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Title: Germinal

Author: Émile Zola

Translator: Havelock Ellis

Release date: February 8, 2018 [eBook #56528]
Most recently updated: September 23, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/56528

Credits: Dagny and Marc D’Hooghe

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GERMINAL ***

GERMINAL
BY

ÉMILE ZOLA

Translated and Introduced

By

Havelock Ellis

J. M. DENT & SONS LTD.

Aldine House—Bedford St.—London

1885

Contents

INTRODUCTION BY HAVELOCK ELLIS

'GERMINAL' was published in 1885, after occupying Zola during the
previous year. In accordance with his usual custom—but to a greater extent
than with any other of his books except La Débâcle—he accumulated
material beforehand. For six months he travelled about the coal-mining
district in northern France and Belgium, especially the Borinage around
Mons, note-book in hand. 'He was inquisitive, was that gentleman', miner
told Sherard who visited the neighbourhood at a later period and found that
the miners in every village knew Germinal. That was a tribute of admiration
the book deserved, but it was never one of Zola's most popular novels; it
was neither amusing enough nor outrageous enough to attract the multitude.
Yet Germinal occupies a place among Zola's works which is constantly
becoming more assured, so that to some critics it even begins to seem the
only book of his that in the end may survive. In his own time, as we know,
the accredited critics of the day could find no condemnation severe enough
for Zola. Brunetière attacked him perpetually with a fury that seemed
inexhaustible; Schérer could not even bear to hear his name mentioned;

Anatole France, though he lived to relent, thought it would have been better
if he had never been born. Even at that time, however, there were critics
who inclined to view Germinal more favourably. Thus Faguet, who was the
recognized academic critic of the end of the last century, while he held that
posterity would be unable to understand how Zola could ever have been
popular, yet recognized him as in Germinal the heroic representative of
democracy, incomparable in his power of describing crowds, and he
realized how marvellous is the conclusion of this book.
To-day, when critics view Zola In the main with indifference rather than
with horror, although he still retains his popular favour, the distinction of
Germinal is yet more clearly recognized. Seillière, while regarding the
capitalistic conditions presented as now of an ancient and almost extinct
type, yet sees Germinal standing out as 'the poem of social mysticism',
while André Gide, a completely modern critic who has left a deep mark on
the present generation, observes somewhere that it may nowadays cause
surprise that he should refer with admiration to Germinal, but it is a
masterly book that fills him with astonishment; he can hardly believe that it
was written in French and still less that it should have been written in any
other language; it seems that it should have been created in some
international tongue.
The high place thus claimed for Germinal will hardly seem exaggerated.
The book was produced when Zola had at length achieved the full mastery
of his art and before his hand had, as in his latest novels, begun to lose its
firm grasp. The subject lent itself, moreover, to his special aptitude for
presenting in vivid outline great human groups, and to his special sympathy
with the collective emotions and social aspirations of such groups. We do
not, as so often in Zola's work, become painfully conscious that he is
seeking to reproduce aspects of life with which he is imperfectly
acquainted, or fitting them into scientific formulas which he has imperfectly
understood. He shows a masterly grip of each separate group, and each
represents some essential element of the whole; they are harmoniously
balanced, and their mutual action and reaction leads on inevitably to the
splendid tragic dose, with yet its great promise for the future. I will not here
discuss Zola's literary art (I have done so in my book of Affirmations); it is
enough to say that, though he was not a great master of style, Zola never
again wrote so finely as here.

A word may be added to explain how this translation fell to the lot of one
whose work has been in other fields. In 1893 the late A. Texeira de Mattos
was arranging for private issue a series of complete versions of some of
Zola's chief novels and offered to assign Germinal to me. My time was
taken up with preliminary but as yet unfruitful preparation for what I
regarded as my own special task in life, and I felt that I must not neglect the
opportunity of spending my spare time in making a modest addition to my
income. My wife readily fell into the project and agreed, on the
understanding that we shared the proceeds, to act as my amanuensis. So, in
the little Cornish cottage over the sea we then occupied, the evenings of the
early months of 1894 were spent over Germinal, I translating aloud, and she
with swift efficient untiring pen following, now and then bettering my
English dialogue with her pungent wit. In this way I was able to gain a
more minute insight into the details of Zola's work, and a more impressive
vision of the massive structure he here raised, than can easily be acquired
by the mere reader. That joint task has remained an abidingly pleasant
memory. It is, moreover, a satisfaction to me to know that I have been
responsible, however inadequately, for the only complete English version of
this wonderful book, 'a great fresco,' as Zola himself called it, a great prose
epic, as it has seemed to some, worthy to compare with the great verse epics
of old.

PART ONE

CHAPTER I

Over the open plain, beneath a starless sky as dark and thick as ink, a man
walked alone along the highway from Marchiennes to Montsou, a straight
paved road ten kilometres in length, intersecting the beetroot fields. He
could not even see the black soil before him, and only felt the immense flat
horizon by the gusts of March wind, squalls as strong as on the sea, and
frozen from sweeping leagues of marsh and naked earth. No tree could be

