GERMINAL
PART VII
CHAPTER I
THE shots fired at Montsou had reached as far as
Paris with a formidable echo. For four days all
the opposition journals had been indignant,
displaying atrocious narratives on their front
pages: twenty-five wounded, fourteen dead,
including three women and two children. And there
were prisoners taken as well; Levaque had become a
sort of hero, and was credited with a reply of
antique sublimity to the examining magistrate.
The empire, hit in mid career by these few balls,
affected the calm of omnipotence, without itself
realizing the gravity of its wound. It was simply
an unfortunate collision, something lost over
there in the black country, very far from the
Parisian boulevards which formed public opinion;
it would soon be forgotten. The Company had
received official intimation to hush up the
affair, and to put an end to a strike which from
its irritating duration was becoming a social
danger.
So on Wednesday morning three of the directors
appeared at Montsou. The little town, sick at
heart, which had not dared hitherto to rejoice
over the massacre, now breathed again, and tasted
the joy of being saved. The weather, too, had
become fine; there was a bright sun--one of those
first February days which, with their moist
warmth, tip the lilac shoots with green. All the
shutters had been flung back at the administration
building, the vast structure seemed alive again.
And cheering rumours were circulating; it was said
that the directors, deeply affected by the
catastrophe, had rushed down to open their
paternal arms to the wanderers from the
settlements. Now that the blow had fallen--a more
vigorous one doubtless than they had wished
for--they were prodigal in their task of relief,
and decreed measures that were excellent though
tardy. First of all they sent away the Borains,
and made much of this extreme concession to their
workmen. Then they put an end to the military
occupation of the pits, which were no longer
threatened by the crushed strikers. They also
obtained silence regarding the sentinel who had
disappeared from the Voreux; the district had been
searched without finding either the gun or the
corpse, and although there was a suspicion of
crime, it was decided to consider the soldier a
deserter. In every way they thus tried to
attenuate matters, trembling with fear for the
morrow, judging it dangerous to acknowledge the
irresistible savagery of a crowd set free amid the
falling structure of the old world. And besides,
this work of conciliation did not prevent them
from bringing purely administrative affairs to a
satisfactory conclusion; for Deneulin had been
seen to return to the administration buildings,
where he met M. Hennebeau. The negotiations for
the purchase of Vandame continued, and it was
considered certain that Deneulin would accept the
Company's offers.
But what particularly stirred the country were the
great yellow posters which the directors had stuck
up in profusion on the walls. On them were to be
read these few lines, in very large letters:
"Workers of Montsou! We do not wish that the
errors of which you have lately seen the sad
effects should deprive sensible and willing
workmen of their livelihood. We shall therefore
reopen all the pits on Monday morning, and when
work is resumed we shall examine with care and
consideration those cases in which there may be
room for improvement. We shall, in fact, do all
that is just or possible to do." In one
morning the ten thousand colliers passed before
these placards. Not one of them spoke, many shook
their heads, others went away with trailing steps,
without changing one line in their motionless
faces.
Up till now the settlement of the
Deux-Cent-Quarante had persisted in its fierce
resistance. It seemed that the blood of their
mates, which had reddened the mud of the pit, was
barricading the road against the others. Scarcely
a dozen had gone down, merely Pierron and some
sneaks of his sort, whose departure and arrival
were gloomily watched without a gesture or a
threat. Therefore a deep suspicion greeted the
placard stuck on to the church. Nothing was said
about the returned certificates in that. Would
the Company refuse to take them on again? and the
fear of retaliations, the fraternal idea of
protesting against the dismissal of the more
compromised men, made them all obstinate still.
It was dubious; they would see. They would return
to the pit when these gentlemen were good enough
to put things plainly. Silence crushed the low
houses. Hunger itself seemed nothing; all might
die now that violent death had passed over their
roofs.
But one house, that of the Maheus, remained
especially black and mute in its overwhelming
grief. Since she had followed her man to the
cemetery, Maheude kept her teeth clenched. After
the battle, she had allowed Étienne to
bring back Catherine muddy and half dead; and as
she was undressing her, before the young man, in
order to put her to bed, she thought for a moment
that her daughter also had received a ball in the
belly, for the chemise was marked with large
patches of blood. But she soon understood that it
was the flood of puberty, which was at last
breaking out in the shock of this abominable day.
