broken with her. But he would see her just once sometimes. In distraction she implored him; she swore to keep out of sight; she would not keep him five minutes. He was touched, but still refused. It was necessary. Then, as he left her, he wished at least to kiss her. They had gradually reached the first houses of Montsou, and were standing with their arms round one another beneath a large round moon, when a woman passed near them with a sudden start, as though she had knocked against a stone. + 

“Who is that?” asked Étienne, anxiously. + 

“It’s Catherine,” replied Mouquette. “She’s coming back from Jean-Bart.” + 

The woman now was going away, with lowered head and feeble limbs, looking very tired. And the young man gazed at her, in despair at having been seen by her, his heart aching with an unreasonable remorse. Had she not been with a man? Had she not made him suffer with the same suffering here, on this Réquillart road, when she had given herself to that man? But, all the same, he was grieved to have done the like to her. + 

“Shall I tell you what it is?” whispered Mouquette, in tears, as she left him. “If you don’t want me it’s because you want someone else.” + 

On the next day the weather was superb; it was one of those clear frosty days, the beautiful winter days when the hard earth rings like crystal beneath the feet. Jeanlin had gone off at one o’clock, but he had to wait for Bébert behind the church, and they nearly set out without Lydie, whose mother had again shut her up in the cellar, and only now liberated her to put a basket on her arm, telling her that if she did not bring it back full of dandelions she should be shut up with the rats all night long. She was frightened, therefore, and wished to go at once for salad. Jeanlin dissuaded her; they would see later on. For a long time Poland, Rasseneur’s big rabbit, had attracted his attention. He was passing before the Avantage when, just then, the rabbit came out on to the road. With a leap he seized her by the ears, stuffed her into the little girl’s basket, and all three rushed away. They would amuse themselves finely by making her run like a dog as far as the forest. + 

But they stopped to gaze at Zacharie and Mouquet, who, after having drunk a glass with two other mates, had begun their big game of crosse. The stake was a new cap and a red handkerchief, deposited with Rasseneur. The four players, two against two, were bidding for the first turn from the Voreux to the Paillot farm, nearly three kilometres; and it was Zacharie who won, with seven strokes, while Mouquet required eight. They had placed the ball, the little boxwood egg, on the pavement with one end up. Each was holding his crosse, the mallet with its bent iron, long handle, and tight-strung network. Two o’clock struck as they set out. Zacharie, in a masterly manner, at his first stroke, composed of a series of three, sent the ball more than four hundred yards across the beetroot fields; for it was forbidden to play in the villages and on the streets, where people might be killed. Mouquet, who was also a good player, sent off the ball with so vigorous an arm that his single stroke brought the ball a hundred and fifty metres behind. And the game went on, backwards and forwards, always running, their feet bruised by the frozen ridges of the ploughed fields. + 

At first Jeanlin, Bébert, and Lydie had trotted behind the players, delighted with their vigorous strokes. Then they remembered Poland, whom they were shaking up in the basket; and, leaving the game in the open country, they took out the rabbit, inquisitive to see how fast she could run. She went off, and they fled after her; it was a chase lasting an hour at full speed, with constant turns, with shouts to frighten her, and arms opened and closed on emptiness. If she had not been at the beginning of pregnancy they would never have caught her again. + 

As they were panting the sound of oaths made them turn their heads. They had just come upon the crosse party again, and Zacharie had nearly split open his brother’s skull. The players were now at their fourth turn. From the Paillot farm they had gone off to the Quatre-Chemins, then from the Quatre-Chemins to Montoire; and now they were going in six strokes from Montoire to Pré-des-Vaches. That made two leagues and a half in an hour; and, besides, they had had drinks at the Estaminet Vincent and at the Trois-Sages Bar. Mouquet this time was ahead. He had two more strokes to play, and his victory was certain, when Zacharie, grinning as he availed himself of his privilege, played with so much skill that the ball rolled into a deep pit. Mouquet’s partner could not get it out; it was a disaster. All four shouted; the party was excited, for they were neck to neck; it was necessary to begin again. From the Pré-des-Vaches it was not two kilometres to the point of Herbes-Rousses, in five strokes. There they would refresh themselves at Lerenard’s. + 