seen against the sky, and the road unrolled as straight as a pier in the midst
of the blinding spray of darkness.
The man had set out from Marchiennes about two o'clock. He walked with
long strides, shivering beneath his worn cotton jacket and corduroy
breeches. A small parcel tied in a check handkerchief troubled him much,
and he pressed it against his side, sometimes with one elbow, sometimes
with the other, so that he could slip to the bottom of his pockets both the
benumbed hands that bled beneath the lashes of the wind. A single idea
occupied his head—the empty head of a workman without work and
without lodging—the hope that the cold would be less keen after sunrise.
For an hour he went on thus, when on the left, two kilometres from
Montsou, he saw red flames, three fires burning in the open air and
apparently suspended. At first he hesitated, half afraid. Then he could not
resist the painful need to warm his hands for a moment.
The steep road led downwards, and everything disappeared. The man saw
on his right a paling, a wall of coarse planks shutting in a line of rails, while
a grassy slope rose on the left surmounted by confused gables, a vision of a
village with low uniform roofs. He went on some two hundred paces.
Suddenly, at a bend in the road, the fires reappeared close to him, though he
could not understand how they burnt so high in the dead sky, like smoky
moons. But on the level soil another sight had struck him. It was a heavy
mass, a low pile of buildings from which rose the silhouette of a factory
chimney; occasional gleams appeared from dirty windows, five or six
melancholy lanterns were hung outside to frames of blackened wood, which
vaguely outlined the profiles of gigantic stages; and from this fantastic
apparition, drowned in night and smoke, a single voice arose, the thick,
long breathing of a steam escapement that could not be seen.
Then the man recognized a pit. His despair returned. What was the good?
There would be no work. Instead of turning towards the buildings he
decided at last to ascend the pit bank, on which burnt in iron baskets the
three coal fires which gave light and warmth for work. The labourers in the
cutting must have been working late; they were still throwing out the
useless rubbish. Now he heard the landers push the wagons on the stages.
He could distinguish living shadows tipping over the trams or tubs near
each fire.

"Good day," he said, approaching one of the baskets.
Turning his back to the fire, the carman stood upright. He was an old man,
dressed in knitted violet wool with a rabbit-skin cap on his head; while his
horse, a great yellow horse, waited with the immobility of stone while they
emptied the six trains he drew. The workman employed at the tipping-
cradle, a red-haired lean fellow, did not hurry himself; he pressed on the
lever with a sleepy hand. And above, the wind grew stronger—an icy north
wind—and its great, regular breaths passed by like the strokes of a scythe.
"Good day," replied the old man. There was silence. The man, who felt that
he was being looked at suspiciously, at once told his name.
"I am called Étienne Lantier. I am an engine-man. Any work here?"
The flames lit him up. He might be about twenty-one years of age, a very
dark, handsome man, who looked strong in spite of his thin limbs.
The carman, thus reassured, shook his head.
"Work for an engine-man? No, no! There were two came yesterday. There's
nothing."
A gust cut short their speech. Then Étienne asked, pointing to the sombre
pile of buildings at the foot of the platform:
"A pit, isn't it?"
The old man this time could not reply: he was strangled by a violent cough.
At last he expectorated, and his expectoration left a black patch on the
purple soil.
"Yes, a pit. The Voreux. There! The settlement is quite near."
In his turn, and with extended arm, he pointed out in the night the village of
which the young man had vaguely seen the roofs. But the six trams were
empty, and he followed them without cracking his whip, his legs stiffened
by rheumatism; while the great yellow horse went on of itself, pulling
heavily between the rails beneath a new gust which bristled its coat.
The Voreux was now emerging from the gloom. Étienne, who forgot
himself before the stove, warming his poor bleeding hands, looked round
and could see each part of the pit: the shed tarred with siftings, the pit-
frame, the vast chamber of the winding machine, the square turret of the

exhaustion pump. This pit, piled up in the bottom of a hollow, with its squat
brick buildings, raising its chimney like a threatening horn, seemed to him
to have the evil air of a gluttonous beast crouching there to devour the earth.
While examining it, he thought of himself, of his vagabond existence these
eight days he had been seeking work. He saw himself again at his workshop
at the railway, delivering a blow at his foreman, driven from Lille, driven
from everywhere. On Saturday he had arrived at Marchiennes, where they
said that work was to be had at the Forges, and there was nothing, neither at
the Forges nor at Sonneville's. He had been obliged to pass the Sunday
hidden beneath the wood of a cartwright's yard, from which the watchman
had just turned him out at two o'clock in the morning. He had nothing, not a
penny, not even a crust; what should he do, wandering along the roads
without aim, not knowing where to shelter himself from the wind? Yes, it
was certainly a pit; the occasional lanterns lighted up the square; a door,
suddenly opened, had enabled him to catch sight of the furnaces in a clear
light. He could explain even the escapement of the pump, that thick, long
breathing that went on without ceasing, and which seemed to be the
monster's congested respiration.
The workman, expanding his back at the tipping-cradle, had not even lifted
his eyes on Étienne, and the latter was about to pick up his little bundle,
which had fallen to the earth, when a spasm of coughing announced the
carman's return. Slowly he emerged from the darkness, followed by the
yellow horse drawing six more laden trams.
"Are there factories at Montsou?" asked the young man.
The old man expectorated, then replied in the wind:
"Oh, it isn't factories that are lacking. Should have seen it three or four
years ago. Everything was roaring then. There were not men enough; there
never were such wages. And now they are tightening their bellies again.
Nothing but misery in the country; every one is being sent away; workshops
closing one after the other. It is not the Emperor's fault, perhaps; but why
should he go and fight in America? without counting that the beasts are
dying from cholera, like the people."
Then, in short sentences and with broken breath, the two continued to
complain. Étienne narrated his vain wanderings of the past week: must one,
then, die of hunger? Soon the roads would be full of beggars.