Ah! another piece of luck, that wound! A fine
present, to be able to make children for the
gendarmes to kill; and she never spoke to
Catherine, nor did she, indeed, talk to
Étienne. The latter slept with Jeanlin, at
the risk of being arrested, seized by such horror
at the idea of going back to the darkness of
Réquillart that he would have preferred a
prison. A shudder shook him, the horror of the
night after all those deaths, an unacknowledged
fear of the little soldier who slept down there
underneath the rocks. Besides, he dreamed of a
prison as of a refuge in the midst of the torment
of his defeat; but they did not trouble him, and
he dragged on his wretched hours, not knowing how
to weary out his body. Only at times Maheude
looked at both of them, at him and her daughter,
with a spiteful air, as though she were asking
them what they were doing in her house.
Once more they were all snoring in a heap. Father
Bonnemort occupied the former bed of the two
youngsters, who slept with Catherine now that poor
Alzire no longer dug her hump into her big
sister's ribs. It was when going to bed that the
mother felt the emptiness of the house by the
coldness of her bed, which was now too large. In
vain she took Estelle to fill the vacancy; that
did not replace her man, and she wept quietly for
hours. Then the days began to pass by as before,
always without bread, but without the luck to die
outright; things picked up here and there rendered
to the wretches the poor service of keeping them
alive. Nothing had changed in their existence,
only her man was gone.
On the afternoon of the fifth day, Étienne,
made miserable by the sight of this silent woman,
left the room, and walked slowly along the paved
street of the settlement. The inaction which
weighed on him impelled him to take constant
walks, with arms swinging idly and lowered head,
always tortured by the same thought. He tramped
thus for half an hour, when he felt, by an
increase in his discomfort, that his mates were
coming to their doors to look at him. His little
remaining popularity had been driven to the winds
by that fusillade, and he never passed now without
meeting fiery looks which pursued him. When he
raised his head there were threatening men there,
women drawing aside the curtains from their
windows; and beneath this still silent accusation
and the restrained anger of these eyes, enlarged
by hunger and tears, he became awkward and could
scarcely walk straight. These dumb reproaches
seemed to be always increasing behind him. He
became so terrified, lest he should hear the
entire settlement come out to shout its
wretchedness at him, that he returned shuddering.
But at the Maheus' the scene which met him still
further agitated him. Old Bonnemort was near the
cold fireplace, nailed to his chair ever since two
neighbours, on the day of the slaughter, had found
him on the ground, with his stick broken, struck
down like an old thunder-stricken tree. And while
Lénore and Henri, to beguile their hunger,
were scraping, with deafening noise, an old
saucepan in which cabbages had been boiled the day
before, Maheude, after having placed Estelle on
the table, was standing up threatening Catherine
with her fist.
"Say that again, by God! Just dare to say
that again!" Catherine had declared her
intention to go back to the Voreux. The idea of
not gaining her bread, of being thus tolerated in
her mother's house, like a useless animal that is
in the way, was becoming every day more
unbearable; and if it had not been for the fear of
Chaval she would have gone down on Tuesday.
She said again, stammering:
"What would you have? We can't go on doing
nothing. We should get bread, anyhow."
Maheude interrupted her.
"Listen to me: the first one of you who goes
to work, I'll do for you. No, that would be too
much, to kill the father and go on taking it out
of the children! I've had enough of it; I'd
rather see you all put in your coffins, like him
that's gone already."
And her long silence broke out into a furious
flood of words. A fine sum Catherine would bring
her! hardly thirty sous, to which they might add
twenty sous if the bosses were good enough to find
work for that brigand Jeanlin. Fifty sous, and
seven mouths to feed! The brats were only good to
swallow soup. As to the grandfather, he must have
broken something in his brain when he fell, for he
seemed imbecile; unless it had turned his blood to
see the soldiers firing at his mates.
"That's it, old man, isn't it? They've quite
done for you. It's no good having your hands
still strong; you're done for."
Bonnemort looked at her with his dim eyes without
understanding. He remained for hours with fixed
gaze, having no intelligence now except to spit
into a plate filled with ashes, which was put
beside him for cleanliness.
"And they've not settled his pension,
either," she went on. "And I'm sure
they won't give it, because of our ideas. No! I
tell you that we've too much to do with those
people who bring ill luck."
"But," Catherine ventured to say,
"they promise on the placard----"
"Just let me alone with your damned placard!
More bird-lime for catching us and eating us.
They can be mighty kind now that they have ripped
us open."
"But where shall we go, mother? They won't
keep us at the settlement, sure enough."
