Germinal, Émile Zola [readict .txt] 📗

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