"Yes," said the old man, "this will turn out badly, for God does not allow so
many Christians to be thrown on the street."
"We don't have meat every day."
"But if one had bread!"
"True, if one only had bread."
Their voices were lost, gusts of wind carrying away the words in a
melancholy howl.
"Here!" began the carman again very loudly, turning towards the south.
"Montsou is over there."
And stretching out his hand again he pointed out invisible spots in the
darkness as he named them. Below, at Montsou, the Fauvelle sugar works
were still going, but the Hoton sugar works had just been dismissing hands;
there were only the Dutilleul flour mill and the Bleuze rope walk for mine-
cables which kept up. Then, with a large gesture he indicated the north half
of the horizon: the Sonneville workshops had not received two-thirds of
their usual orders; only two of the three blast furnaces of the Marchiennes
Forges were alight; finally, at the Gagebois glass works a strike was
threatening, for there was talk of a reduction of wages.
"I know, I know," replied the young man at each indication. "I have been
there."
"With us here things are going on at present," added the carman; "but the
pits have lowered their output. And see opposite, at the Victoire, there are
also only two batteries of coke furnaces alight."
He expectorated, and set out behind his sleepy horse, after harnessing it to
the empty trams.
Now Étienne could oversee the entire country. The darkness remained
profound, but the old man's hand had, as it were, filled it with great
miseries, which the young man unconsciously felt at this moment around
him everywhere in the limitless tract. Was it not a cry of famine that the
March wind rolled up across this naked plain? The squalls were furious:
they seemed to bring the death of labour, a famine which would kill many
men. And with wandering eyes he tried to pierce shades, tormented at once
by the desire and by the fear of seeing. Everything was hidden in the

unknown depths of the gloomy night. He only perceived, very far off, the
blast furnaces and the coke ovens. The latter, with their hundreds of
chimneys, planted obliquely, made lines of red flame; while the two towers,
more to the left, burnt blue against the blank sky, like giant torches. It
resembled a melancholy conflagration. No other stars rose on the
threatening horizon except these nocturnal fires in a land of coal and iron.
"You belong to Belgium, perhaps?" began again the carman, who had
returned behind Étienne.
This time he only brought three trams. Those at least could be tipped over;
an accident which had happened to the cage, a broken screw nut, would
stop work for a good quarter of an hour. At the bottom of the pit bank there
was silence; the landers no longer shook the stages with a prolonged
vibration. One only heard from the pit the distant sound of a hammer
tapping on an iron plate.
"No, I come from the South," replied the young man.
The workman, after having emptied the trams, had seated himself on the
earth, glad of the accident, maintaining his savage silence; he had simply
lifted his large, dim eyes to the carman, as if annoyed by so many words.
The latter, indeed, did not usually talk at such length. The unknown man's
face must have pleased him that he should have been taken by one of these
itchings for confidence which sometimes make old people talk aloud even
when alone.
"I belong to Montsou," he said, "I am called Bonnemort."
"Is it a nickname?" asked Étienne, astonished.
The old man made a grimace of satisfaction and pointed to the Voreux:
"Yes, yes; they have pulled me three times out of that, torn to pieces, once
with all my hair scorched, once with my gizzard full of earth, and another
time with my belly swollen with water, like a frog. And then, when they
saw that nothing would kill me, they called me Bonnemort for a joke."
His cheerfulness increased, like the creaking of an ill-greased pulley, and
ended by degenerating into a terrible spasm of coughing. The fire basket
now clearly lit up his large head, with its scanty white hair and flat, livid
face, spotted with bluish patches. He was short, with an enormous neck,

projecting calves and heels, and long arms, with massive hands falling to
his knees. For the rest, like his horse, which stood immovable, without
suffering from the wind, he seemed to be made of stone; he had no
appearance of feeling either the cold or the gusts that whistled at his ears.
When he coughed his throat was torn by a deep rasping; he spat at the foot
of the basket and the earth was blackened.
Étienne looked at him and at the ground which he had thus stained.
"Have you been working long at the mine?"
Bonnemort flung open both arms.
"Long? I should think so. I was not eight when I went down into the Voreux
and I am now fifty-eight. Reckon that up! I have been everything down
there; at first trammer, then putter, when I had the strength to wheel, then
pikeman for eighteen years. Then, because of my cursed legs, they put me
into the earth cutting, to bank up and patch, until they had to bring me up,
because the doctor said I should stay there for good. Then, after five years
of that, they made me carman. Eh? that's fine—fifty years at the mine,
forty-five down below."
While he was speaking, fragments of burning coal, which now and then fell
from the basket, lit up his pale face with their red reflection.
"They tell me to rest," he went on, "but I'm not going to; I'm not such a fool.
I can get on for two years longer, to my sixtieth, so as to get the pension of
one hundred and eighty francs. If I wished them good evening to-day they
would give me a hundred and fifty at once. They are cunning, the beggars.
Besides, I am sound, except my legs. You see, it's the water which has got
under my skin through being always wet in the cuttings. There are days
when I can't move a paw without screaming."
A spasm of coughing interrupted him again.
"And that makes you cough so?" said Étienne.
But he vigorously shook his head. Then, when he could speak:
"No, no! I caught cold a month ago. I never used to cough; now I can't get
rid of it. And the queer thing is that I spit, that I spit——"

The rasping was again heard in his throat, followed by the black
expectoration.
"Is it blood?" asked Étienne, at last venturing to question him.
Bonnemort slowly wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
"It's coal. I've got enough in my carcass to warm me till I die. And it's five
years since I put a foot down below. I stored it up, it seems, without
knowing it; it keeps you alive!"
There was silence. The distant hammer struck regular blows in the pit, and
the wind passed by with its moan, like a cry of hunger and weariness
coming out of the depths of the night. Before the flames which grew low,
the old man went on in lower tones, chewing over again his old
recollections. Ah, certainly: it was not yesterday that he and his began
hammering at the seam. The family had worked for the Montsou Mining
Company since it started, and that was long ago, a hundred and six years
already. His grandfather, Guillaume Maheu, an urchin of fifteen then, had
found the rich coal at Réquillart, the Company's first pit, an old abandoned
pit to-day down below near the Fauvelle sugar works. All the country knew
it, and as a proof, the discovered seam was called the Guillaume, after his
grandfather. He had not known him—a big fellow, it was said, very strong,
who died of old age at sixty. Then his father, Nicolas Maheu, called Le
Rouge, when hardly forty years of age had died in the pit, which was being
excavated at that time: a landslip, a complete slide, and the rock drank his
blood and swallowed his bones. Two of his uncles and his three brothers,
later on, also left their skins there. He, Vincent Maheu, who had come out
almost whole, except that his legs were rather shaky, was looked upon as a
knowing fellow. But what could one do? One must work; one worked here
from father to son, as one would work at anything else. His son, Toussaint
Maheu, was being worked to death there now, and his grandsons, and all his
people, who lived opposite in the settlement. A hundred and six years of
mining, the youngsters after the old ones, for the same master. Eh? there
were many bourgeois that could not give their history so well!
"Anyhow, when one has got enough to eat!" murmured Étienne again.
"That is what I say. As long as one has bread to eat one can live."