But Jeanlin had an idea. He let them go on, and pulled out of his pocket a piece of string which he tied to one of Poland’s legs, the left hind leg. And it was very amusing. The rabbit ran before the three young rascals, waddling along in such an extraordinary manner that they had never laughed so much before. Afterwards they fastened it round her neck, and let her run off; and, as she grew tired, they dragged her on her belly or on her back, just like a little carriage. That lasted for more than an hour. She was moaning when they quickly put her back into the basket, near the wood at Cruchot, on hearing the players whose game they had once more came across. + 

Zacharie, Mouquet, and the two others were getting over the kilometres, with no other rest than the time for a drink at all the inns which they had fixed on as their goals. From the Herbes-Rousses they had gone on to Buchy, then to Croix-de-Pierre, then to Chamblay. The earth rang beneath the helter-skelter of their feet, rushing untiringly after the ball, which bounded over the ice; the weather was good, they did not fall in, they only ran the risk of breaking their legs. In the dry air the great crosse blows exploded like firearms. Their muscular hands grasped the strung handle; their entire bodies were bent forward, as though to slay an ox. And this went on for hours, from one end of the plain to the other, over ditches and hedges and the slopes of the road, the low walls of the enclosures. One needed to have good bellows in one’s chest and iron hinges in one’s knees. The pikemen thus rubbed off the rust of the mine with impassioned zeal. There were some so enthusiastic at twenty-five that they could do ten leagues. At forty they played no more; they were too heavy. + 

Five o’clock struck; the twilight was already coming on. One more turn to the Forest of Vandame, to decide who had gained the cap and the handkerchief. And Zacharie joked, with his chaffing indifference for politics; it would be fine to tumble down over there in the midst of the mates. As to Jeanlin, ever since leaving the settlement he had been aiming at the forest, though apparently only scouring the fields. With an indignant gesture he threatened Lydie, who was full of remorse and fear, and talked of going back to the Voreux to gather dandelions. Were they going to abandon the meeting? he wanted to know what the old people would say. He pushed Bébert, and proposed to enliven the end of the journey as far as the trees by detaching Poland and pursuing her with stones. His real idea was to kill her; he wanted to take her off and eat her at the bottom of his hole at Réquillart. The rabbit ran ahead, with nose in the air and ears back; a stone grazed her back, another cut her tail, and, in spite of the growing darkness, she would have been done for if the young rogues had not noticed Étienne and Maheu standing in the middle of a glade. They threw themselves on the animal in desperation, and put her back in the basket. Almost at the same minute Zacharie, Mouquet, and the two others, with their last blow at crosse, drove the ball within a few metres of the glade. They all came into the midst of the rendezvous. + 

Through the whole country, by the roads and pathways of the flat plain, ever since twilight, there had been a long procession, a rustling of silent shadows, moving separately or in groups towards the violet thickets of the forest. Every settlement was emptied, the women and children themselves set out as if for a walk beneath the great clear sky. Now the roads were growing dark; this walking crowd, all gliding towards the same goal, could no longer be distinguished. But one felt it, the confused tramping moved by one soul. Between the hedges, among the bushes, there was only a light rustling, a vague rumour of the voices of the night. + 

M. Hennebeau, who was at this hour returning home mounted on his mare, listened to these vague sounds. He had met couples, long rows of strollers, on this beautiful winter night. More lovers, who were going to take their pleasure, mouth to mouth, behind the walls. Was it not what he always met, girls tumbled over at the bottom of every ditch, beggars who crammed themselves with the only joy that cost nothing? And these fools complained of life, when they could take their supreme fill of this happiness of love! Willingly would he have starved as they did if he could begin life again with a woman who would give herself to him on a heap of stones, with all her strength and all her heart. His misfortune was without consolation, and he envied these wretches. With lowered head he went back, riding his horse at a slackened pace, rendered desperate by these long sounds, lost in the depth of the black country, in which he heard only kisses. + 