Maheude made a vague, terrified gesture. Where
should they go to? She did not know at all; she
avoided thinking, it made her mad. They would go
elsewhere--somewhere. And as the noise of the
saucepan was becoming unbearable, she turned round
on Lénore and Henri and boxed their ears.
The fall of Estelle, who had been crawling on all
fours, increased the disturbance. The mother
quieted her with a push--a good thing if it had
killed her! She spoke of Alzire; she wished the
others might have that child's luck. Then
suddenly she burst out into loud sobs, with her
head against the wall.
Étienne, who was standing by, did not dare
to interfere. He no longer counted for anything
in the house, and even the children drew back from
him suspiciously. But the unfortunate woman's
tears went to his heart, and he murmured:
"Come, come! courage! we must try to get
out of it." She did not seem to hear him, and
was bemoaning herself now in a low continuous
complaint.
"Ah! the wretchedness! is it possible?
Things did go on before these horrors. We ate our
bread dry, but we were all together; and what has
happened, good God! What have we done, then, that
we should have such troubles--some under the
earth, and the others with nothing left but to
long to get there too? It's true enough that they
harnessed us like horses to work, and it's not at
all a just sharing of things to be always getting
the stick and making rich people's fortunes bigger
without hope of ever tasting the good things.
There's no pleasure in life when hope goes. Yes,
that couldn't have gone on longer; we had to
breathe a bit. If we had only known! Is it
possible to make oneself so wretched through
wanting justice?"
Sighs swelled her breast, and her voice choked
with immense sadness.
"Then there are always some clever people
there who promise you that everything can be
arranged by just taking a little trouble. Then
one loses one's head, and one suffers so much from
things as they are that one asks for things that
can't be. Now, I was dreaming like a fool; I
seemed to see a life of good friendship with
everybody; I went off into the air, my faith!
into the clouds. And then one breaks one's back
when one tumbles down into the mud again. It's
not true; there's nothing over there of the things
that people tell of. What there is, is only
wretchedness, ah! wretchedness, as much as you
like of it, and bullets into the bargain."
Étienne listened to this lamentation, and
every tear struck him with remorse. He knew not
what to say to calm Maheude, broken by her
terrible fall from the heights of the ideal. She
had come back to the middle of the room, and was
now looking at him; she addressed him with
contemptuous familiarity in a last cry of rage:
"And you, do you talk of going back to the
pit, too, after driving us out of the bloody
place! I've nothing to reproach you with; but if
I were in your shoes I should be dead of grief by
now after causing such harm to the mates."
He was about to reply, but then shrugged his
shoulders in despair. What was the good of
explaining, for she would not understand in her
grief? And he went away, for he was suffering too
much, and resumed his wild walk outside.
There again he found the settlement apparently
waiting for him, the men at the doors, the women
at the windows. As soon as he appeared growls
were heard, and the crowd increased. The breath
of gossip, which had been swelling for four days,
was breaking out in a universal malediction.
Fists were stretched towards him, mothers
spitefully pointed him out to their boys, old men
spat as they looked at him. It was the change
which follows on the morrow of defeat, the fatal
reverse of popularity, an execration exasperated
by all the suffering endured without result. He
had to pay for famine and death.
Zacharie, who came up with Philoméne,
hustled Étienne as he went out, grinning
maliciously.
"Well, he gets fat. It's filling, then, to
live on other people's deaths?"
The Levaque woman had already come to her door
with Bouteloup. She spoke of Bébert, her
youngster, killed by a bullet, and cried:
"Yes, there are cowards who get children
murdered! Let him go and look for mine in the
earth if he wants to give it me back!"
She was forgetting her man in prison, for the
household was going on since Bouteloup remained;
but she thought of him, however, and went on in a
shrill voice:
"Get along! rascals may walk about while
good people are put away!"
In avoiding her, Étienne tumbled on to
Pierrone, who was running up across the gardens.
She had regarded her mother's death as a
deliverance, for the old woman's violence
threatened to get them hanged; nor did she weep
over Pierron's little girl, that street-walker
Lydie--a good riddance. But she joined in with
her neighbours with the idea of getting reconciled
with them.
"And my mother, eh, and the little girl? You
were seen; you were hiding yourself behind them
when they caught the lead instead of you!"
What was to be done? Strangle Pierronne and the
others, and fight the whole settlement?