Bonnemort was silent; and his eyes turned towards the settlement, where
lights were appearing one by one. Four o'clock struck in the Montsou tower
and the cold became keener.
"And is your company rich?" asked Étienne.
The old man shrugged his shoulders, and then let them fall as if
overwhelmed beneath an avalanche of gold.
"Ah, yes! Ah, yes! Not perhaps so rich as its neighbour, the Anzin
Company. But millions and millions all the same. They can't count it.
Nineteen pits, thirteen at work, the Voreux, the Victoire, Crévecœur, Mirou,
St. Thomas, Madeleine, Feutry-Cantel, and still more, and six for pumping
or ventilation, like Réquillart. Ten thousand workers, concessions reaching
over sixty-seven communes, an output of five thousand tons a day, a
railway joining all the pits, and workshops, and factories! Ah, yes! ah, yes!
there's money there!"
The rolling of trams on the stages made the big yellow horse prick his ears.
The cage was evidently repaired below, and the landers had got to work
again. While he was harnessing his beast to re-descend, the carman added
gently, addressing himself to the horse:
"Won't do to chatter, lazy good-for-nothing! If Monsieur Hennebeau knew
how you waste your time!"
Étienne looked thoughtfully into the night. He asked:
"Then Monsieur Hennebeau owns the mine?"
"No," explained the old man, "Monsieur Hennebeau is only the general
manager; he is paid just the same as us."
With a gesture the young man pointed into the darkness.
"Who does it all belong to, then?"
But Bonnemort was for a moment so suffocated by a new and violent spasm
that he could not get his breath. Then, when he had expectorated and wiped
the black froth from his lips, he replied in the rising wind:
"Eh? all that belong to? Nobody knows. To people."

And with his hand he pointed in the darkness to a vague spot, an unknown
and remote place, inhabited by those people for whom the Maheus had been
hammering at the seam for more than a century. His voice assumed a tone
of religious awe; it was as if he were speaking of an inaccessible tabernacle
containing a sated and crouching god to whom they had given all their flesh
and whom they had never seen.
"At all events, if one can get enough bread to eat," repeated Étienne, for the
third time, without any apparent transition.
"Indeed, yes; if we could always get bread, it would be too good."
The horse had started; the carman, in his turn, disappeared, with the trailing
step of an invalid. Near the tipping-cradle the workman had not stirred,
gathered up in a ball, burying his chin between his knees, with his great dim
eyes fixed on emptiness.
When he had picked up his bundle, Étienne still remained at the same spot.
He felt the gusts freezing his back, while his chest was burning before the
large fire. Perhaps, all the same, it would be as well to inquire at the pit, the
old man might not know. Then he resigned himself; he would accept any
work. Where should he go, and what was to become of him in this country
famished for lack of work? Must he leave his carcass behind a wall, like a
strayed dog? But one doubt troubled him, a fear of the Voreux in the middle
of this flat plain, drowned in so thick a night. At every gust the wind
seemed to rise as if it blew from an ever-broadening horizon. No dawn
whitened the dead sky. The blast furnaces alone flamed, and the coke ovens,
making the darkness redder without illuminating the unknown. And the
Voreux, at the bottom of its hole, with its posture as of an evil beast,
continued to crunch, breathing with a heavier and slower respiration,
troubled by its painful digestion of human flesh.

CHAPTER II

In the middle of the fields of wheat and beetroot, the Deux-Cent-Quarante
settlement slept beneath the black night. One could vaguely distinguish four

immense blocks of small houses, back to back, barracks or hospital blocks,
geometric and parallel, separated by three large avenues which were
divided into gardens of equal size. And over the desert plain one heard only
the moan of squalls through the broken trellises of the enclosures.
In the Maheus' house, No. 16 in the second block, nothing was stirring. The
single room that occupied the first floor was drowned in a thick darkness
which seemed to overwhelm with its weight the sleep of the beings whom
one felt to be there in a mass, with open mouths, overcome by weariness. In
spite of the keen cold outside, there was a living heat in the heavy air, that
hot stuffiness of even the best kept bedrooms, the smell of human cattle.
Four o'clock had struck from the clock in the room on the ground floor, but
nothing yet stirred; one heard the piping of slender respirations,
accompanied by two series of sonorous snores. And suddenly Catherine got
up. In her weariness she had, as usual, counted the four strokes through the
floor without the strength to arouse herself completely. Then, throwing her
legs from under the bedclothes, she felt about, at last struck a match and
lighted the candle. But she remained seated, her head so heavy that it fell
back between her shoulders, seeking to return to the bolster.
Now the candle lighted up the room, a square room with two windows, and
filled with three beds. There could be seen a cupboard, a table, and two old
walnut chairs, whose smoky tone made hard, dark patches against the walls,
which were painted a light yellow. And nothing else, only clothes hung to
nails, a jug placed on the floor, and a red pan which served as a basin. In the
bed on the left, Zacharie, the eldest, a youth of one-and-twenty, was asleep
with his brother Jeanlin, who had completed his eleventh year; in the right-
hand bed two urchins, Lénore and Henri, the first six years old, the second
four, slept in each other's arms, while Catherine shared the third bed with
her sister Alzire, so small for her nine years that Catherine would not have
felt her near her if it were not for the little invalid's humpback, which
pressed into her side. The glass door was open; one could perceive the
lobby of a landing, a sort of recess in which the father and the mother
occupied a fourth bed, against which they had been obliged to install the
cradle of the latest comer, Estelle, aged scarcely three months.
However, Catherine made a desperate effort. She stretched herself, she
fidgeted her two hands in the red hair which covered her forehead and neck.