VII + 

It was the Plan-des-Dames, that vast glade just opened up by the felling of trees. It spread out in a gentle slope, surrounded by tall thickets and superb beeches with straight regular trunks, which formed a white colonnade patched with green lichens; fallen giants were also lying in the grass, while on the left a mass of logs formed a geometrical cube. The cold was sharpening with the twilight and the frozen moss crackled beneath the feet. There was black darkness on the earth while the tall branches showed against the pale sky, where a full moon coming above the horizon would soon extinguish the stars. + 

Nearly three thousand colliers had come to the rendezvous, a swarming crowd of men, women, and children, gradually filling the glade and spreading out afar beneath the trees. Late arrivals were still coming up, a flood of heads drowned in shadow and stretching as far as the neighbouring copses. A rumbling arose from them, like that of a storm, in this motionless and frozen forest. + 

At the top, dominating the slope, Étienne stood with Rasseneur and Maheu. A quarrel had broken out, one could hear their voices in sudden bursts. Near them some men were listening: Levaque, with clenched fists; Pierron, turning his back and much annoyed that he had no longer been able to feign a fever. There were also Father Bonnemort and old Mouque, seated side by side on a stump, lost in deep meditation. Then behind were the chaffers, Zacharie, Mouquet, and others who had come to make fun of the thing; while gathered together in a very different spirit the women in a group were as serious as if at church. Maheude silently shook her head at the Levaque woman’s muttered oaths. Philoméne was coughing, her bronchitis having come back with the winter. Only Mouquette was showing her teeth with laughter, amused at the way in which Mother Brulé was abusing her daughter, an unnatural creature who had sent her away that she might gorge herself with rabbit, a creature who had sold herself and who fattened on her man’s cowardice. And Jeanlin had planted himself on the pile of wood, hoisting up Lydie and making Bébert follow him, all three higher up in the air than anyone else. + 

The quarrel was raised by Rasseneur, who wished to proceed formally to the election of officers. He was enraged by his defeat at the Bon-Joyeux, and had sworn to have his revenge, for he flattered himself that he could regain his old authority when he was once face to face, not with the delegates, but with the miners themselves. Étienne was disgusted, and thought the idea of officers was ridiculous in this forest. They ought to act in a revolutionary fashion, like savages, since they were tracked like wolves. + 

As the dispute threatened to drag on, he took possession of the crowd at once by jumping on to the trunk of a tree and shouting: + 

“Comrades! comrades!” + 

The confused roar of the crowd died down into a long sigh, while Maheu stifled Rasseneur’s protestations. Étienne went on in a loud voice. + 

“Comrades, since they forbid us to speak, since they send the police after us as if we were robbers, we have come to talk here! Here we are free, we are at home. No one can silence us any more than they can silence the birds and beasts!” + 

A thunder of cries and exclamations responded to him. + 

“Yes, yes! the forest is ours, we can talk here. Go on.” + 

Then Étienne stood for a moment motionless on the tree-trunk. The moon, still beneath the horizon, only lit up the topmost branches, and the crowd, remaining in the darkness, stood above it at the top of the slope like a bar of shadow. + 

He raised his arm with a slow movement and began. But his voice was not fierce; he spoke in the cold tones of a simple envoy of the people, who was rendering his account. He was delivering the discourse which the commissioner of police had cut short at the Bon-Joyeux; and he began by a rapid history of the strike, affecting a certain scientific eloquence⁠—facts, nothing but facts. At first he spoke of his dislike to the strike; the miners had not desired it, it was the management which had provoked it with the new timbering tariff. Then he recalled the first step taken by the delegates in going to the manager, the bad faith of the directors; and, later on, the second step, the tardy concession, the ten centimes given up, after the attempt to rob them. Now he showed by figures the exhaustion of the Provident Fund, and pointed out the use that had been made of the help sent, briefly excusing the International, Pluchart and the others, for not being able to do more for them in the midst of the cares of their conquest of the world. So the situation was getting worse every day; the Company was giving back certificates and threatening to hire men from Belgium; besides, it was intimidating the weak, and had forced a certain number of miners to go down again. He preserved his monotonous voice, as if to insist on the bad news; he said that hunger was victorious, that hope was dead, and that the struggle had reached the last feverish efforts of courage. And then he suddenly concluded, without raising his voice: + 