Étienne wanted to do so for a moment. The
blood was throbbing in his head, he now looked
upon his mates as brutes, he was irritated to see
them so unintelligent and barbarous that they
wanted to revenge themselves on him for the logic
of facts. How stupid it all was! and he felt
disgust at his powerlessness to tame them again;
and satisfied himself with hastening his steps as
though he were deaf to abuse. Soon it became a
flight; every house hooted him as he passed, they
hastened on his heels, it was a whole nation
cursing him with a voice that was becoming like
thunder in its overwhelming hatred. It was he,
the exploiter, the murderer, who was the sole
cause of their misfortune. He rushed out of the
settlement, pale and terrified, with this yelling
crowd behind his back. When he at last reached
the main road most of them left him; but a few
persisted, until at the bottom of the slope before
the Avantage he met another group coming from the
Voreux.
Old Mouque and Chaval were there. Since the death
of his daughter Mouquette, and of his son Mouquet,
the old man had continued to act as groom without
a word of regret or complaint. Suddenly, when he
saw Étienne, he was shaken by fury, tears
broke out from his eyes, and a flood of coarse
words burst from his mouth, black and bleeding
from his habit of chewing tobacco.
"You devil! you bloody swine! you filthy
snout! Wait, you've got to pay me for my poor
children; you'll have to come to it!"
He picked up a brick, broke it, and threw both
pieces. "Yes! yes! clear him off!"
shouted Chaval, who was grinning in excitement,
delighted at this vengeance. "Every one gets
his turn; now you're up against the wall, you
dirty hound!"
And he also attacked Étienne with stones.
A savage clamour arose; they all took up bricks,
broke them, and threw them, to rip him open, as
they would like to have done to the soldiers. He
was dazed and could not flee; he faced them,
trying to calm them with phrases. His old
speeches, once so warmly received, came back to
his lips. He repeated the words with which he had
intoxicated them at the time when he could keep
them in hand like a faithful flock; but his power
was dead, and only stones replied to him. He had
just been struck on the left arm, and was drawing
back, in great peril, when he found himself hemmed
in against the front of the Avantage.
For the last few moments Rasseneur had been at his
door.
"Come in," he said simply.
Étienne hesitated; it choked him to take
refuge there.
"Come in; then I'll speak to them."
He resigned himself, and took refuge at the other
end of the parlour, while the innkeeper filled up
the doorway with his broad shoulders.
"Look here, my friends, just be reasonable.
You know very well that I've never deceived you.
I've always been in favour of quietness, and if
you had listened to me, you certainly wouldn't be
where you are now."
Rolling his shoulders and belly, he went on at
length, allowing his facile eloquence to flow with
the lulling gentleness of warm water. And all his
old success came back; he regained his popularity,
naturally and without an effort, as if he had
never been hooted and called a coward a month
before. Voices arose in approval: "Very
good! we are with you! that is the way to put
it!" Thundering applause broke out.
Étienne, in the background, grew faint, and
there was bitterness at his heart. He recalled
Rasseneur's prediction in the forest, threatening
him with the ingratitude of the mob. What
imbecile brutality! What an abominable
forgetfulness of old services! It was a blind
force which constantly devoured itself. And
beneath his anger at seeing these brutes spoil
their own cause, there was despair at his own fall
and the tragic end of his ambition. What! was it
already done for! He remembered hearing beneath
the beeches three thousand hearts beating to the
echo of his own. On that day he had held his
popularity in both hands. Those people belonged
to him; he felt that he was their master. Mad
dreams had then intoxicated him. Montsou at his
feet, Paris beyond, becoming a deputy perhaps,
crushing the middle class in a speech, the first
speech ever pronounced by a workman in a
parliament. And it was all over! He awakened,
miserable and detested; his people were dismissing
him by flinging bricks.
Rasseneur's voice rose higher:
"Never will violence succeed; the world can't
be re-made in a day. Those who have promised you
to change it all at one stroke are either making
fun of you or they are rascals!"
"Bravo! bravo!" shouted the crowd.
Who then was the guilty one? And this question
which Étienne put to himself overwhelmed
him more than ever. Was it in fact his fault,
this misfortune which was making him bleed, the
wretchedness of some, the murder of others, these
women, these children, lean, and without bread?
He had had that lamentable vision one evening
before the catastrophe. But then a force was
lifting him, he was carried away with his mates.