Slender for her fifteen years, all that showed of her limbs outside the
narrow sheath of her chemise were her bluish feet, as it were tattooed with
coal, and her slight arms, the milky whiteness of which contrasted with the
sallow tint of her face, already spoilt by constant washing with black soap.
A final yawn opened her rather large mouth with splendid teeth against the
chlorotic pallor of her gums; while her grey eyes were crying in her fight
with sleep, with a look of painful distress and weariness which seemed to
spread over the whole of her naked body.
But a growl came from the landing, and Maheu's thick voice stammered;
"Devil take it! It's time. Is it you lighting up, Catherine?"
"Yes, father; it has just struck downstairs."
"Quick then, lazy. If you had danced less on Sunday you would have woke
us earlier. A fine lazy life!"
And he went on grumbling, but sleep returned to him also. His reproaches
became confused, and were extinguished in fresh snoring.
The young girl, in her chemise, with her naked feet on the floor, moved
about in the room. As she passed by the bed of Henri and Lénore, she
replaced the coverlet which had slipped down. They did not wake, lost in
the strong sleep of childhood. Alzire, with open eyes, had turned to take the
warm place of her big sister without speaking.
"I say, now, Zacharie—and you, Jeanlin; I say, now!" repeated Catherine,
standing before her two brothers, who were still wallowing with their noses
in the bolster.
She had to seize the elder by the shoulder and shake him; then, while he
was muttering abuse, it came into her head to uncover them by snatching
away the sheet. That seemed funny to her, and she began to laugh when she
saw the two boys struggling with naked legs.
"Stupid, leave me alone," growled Zacharie in ill-temper, sitting up. "I don't
like tricks. Good Lord! Say it's time to get up?"
He was lean and ill-made, with a long face and a chin which showed signs
of a sprouting beard, yellow hair, and the anaemic pallor which belonged to
his whole family.

His shirt had rolled up to his belly, and he lowered it, not from modesty but
because he was not warm.
"It has struck downstairs," repeated Catherine; "come! up! father's angry."
Jeanlin, who had rolled himself up, closed his eyes, saying: "Go and hang
yourself; I'm going to sleep."
She laughed again, the laugh of a good-natured girl. He was so small, his
limbs so thin, with enormous joints, enlarged by scrofula, that she took him
up in her arms. But he kicked about, his apish face, pale and wrinkled, with
its green eyes and great ears, grew pale with the rage of weakness. He said
nothing, he bit her right breast.
"Beastly fellow!" she murmured, keeping back a cry and putting him on the
floor.
Alzire was silent, with the sheet tucked under her chin, but she had not gone
to sleep again. With her intelligent invalid's eyes she followed her sister and
her two brothers, who were now dressing. Another quarrel broke out around
the pan, the boys hustled the young girl because she was so long washing
herself. Shirts flew about: and, while still half-asleep, they eased themselves
without shame, with the tranquil satisfaction of a litter of puppies that have
grown up together. Catherine was ready first. She put on her miner's
breeches, then her canvas jacket, and fastened the blue cap on her knotted
hair; in these clean Monday clothes she had the appearance of a little man;
nothing remained to indicate her sex except the slight roll of her hips.
"When the old man comes back," said Zacharie, mischievously, "he'll like
to find the bed unmade. You know I shall tell him it's you."
The old man was the grandfather, Bonnemort, who, as he worked during the
night, slept by day, so that the bed was never cold; there was always
someone snoring there. Without replying, Catherine set herself to arrange
the bed-clothes and tuck them in. But during the last moments sounds had
been heard behind the wall in the next house. These brick buildings,
economically put up by the Company, were so thin that the least breath
could be heard through them. The inmates lived there, elbow to elbow, from
one end to the other; and no fact of family life remained hidden, even from
the youngsters. A heavy step had tramped up the staircase; then there was a
kind of soft fall, followed by a sigh of satisfaction.

"Good!" said Catherine. "Levaque has gone down, and here is Bouteloup
come to join the Levaque woman."
Jeanlin grinned; even Alzire's eyes shone. Every morning they made fun of
the household of three next door, a pikeman who lodged a worker in the
cutting, an arrangement which gave the woman two men, one by night, the
other by day.
"Philoméne is coughing," began Catherine again, after listening.
She was speaking of the eldest Levaque, a big girl of nineteen, and the
mistress of Zacharie, by whom she had already had two children; her chest
was so delicate that she was only a sifter at the pit, never having been able
to work below.
"Pooh! Philoméne!" replied Zacharie, "she cares a lot, she's asleep. It's
hoggish to sleep till six."
He was putting on his breeches when an idea occurred to him, and he
opened the window. Outside in the darkness the settlement was awaking,
lights were dawning one by one between the laths of the shutters. And there
was another dispute: he leant out to watch if he could not see, coming out of
Pierron's opposite, the captain of the Voreux, who was accused of sleeping
with the Pierron woman, while his sister called to him that since the day
before the husband had taken day duty at the pit-eye, and that certainly
Dansaert could not have slept there that night. Whilst the air entered in icy
whiffs, both of them, becoming angry, maintained the truth of their own
information, until cries and tears broke out. It was Estelle, in her cradle,
vexed by the cold.
Maheu woke up suddenly. What had he got in his bones, then? Here he was
going to sleep again like a good-for-nothing. And he swore so vigorously
that the children became still. Zacharie and Jeanlin finished washing with
slow weariness. Alzire, with her large, open eyes, continually stared. The
two youngsters, Lénore and Henri, in each other's arms, had not stirred,
breathing in the same quiet way in spite of the noise.
"Catherine, give me the candle," called out Maheu.
She finished buttoning her jacket, and carried the candle into the closet,
leaving her brothers to look for their clothes by what light came through the
door. Her father jumped out of bed. She did not stop, but went downstairs in