“It is in these circumstances, mates, that you have to take a decision tonight. Do you want the strike to go on? and if so, what do you expect to do to beat the Company?” + 

A deep silence fell from the starry sky. The crowd, which could not be seen, was silent in the night beneath these words which choked every heart, and a sigh of despair could be heard through the trees. + 

But Étienne was already continuing, with a change in his voice. It was no longer the secretary of the association who was speaking; it was the chief of a band, the apostle who was bringing truth. Could it be that any were cowardly enough to go back on their word? What! They were to suffer in vain for a month, and then to go back to the pits, with lowered heads, so that the everlasting wretchedness might begin over again! Would it not be better to die at once in the effort to destroy this tyranny of capital, which was starving the worker? Always to submit to hunger up to the moment when hunger will again throw the calmest into revolt, was it not a foolish game which could not go on forever? And he pointed to the exploited miners, bearing alone the disasters of every crisis, reduced to go without food as soon as the necessities of competition lowered net prices. No, the timbering tariff could not be accepted; it was only a disguised effort to economize on the Company’s part; they wanted to rob every man of an hour’s work a day. It was too much this time; the day was coming when the miserable, pushed to extremity, would deal justice. + 

He stood with his arms in the air. At the word “justice” the crowd, shaken by a long shudder, broke out into applause which rolled along with the sound of dry leaves. Voices cried: + 

“Justice! it is time! Justice!” + 

Gradually Étienne grew heated. He had not Rasseneur’s easy flowing abundance. Words often failed him, he had to force his phrases, bringing them out with an effort which he emphasized by a movement of his shoulders. Only in these continual shocks he came upon familiar images which seized on his audience by their energy; while his workman’s gestures, his elbows in and then extended, with his fists thrust out, his jaw suddenly advanced as if to bite, had also an extraordinary effect on his mates. They all said that if he was not big he made himself heard. + 

“The wage system is a new form of slavery,” he began again, in a more sonorous voice. “The mine ought to belong to the miner, as the sea belongs to the fisherman, and the earth to the peasant. Do you see? The mine belongs to you, to all of you who, for a century, have paid for it with so much blood and misery!” + 

He boldly entered on obscure questions of law, and lost himself in the difficulties of the special regulations concerning mines. The subsoil, like the soil, belonged to the nation: only an odious privilege gave the monopoly of it to the Companies; all the more since, at Montsou, the pretended legality of the concession was complicated by treaties formerly made with the owners of the old fiefs, according to the ancient custom of Hainault. The miners, then, had only to reconquer their property; and with extended hands he indicated the whole country beyond the forest. At this moment the moon, which had risen above the horizon, lit him up as it glided from behind the high branches. When the crowd, which was still in shadow, saw him thus, white with light, distributing fortune with his open hands, they applauded anew by prolonged clapping. + 

“Yes, yes, he’s right. Bravo!” + 

Then Étienne trotted out his favourite subject, the assumption of the instruments of production by the collectivity, as he kept on saying in a phrase the pedantry of which greatly pleased him. At the present time his evolution was completed. Having set out with the sentimental fraternity of the novice and the need for reforming the wage system, he had reached the political idea of its suppression. Since the meeting at the Bon-Joyeux his collectivism, still humanitarian and without a formula, had stiffened into a complicated programme which he discussed scientifically, article by article. First, he affirmed that freedom could only be obtained by the destruction of the state. Then, when the people had obtained possession of the government, reforms would begin: return to the primitive commune, substitution of an equal and free family for the moral and oppressive family; absolute equality, civil, political, and economic; individual independence guaranteed, thanks to the possession of the integral product of the instruments of work; finally, free vocational education, paid for by the collectivity. This led to the total reconstruction of the old rotten society; he attacked marriage, the right of bequest, he regulated everyone’s fortune, he threw down the iniquitous monument of the dead centuries with a great movement of his arm, always the same movement, the movement of the reaper who is cutting down a ripe harvest. And then with the other hand he reconstructed; he built up the future humanity, the edifice of truth and justice rising in the dawn of the twentieth century. In this state of mental tension reason trembled, and only the sectarian’s fixed idea was left. The scruples of sensibility and of good sense were lost; nothing seemed easier than the realization of this new world. He had foreseen everything; he spoke of it as of a machine which he could put together in two hours, and he stuck at neither fire nor blood. + 