Besides, he had never led them, it was they who
led him, who obliged him to do things which he
would never have done if it were not for the shock
of that crowd pushing behind him. At each new
violence he had been stupefied by the course of
events, for he had neither foreseen nor desired
any of them. Could he anticipate, for instance,
that his followers in the settlement would one day
stone him? These infuriated people lied when they
accused him of having promised them an existence
all fodder and laziness. And in this
justification, in this reasoning, in which he
tried to fight against his remorse, was hidden the
anxiety that he had not risen to the height of his
task; it was the doubt of the half-cultured man
still perplexing him. But he felt himself at the
end of his courage, he was no longer at heart with
his mates; he feared this enormous mass of the
people, blind and irresistible, moving like a
force of nature, sweeping away everything, outside
rules and theories. A certain repugnance was
detaching him from them--the discomfort of his new
tastes, the slow movement of all his being towards
a superior class.
At this moment Rasseneur's voice was lost in the
midst of enthusiastic shouts:
"Hurrah for Rasseneur! he's the fellow!
Bravo, bravo!"
The innkeeper shut the door, while the band
dispersed; and the two men looked at each other in
silence. They both shrugged their shoulders.
They finished up by having a drink together.
On the same day there was a great dinner at
Piolaine; they were celebrating the betrothal of
Négrel and Cécile. Since the
previous evening the Grégoires had had the
dining-room waxed and the drawing-room dusted.
Mélanie reigned in the kitchen, watching
over the roasts and stirring the sauces, the odour
of which ascended to the attics. It had been
decided that Francis, the coachman, should help
Honorine to wait. The gardener's wife would wash
up, and the gardener would open the gate. Never
had the substantial, patriarchal old house been in
such a state of gaiety.
Everything went off beautifully, Madame Hennebeau
was charming with Cécile, and she smiled at
Négrel when the Montsou lawyer gallantly
proposed the health of the future household. M.
Hennebeau was also very amiable. His smiling face
struck the guests. The report circulated that he
was rising in favour with the directors, and that
he would soon be made an officer of the Legion of
Honour, on account of the energetic manner in
which he had put down the strike. Nothing was
said about recent events; but there was an air of
triumph in the general joy, and the dinner became
the official celebration of a victory. At last,
then, they were saved, and once more they could
begin to eat and sleep in peace. A discreet
allusion was made to those dead whose blood the
Voreux mud had yet scarcely drunk up. It was a
necessary lesson: and they were all affected when
the Grégoires added that it was now the
duty of all to go and heal the wounds in the
settlements. They had regained their benevolent
placidity, excusing their brave miners, whom they
could already see again at the bottom of the
mines, giving a good example of everlasting
resignation. The Montsou notables, who had now
left off trembling, agreed that this question of
the wage system ought to be studied, cautiously.
The roasts came on; and the victory became
complete when M. Hennebeau read a letter from the
bishop announcing Abbé Ranvier's removal.
The middle class throughout the province had been
roused to anger by the story of this priest who
treated the soldiers as murderers. And when the
dessert appeared the lawyer resolutely declared
that he was a free-thinker. Deneulin was there
with his two daughters. In the midst of the joy,
he forced himself to hide the melancholy of his
ruin. That very morning he had signed the sale of
his Vandame concession to the Montsou Company.
With the knife at his throat he had submitted to
the directors' demands, at last giving up to them
that prey they had been on the watch for so long,
scarcely obtaining from them the money necessary
to pay off his creditors. He had even accepted,
as a lucky chance, at the last moment, their offer
to keep him as divisional engineer, thus resigning
himself to watch, as a simple salaried servant,
over that pit which had swallowed up his fortune.
It was the knell of small personal enterprises,
the approaching disappearance of the masters,
eaten up, one by one, by the ever-hungry ogre of
capital, drowned in the rising flood of great
companies. He alone paid the expenses of the
strike; he understood that they were drinking to
his disaster when they drank to M. Hennebeau's
rosette. And he only consoled himself a little
when he saw the fine courage of Lucie and Jeanne,
who looked charming in their done-up toilettes,
laughing at the downfall, like happy tomboys
disdainful of money.
When they passed into the drawing-room for coffee,
M. Grégoire drew his cousin aside and
congratulated him on the courage of his decision.
"What would you have? Your real mistake was
to risk the million of your Montsou denier over
Vandame. You gave yourself a terrible wound, and
it has melted away in that dog's labour, while
mine, which has not stirred from my drawer, still
keeps me comfortably doing nothing, as it will
keep my grandchildren's children."