her coarse woollen stockings, feeling her way, and lighted another candle in
the parlour, to prepare the coffee. All the sabots of the family were beneath
the sideboard.
"Will you be still, vermin?" began Maheu, again, exasperated by Estelle's
cries which still went on.
He was short, like old Bonnemort, and resembled him, with his strong head,
his flat, livid face, beneath yellow hair cut very short. The child screamed
more than ever, frightened by those great knotted arms which were held
above her.
"Leave her alone; you know that she won't be still," said his wife, stretching
herself in the middle of the bed.
She also had just awakened and was complaining how disgusting it was
never to be able to finish the night. Could they not go away quietly? Buried
in the clothes she only showed her long face with large features of a heavy
beauty, already disfigured at thirty-nine by her life of wretchedness and the
seven children she had borne. With her eyes on the ceiling she spoke
slowly, while her man dressed himself. They both ceased to hear the little
one, who was strangling herself with screaming.
"Eh? You know I haven't a penny and this is only Monday: still six days
before the fortnight's out. This can't go on. You, all of you, only bring in
nine francs. How do you expect me to go on? We are ten in the house."
"Oh! nine francs!" exclaimed Maheu. "I and Zacharie three: that makes six,
Catherine and the father, two: that makes four: four and six, ten, and Jeanlin
one, that makes eleven."
"Yes, eleven, but there are Sundays and the off-days. Never more than nine,
you know."
He did not reply, being occupied in looking on the ground for his leather
belt. Then he said, on getting up:
"Mustn't complain. I am sound all the same. There's more than one at forty-
two who are put to the patching."
"Maybe, old man, but that does not give us bread. Where am I to get it
from, eh? Have you got nothing?"

"I've got two coppers."
"Keep them for a half-pint. Good Lord! where am I to get it from? Six days!
it will never end. We owe sixty francs to Maigrat, who turned me out of
doors day before yesterday. That won't prevent me from going to see him
again. But if he goes on refusing——"
And Maheude continued in her melancholy voice, without moving her
head, only closing her eyes now and then beneath the dim light of the
candle. She said the cupboard was empty, the little ones asking for bread
and butter, even the coffee was done, and the water caused colic, and the
long days passed in deceiving hunger with boiled cabbage leaves. Little by
little she had been obliged to raise her voice, for Estelle's screams drowned
her words. These cries became unbearable. Maheu seemed all at once to
hear them, and, in a fury, snatched the little one up from the cradle and
threw it on the mother's bed, stammering with rage:
"Here, take her; I'll do for her! Damn the child! It wants for nothing: it
sucks, and it complains louder than all the rest!"
Estelle began, in fact, to suck. Hidden beneath the clothes and soothed by
the warmth of the bed, her cries subsided into the greedy little sound of her
lips.
"Haven't the Piolaine people told you to go and see them?" asked the father,
after a period of silence.
The mother bit her lip with an air of discouraged doubt.
"Yes, they met me; they were carrying clothes for poor children. Yes, I'll
take Lénore and Henri to them this morning. If they only give me a few
pence!"
There was silence again.
Maheu was ready. He remained a moment motionless, then added, in his
hollow voice:
"What is it that you want? Let things be, and see about the soup. It's no
good talking, better be at work down below."
"True enough," replied Maheude. "Blow out the candle: I don't need to see
the colour of my thoughts."

He blew out the candle. Zacharie and Jeanlin were already going down; he
followed them, and the wooden staircase creaked beneath their heavy feet,
clad in wool. Behind them the closet and the room were again dark. The
children slept; even Alzire's eyelids were closed; but the mother now
remained with her eyes open in the darkness, while, pulling at her breast,
the pendent breast of an exhausted woman, Estelle was purring like a kitten.
Down below, Catherine had at first occupied herself with the fire, which
was burning in the iron grate, flanked by two ovens. The Company
distributed every month, to each family, eight hectolitres of a hard slaty
coal, gathered in the passages. It burnt slowly, and the young girl, who piled
up the fire every night, only had to stir it in the morning, adding a few
fragments of soft coal, carefully picked out. Then, after having placed a
kettle on the grate, she sat down before the sideboard.
It was a fairly large room, occupying all the ground floor, painted an apple
green, and of Flemish cleanliness, with its flags well washed and covered
with white sand. Besides the sideboard of varnished deal the furniture
consisted of a table and chairs of the same wood. Stuck on to the walls were
some violently-coloured prints, portraits of the Emperor and the Empress,
given by the Company, of soldiers and of saints speckled with gold,
contrasting crudely with the simple nudity of the room; and there was no
other ornament except a box of rose-coloured pasteboard on the sideboard,
and the clock with its daubed face and loud tick-tack, which seemed to fill
the emptiness of the place. Near the staircase door another door led to the
cellar. In spite of the cleanliness, an odour of cooked onion, shut up since
the night before, poisoned the hot, heavy air, always laden with an acrid
flavour of coal.
Catherine, in front of the sideboard, was reflecting. There only remained the
end of a loaf, cheese in fair abundance, but hardly a morsel of butter; and
she had to provide bread and butter for four. At last she decided, cut the
slices, took one and covered it with cheese, spread another with butter, and
stuck them together; that was the "brick," the bread-and-butter sandwich
taken to the pit every morning. The four bricks were soon on the table, in a
row, cut with severe justice, from the big one for the father down to the
little one for Jeanlin.