“Our turn is come,” he broke out for the last time. “Now it is for us to have power and wealth!” + 

The cheering rolled up to him from the depths of the forest. The moon now whitened the whole of the glade, and cut into living waves the sea of heads, as far as the dimly visible copses in the distance between the great grey trunks. And in the icy air there was a fury of faces, of gleaming eyes, of open mouths, a rut of famishing men, women, and children, let loose on the just pillage of the ancient wealth they had been deprived of. They no longer felt the cold, these burning words had warmed them to the bone. Religious exaltation raised them from the earth, a fever of hope like that of the Christians of the early Church awaiting the near coming of justice. Many obscure phrases had escaped them, they could not properly understand this technical and abstract reasoning; but the very obscurity and abstraction still further enlarged the field of promises and lifted them into a dazzling region. What a dream! to be masters, to suffer no more, to enjoy at last! + 

“That’s it, by God! it’s our turn now! Down with the exploiters.” + 

The women were delirious; Maheude, losing her calmness, was seized with the vertigo of hunger, the Levaque woman shouted, old Brulé, carried out of herself, was brandishing her witch-like arms, Philoméne was shaken by a spasm of coughing, and Mouquette was so excited that she cried out words of tenderness to the orator. Among the men, Maheu was won over and shouted with anger, between Pierron who was trembling and Levaque who was talking too much; while the chaffers, Zacharie and Mouquet, though trying to make fun of things, were feeling uncomfortable and were surprised that their mate could talk on so long without having a drink. But on top of the pile of wood, Jeanlin was making more noise than anyone, egging on Bébert and Lydie and shaking the basket in which Poland lay. + 

The clamour began again. Étienne was enjoying the intoxication of his popularity. He held power, as it were, materialized in these three thousand breasts, whose hearts he could move with a word. Souvarine, if he had cared to come, would have applauded his ideas so far as he recognized them, pleased with his pupil’s progress in anarchism and satisfied with the programme, except the article on education, a relic of silly sentimentality, for men needed to be dipped in a bath of holy and salutary ignorance. As to Rasseneur, he shrugged his shoulders with contempt and anger. + 

“You shall let me speak,” he shouted to Étienne. + 

The latter jumped from the tree-trunk. + 

“Speak, we shall see if they’ll hear you.” + 

Already Rasseneur had replaced him, and with a gesture demanded silence. But the noise did not cease; his name went round from the first ranks, who had recognized him, to the last, lost beneath the beeches, and they refused to hear him; he was an overturned idol, the mere sight of him angered his old disciples. His facile elocution, his flowing, good-natured speech, which had so long charmed them, was now treated like warm gruel made to put cowards to sleep. In vain he talked through the noise, trying to take up again his discourse of conciliation, the impossibility of changing the world by a stroke of law, the necessity of allowing the social evolution time to accomplish itself; they joked him, they hissed him; his defeat at the Bon-Joyeux was now beyond repair. At last they threw handfuls of frozen moss at him, and a woman cried in a shrill voice: + 

“Down with the traitor!” + 

He explained that the miner could not be the proprietor of the mine, as the weaver is of his loom, and he said that he preferred sharing in the benefits, the interested worker becoming the child of the house. + 

“Down with the traitor!” repeated a thousand voices, while stones began to whistle by. + 

Then he turned pale, and despair filled his eyes with tears. His whole existence was crumbling down; twenty years of ambitious comradeship were breaking down beneath the ingratitude of the crowd. He came down from the tree-trunk, with no strength to go on, struck to the heart. + 

“That makes you laugh,” he stammered, addressing the triumphant Étienne. “Good! I hope your turn will come. It will come, I tell you!” + 

And as if to reject all responsibility for the evils which he foresaw, he made a large gesture, and went away alone across the country, pale and silent. + 

