Germinal, Émile Zola [readict .txt] 📗

shudder as though he had touched a corpse. Then he went down to the boiler-room, walked slowly before the extinguished stoves, yawning and inundated, and struck his foot against the boilers, which sounded hollow. Well! it was quite finished; his ruin was complete. Even if he mended the cables and lit the fires, where would he find men? Another fortnight’s strike and he would be bankrupt. And in this certainty of disaster he no longer felt any hatred of the Montsou brigands; he felt that all had a complicity in it, that it was a general age-long fault. They were brutes, no doubt, but brutes who could not read, and who were dying of hunger. IV

And the troop went off over the flat plain, white with frost beneath the pale winter sun, and overflowed the path as they passed through the beetroot fields.

From the Fourche-aux-Bœufs, Étienne had assumed command. He cried his orders while the crowd moved on, and organized the march. Jeanlin galloped at the head, performing barbarous music on his horn. Then the women came in the first ranks, some of them armed with sticks: Maheude, with wild eyes seemed to be seeking afar for the promised city of justice, Mother Brulé, the Levaque woman, Mouquette, striding along beneath their rags, like soldiers setting out for the seat of war. If they had any encounters, we should see if the police dared to strike women. And the men followed in a confused flock, a stream that grew larger and larger, bristling with iron bars and dominated by Levaque’s single axe, with its blade glistening in the sun. Étienne, in the middle, kept Chaval in sight, forcing him to walk before him; while Maheu, behind, gloomily kept an eye on Catherine, the only woman among these men, obstinately trotting near her lover for fear that he would be hurt. Bare heads were dishevelled in the air; only the clank of sabots could be heard, like the movement of released cattle, carried away by Jeanlin’s wild trumpeting.

But suddenly a new cry arose:

“Bread! bread! bread!”

It was midday; the hunger of six weeks on strike was awaking in these empty stomachs, whipped up by this race across the fields. The few crusts of the morning and Mouquette’s chestnuts had long been forgotten; their stomachs were crying out, and this suffering was added to their fury against the traitors.

“To the pits! No more work! Bread!”

Étienne, who had refused to eat his share at the settlement, felt an unbearable tearing sensation in his chest. He made no complaint, but mechanically took his tin from time to time and swallowed a gulp of gin, shaking so much that he thought he needed it to carry him to the end. His cheeks were heated and his eyes inflamed. He kept his head, however, and still wished to avoid needless destruction.

As they arrived at the Joiselle road a Vandame pikeman, who had joined the band for revenge on his master, impelled the men towards the right, shouting:

“To Gaston-Marie! Must stop the pump! Let the water ruin Jean-Bart!”

The mob was already turning, in spite of the protests of Étienne, who begged them to let the pumping continue. What was the good of destroying the galleries? It offended his workman’s heart, in spite of his resentment. Maheu also thought it unjust to take revenge on a machine. But the pikeman still shouted his cry of vengeance, and Étienne had to cry still louder:

“To Mirou! There are traitors down there! To Mirou! to Mirou!”

With a gesture, he had turned the crowd towards the left road; while Jeanlin, going ahead, was blowing louder than ever. An eddy was produced in the crowd; this time Gaston-Marie was saved.

And the four kilometres which separated them from Mirou were traversed in half an hour, almost at running pace, across the interminable plain. The canal on this side cut it with a long icy ribbon. The leafless trees on the banks, changed by the frost into giant candelabra, alone broke this pale uniformity, prolonged and lost in the sky at the horizon as in a sea. An undulation of the ground hid Montsou and Marchiennes; there was nothing but bare immensity.

They reached the pit, and found a captain standing on a footbridge at the screening-shed to receive them. They all well knew Father Quandieu, the doyen of the Montsou captains, an old man whose skin and hair were quite white, and who was in his seventies, a miracle of fine health in the mines.

“What have you come after here, you pack of meddlers?” he shouted.

The band stopped. It was no longer a master, it was a mate; and a certain respect held them back before this old workman.

“There are men down below,” said Étienne. “Make them come up.”

“Yes, there are men there,” said Father Quandieu, “some six dozen; the others were afraid of you evil beggars! But I warn you that not one comes up, or you will have to deal with me!”

Exclamations arose, the men pushed, the women advanced. Quickly coming down from the footbridge, the captain now barred the door.

Then Maheu tried to interfere.

“It is our right, old man. How can we make the strike general if we don’t force all the mates to be on our side?”

The old man was silent a moment. Evidently his ignorance on the subject of coalition equalled the pikeman’s. At last he replied:

“It may be your right, I don’t say. But I only know my orders. I am alone here; the men are down till three, and they shall stay there till three.”

The last words were lost in hooting. Fists were threateningly advanced, the women deafened him, and their hot breath blew in his face. But he still held out, his head erect, and his beard and hair white as snow; his courage had so swollen his voice that he could be heard distinctly over the tumult.

“By God! you shall not pass! As true as the sun shines, I would rather die than let