Catherine, who appeared absorbed in her household duties, must, however,
have been thinking of the stories told by Zacharie about the head captain
and the Pierron woman, for she half opened the front door and glanced
outside. The wind was still whistling. There were numerous spots of light
on the low fronts of the settlement, from which arose a vague tremor of
awakening. Already doors were being closed, and black files of workers
passed into the night. It was stupid of her to get cold, since the porter at the
pit-eye was certainly asleep, waiting to take his duties at six. Yet she
remained and looked at the house on the other side of the gardens. The door
opened, and her curiosity was aroused. But it could only be one of the little
Pierrons, Lydie, setting out for the pit.
The hissing sound of steam made her turn. She shut the door, and hastened
back; the water was boiling over, and putting out the fire. There was no
more coffee. She had to be content to add the water to last night's dregs;
then she sugared the coffee-pot with brown sugar. At that moment her father
and two brothers came downstairs.
"Faith!" exclaimed Zacharie, when he had put his nose into his bowl,
"here's something that won't get into our heads."
Maheu shrugged his shoulders with an air of resignation.
"Bah! It's hot! It's good all the same."
Jeanlin had gathered up the fragments of bread and made a sop of them.
After having drunk, Catherine finished by emptying the coffee-pot into the
tin-jacks. All four, standing up in the smoky light of the candle, swallowed
their meals hastily.
"Are we at the end?" said the father; "one would say we were people of
property."
But a voice came from the staircase, of which they had left the door open. It
was Maheude, who called out:
"Take all the bread: I have some vermicelli for the children."
"Yes, yes," replied Catherine.
She had piled up the fire, wedging the pot that held the remains of the soup
into a corner of the grate, so that the grandfather might find it warm when
he came in at six. Each took his sabots from under the sideboard, passed the

strings of his tin over his shoulder and placed his brick at his back, between
shirt and jacket. And they went out, the men first, the girl, who came last,
blowing out the candle and turning the key. The house became dark again.
"Ah! we're off together," said a man who was closing the door of the next
house.
It was Levaque, with his son Bébert, an urchin of twelve, a great friend of
Jeanlin's. Catherine, in surprise, stifled a laugh in Zacharie's ear:
"Why! Bouteloup didn't even wait until the husband had gone!"
Now the lights in the settlement were extinguished, and the last door
banged. All again fell asleep; the women and the little ones resuming their
slumber in the midst of wider beds. And from the extinguished village to
the roaring Voreux a slow filing of shadows took place beneath the squalls,
the departure of the colliers to their work, bending their shoulders and
incommoded by their arms, crossed on their breasts, while the brick behind
formed a hump on each back. Clothed in their thin jackets they shivered
with cold, but without hastening, straggling along the road with the tramp
of a flock.

CHAPTER III

Étienne had at last descended from the platform and entered the Voreux; he
spoke to men whom he met, asking if there was work to be had, but all
shook their heads, telling him to wait for the captain. They left him free to
roam through the ill-lighted buildings, full of black holes, confusing with
their complicated stories and rooms. After having mounted a dark and half-
destroyed staircase, he found himself on a shaky foot-bridge; then he
crossed the screening-shed, which was plunged in such profound darkness
that he walked with his hands before him for protection. Suddenly two
enormous yellow eyes pierced the darkness in front of him. He was beneath
the pit-frame in the receiving-room, at the very mouth of the shaft.
A captain, Father Richomme, a big man with the face of a good-natured
gendarme, and with a straight grey moustache, was at that moment going

towards the receiver's office.
"Do they want a hand here for any kind of work?" asked Étienne again.
Richomme was about to say no, but he changed his mind and replied like
the others, as he went away:
"Wait for Monsieur Dansaert, the head captain."
Four lanterns were placed there, and the reflectors which threw all the light
on to the shaft vividly illuminated the iron rail, the levers of the signals and
bars, the joists of the guides along which slid the two cages. The rest of the
vast room, like the nave of a church, was obscure, and peopled by great
floating shadows. Only the lamp-cabin shone at the far end, while in the
receiver's office a small lamp looked like a fading star. Work was about to
be resumed, and on the iron pavement there was a continual thunder, trams
of coal being wheeled without ceasing, while the landers, with their long,
bent backs, could be distinguished amid the movement of all these black
and noisy things, in perpetual agitation.
For a moment Étienne stood motionless, deafened and blinded. He felt
frozen by the currents of air which entered from every side. Then he moved
on a few paces, attracted by the winding engine, of which he could now see
the glistening steel and copper. It was twenty-five metres beyond the shaft,
in a loftier chamber, and placed so solidly on its brick foundation that
though it worked at full speed, with all its four hundred horse power, the
movement of its enormous crank, emerging and plunging with oily softness,
imparted no quiver to the walls. The engine-man, standing at his post,
listened to the ringing of the signals, and his eye never moved from the
indicator where the shaft was figured, with its different levels, by a vertical
groove traversed by shot hanging to strings, which represented the cages;
and at each departure, when the machine was put in motion, the drums—
two immense wheels, five metres in radius, by means of which the two steel
cables were rolled and unrolled—turned with such rapidity that they
became like grey powder.
"Look out, there!" cried three landers, who were dragging an immense
ladder.
Étienne just escaped being crushed; his eyes were soon more at home, and
he watched the cables moving in the air, more than thirty metres of steel