Hoots arose, and then they were surprised to see Father Bonnemort standing on the trunk and about to speak in the midst of the tumult. Up till now Mouque and he had remained absorbed, with that air that they always had of reflecting on former things. No doubt he was yielding to one of those sudden crises of garrulity which sometimes made the past stir in him so violently that recollections rose and flowed from his lips for hours at a time. There was deep silence, and they listened to this old man, who was like a pale spectre beneath the moon, and as he narrated things without any immediate relation with the discussion⁠—long histories which no one could understand⁠—the impression was increased. He was talking of his youth; he described the death of his two uncles who were crushed at the Voreux; then he turned to the inflammation of the lungs which had carried off his wife. He kept to his main idea, however: things had never gone well and never would go well. Thus in the forest five hundred of them had come together because the king would not lessen the hours of work; but he stopped short, and began to tell of another strike⁠—he had seen so many! They all broke out under these trees, here at the Plan-des-Dames, lower down at the Charbonnerie, still farther towards the Saut-du-Loup. Sometimes it froze, sometimes it was hot. One evening it had rained so much that they had gone back again without being able to say anything, and the king’s soldiers came up and it finished with volleys of musketry. + 

“We raised our hands like this, and we swore not to go back again. Ah! I have sworn; yes, I have sworn!” + 

The crowd listened gapingly, feeling disturbed, when Étienne, who had watched the scene, jumped on to the fallen tree, keeping the old man at his side. He had just recognized Chaval among their friends in the first row. The idea that Catherine must be there had roused a new ardour within him, the desire to be applauded in her presence. + 

“Mates, you have heard; this is one of our old men, and this is what he has suffered, and what our children will suffer if we don’t have done with the robbers and butchers.” + 

He was terrible; never had he spoken so violently. With one arm he supported old Bonnemort, exhibiting him as a banner of misery and mourning, and crying for vengeance. In a few rapid phrases he went back to the first Maheu. He showed the whole family used up at the mine, devoured by the Company, hungrier than ever after a hundred years of work; and contrasting with the Maheus he pointed to the big bellies of the directors sweating gold, a whole band of shareholders, going on for a century like kept women, doing nothing but enjoy with their bodies. Was it not fearful? a race of men dying down below, from father to son, so that bribes of wine could be given to ministers, and generations of great lords and bourgeois could give feasts or fatten by their firesides! He had studied the diseases of the miners. He made them all march past with their awful details: anaemia, scrofula, black bronchitis, the asthma which chokes, and the rheumatism which paralyses. These wretches were thrown as food to the engines and penned up like beasts in the settlements. The great companies absorbed them, regulating their slavery, threatening to enrol all the workers of the nation, millions of hands, to bring fortune to a thousand idlers. But the miner was no longer an ignorant brute, crushed within the bowels of the earth. An army was springing up from the depths of the pits, a harvest of citizens whose seed would germinate and burst through the earth some sunny day. And they would see then if, after forty years of service, anyone would dare to offer a pension of a hundred and fifty francs to an old man of sixty who spat out coal and whose legs were swollen with the water from the cuttings. Yes! labour would demand an account from capital: that impersonal god, unknown to the worker, crouching down somewhere in his mysterious sanctuary, where he sucked the life out of the starvelings who nourished him! They would go down there; they would at last succeed in seeing his face by the gleam of incendiary fires, they would drown him in blood, that filthy swine, that monstrous idol, gorged with human flesh! + 

He was silent, but his arm, still extended in space, indicated the enemy, down there, he knew not where, from one end of the earth to the other. This time the clamour of the crowd was so great that people at Montsou heard it, and looked towards Vandame, seized with anxiety at the thought that some terrible landslip had occurred. Night-birds rose above the trees in the clear open sky. + 

He now concluded his speech. + 

“Mates, what is your decision? Do you vote for the strike to go on?” + 

Their voices yelled, “Yes! yes!” + 

“And what steps do you decide on? We are sure of defeat if cowards go down tomorrow.” + 

Their voices rose again with the sound of a tempest: + 

“Kill the cowards!” + 

“Then you decide to call them back to duty and to their sworn word. This is what we could do: present ourselves at the pits, bring back the traitors by our presence, show the Company that we are all agreed, and that we are going to die rather than yield.” + 

“That’s it. To the pits! to the pits!” + 

While he was speaking Étienne had looked for Catherine among the pale shouting heads before him. She was certainly not there, but he still saw Chaval, affecting to jeer, shrugging his shoulders, but devoured by jealousy and ready to sell himself for a little of this popularity. + 

“And if there are any spies among us, mates,” Étienne went on, “let them look out; they’re known. Yes, I can see Vandame colliers here who have not left their pit.” + 

“Is that meant for me?” asked Chaval, with an air of bravado. + 

“For you, or for anyone else. But, since you speak, you ought to understand that those who eat have nothing to do with those who are starving. You work at Jean-Bart.” + 

A chaffing voice interrupted: + 

“Oh! he work! he’s got a wife who works for him.” + 

Chaval swore, while the blood rose to his face. + 

“By God! is it forbidden to work, then?” + 

“Yes!” said Étienne, “when your mates are enduring misery for the good of all, it is forbidden to go over, like a selfish sneaking coward, to the masters’ side. If the strike had been general we should have got the best of it long ago. Not a single man at Vandame ought to have gone down when Montsou is resting. To accomplish the great stroke, work should be stopped in the entire country, at Monsieur Deneulin’s as well as here. Do you understand? there are only traitors in the Jean Bart cuttings; you’re all traitors!” + 

The crowd around Chaval grew threatening, and fists were raised and cries of “Kill him! kill him!” began to be uttered. He had grown pale. But, in his infuriated desire to triumph over Étienne, an idea restored him. + 

“Listen to me, then! come tomorrow to Jean-Bart, and you shall see if I’m working! We’re on your side; they’ve sent me to tell you so. The fires must be extinguished, and the engine-men, too, must go on strike. All the better if the pumps do stop! the water will destroy the pits and everything will be done for!” + 

He was furiously applauded in his turn, and now Étienne himself was outflanked. Other orators succeeded each other from the tree-trunk, gesticulating amid the tumult, and throwing out wild propositions. It was a mad outburst of faith, the impatience of a religious sect which, tired of hoping for the expected miracle, had at last decided to provoke it. These heads, emptied by famine, saw everything red, and dreamed of fire and blood in the midst of a glorious apotheosis from which would arise universal happiness. And the tranquil moon bathed this surging sea, the deep forest encircled with its vast silence this cry of massacre. The frozen moss crackled beneath the heels of the crowd, while the beeches, erect in their strength, with the delicate tracery of their black branches against the white sky, neither saw nor heard the miserable beings who writhed at their feet. + 

There was some pushing, and Maheude found herself near Maheu. Both of them, driven out of their ordinary good sense, and carried away by the slow exasperation which had been working within them for months, approved Levaque, who went to extremes by demanding the heads of the engineers. Pierron had disappeared. Bonnemort and Mouque were both talking together, saying vague violent things which nobody heard. For a joke Zacharie demanded the demolition of the churches, while Mouquet, with his crosse in his hand, was beating it against the ground for the sake of increasing the row. The women were furious. The Levaque, with her fists to her hips, was setting to with Philoméne, whom she accused of having laughed; Mouquette talked of attacking the gendarmes by kicking them somewhere; Mother Brulé, who had just slapped Lydie on finding her without either basket or salad, went on launching blows into space against all the masters whom she would like to have got at. For a moment Jeanlin was in terror, Bébert having learned through a trammer that Madame Rasseneur had seen them steal Poland; but when he had decided to go back and quietly release the beast at the door of the Avantage, he shouted louder than ever, and opened his new knife, brandishing the blade and proud of its glitter. + 

“Mates! mates!” repeated the exhausted Étienne, hoarse with the effort to obtain a moment’s silence for a definite understanding. + 

At last they listened. + 

“Mates! tomorrow morning at Jean-Bart, is it agreed?” + 

“Yes! yes! at Jean-Bart! death to the traitors!” + 

The tempest of these three thousand voices filled the sky, and died away in the pure brightness of the moon. + 