ribbon, which flew up into the pit-frame where they passed over pulleys to
descend perpendicularly into the shaft, where they were attached to the
cages. An iron frame, like the high scaffolding of a belfry, supported the
pulleys. It was like the gliding of a bird, noiseless, without a jar, this rapid
flight, the continual come and go of a thread of enormous weight, capable
of lifting twelve thousand kilograms at the rate of ten metres a second.
"Attention there, for God's sake!" cried again the landers, pushing the
ladder to the other side in order to climb to the left-hand rowel. Slowly
Étienne returned to the receiving-room. This giant flight over his head took
away his breath. Shivering in the currents of air, he watched the movement
of the cages, his ears deafened by the rumblings of the trams. Near the shaft
the signal was working, a heavy-levered hammer drawn by a cord from
below and allowed to strike against a block. One blow to stop, two to go
down, three to go up; it was unceasing, like blows of a club dominating the
tumult, accompanied by the clear sound of the bell; while the lander,
directing the work, increased the noise still more by shouting orders to the
engine-man through a trumpet. The cages in the middle of the clear space
appeared and disappeared, were filled and emptied, without Étienne being
at all able to understand the complicated proceeding.
He only understood one thing well: the shaft swallowed men by mouthfuls
of twenty or thirty, and with so easy a gulp that it seemed to feel nothing go
down. Since four o'clock the descent of the workmen had been going on.
They came to the shed with naked feet and their lamps in their hands,
waiting in little groups until a sufficient number had arrived. Without a
sound, with the soft bound of a nocturnal beast, the iron cage arose from the
night, wedged itself on the bolts with its four decks, each containing two
trams full of coal. Landers on different platforms took out the trams and
replaced them by others, either empty or already laden with trimmed
wooden props; and it was into the empty trams that the workmen crowded,
five at a time, up to forty. When they filled all the compartments, an order
came from the trumpet—a hollow indistinct roar—while the signal cord
was pulled four times from below, "ringing meat," to give warning of this
burden of human flesh. Then, after a slight leap, the cage plunged silently,
falling like a stone, only leaving behind it the vibrating flight of a cable.
"Is it deep?" asked Étienne of a miner, who waited near him with a sleepy
air.

"Five hundred and fifty-four metres," replied the man. "But there are four
levels, the first at three hundred and twenty." Both were silent, with their
eyes on the returning cable. Étienne said again:
"And if it breaks?"
"Ah! if it breaks——"
The miner ended with a gesture. His turn had arrived; the cage had
reappeared with its easy, unfatigued movement. He squatted in it with some
comrades; it plunged down, then flew up again in less then four minutes to
swallow down another load of men. For half an hour the shaft went on
devouring in this fashion, with more or less greedy gulps, according to the
depth of the level to which the men went down, but without stopping,
always hungry, with its giant intestines capable of digesting a nation. It
went on filling and still filling, and the darkness remained dead. The cage
mounted from the void with the same voracious silence.
Étienne was at last seized again by the same depression which he had
experienced on the pit bank. What was the good of persisting? This head
captain would send him off like the others. A vague fear suddenly decided
him: he went away, only stopping before the building of the engine room.
The wide-open door showed seven boilers with two furnaces. In the midst
of the white steam and the whistling of the escapes a stoker was occupied in
piling up one of the furnaces, the heat of which could be felt as far as the
threshold; and the young man was approaching, glad of the warmth, when
he met a new band of colliers who had just arrived at the pit. It was the
Maheu and Levaque set. When he saw Catherine at the head, with her
gentle boyish air, a superstitious idea caused him to risk another question.
"I say there, mate! do they want a hand here for any kind of work?"
She looked at him surprised, rather frightened at this sudden voice coming
out of the shadow. But Maheu, behind her, had heard and replied, talking
with Étienne for a moment. No, no one was wanted. This poor devil of a
man who had lost his way here interested him. When he left him he said to
the others:
"Eh! one might easily be like that. Mustn't complain: every one hasn't the
chance to work himself to death."

The band entered and went straight to the shed, a vast hall roughly boarded
and surrounded by cupboards shut by padlocks. In the centre an iron
fireplace, a sort of closed stove without a door, glowed red and was so
stuffed with burning coal that fragments flew out and rolled on to the
trodden soil. The hall was only lighted by this stove, from which sanguine
reflections danced along the greasy woodwork up to the ceiling, stained
with black dust. As the Maheus went into the heat there was a sound of
laughter. Some thirty workmen were standing upright with their backs to
the fire, roasting themselves with an air of enjoyment. Before going down,
they all came here to get a little warmth in their skins, so that they could
face the dampness of the pit. But this morning there was much amusement:
they were joking Mouquette, a putter girl of eighteen, whose enormous
breasts and flanks were bursting through her old jacket and breeches. She
lived at Réquillart with her father old Mouque, a groom, and Mouquet, her
brother, a lander; but their hours of work were not the same; she went to the
pit by herself, and in the middle of the wheatfields in summer, or against a
wall in winter, she took her pleasure with her lover of the week. All in the
mine had their turn; it was a perpetual round of comrades without further
consequences. One day, when reproached about a Marchiennes nail-maker,
she was furiously angry, exclaiming that she respected herself far too much,
that she would cut her arm off if any one could boast that he had seen her
with any one but a collier.
"It isn't that big Chaval now?" said a miner grinning; "did that little fellow
have you? he must have needed a ladder. I saw you behind Réquillart, a
token that he got up on a milestone."
"Well," replied Mouquette, in a good humour, "what's that to do with you?
You were not asked to push."
And this gross good-natured joke increased the laughter of the men, who
expanded their shoulders, half cooked by the stove, while she herself,
shaken by laughter, was displaying in the midst of them the indecency of
her costume, embarrassingly comical, with her masses of flesh exaggerated
almost to disease.
But the gaiety ceased; Mouquette told Maheu that Fleurance, big Fleurance,
would never come again; she had been found the night before stiff in her
bed; some said it was her heart, others that it was a pint of gin she had

drunk too quickly. And Maheu was in despair; another piece of ill-luck; one
of the best of his putters gone without any chance of replacing her at once.
He was working in a set; there were four pikemen associated in his cutting,
himself, Zacharie, Levaque, and Chaval. If they had Catherine alone to
wheel, the work would suffer.
Suddenly he called out:
"I have it! there was that man looking for work!"
At that moment Dansaert passed before the shed. Maheu told him the story,
and asked for his authority to engage the man; he emphasized the desire of
the Company to substitute men for women, as at Anzin. The head captain
smiled at first; for the scheme of excluding women from the pit was not
usually well received by the miners, who were troubled about placing their
daughters, and not much affected by questions of morality and health. But
after some hesitation he gave his permission, reserving its ratification for
Monsieur Négrel, the engineer.
"All very well!" exclaimed Zacharie; "the man must be away by this time."
"No," said Catherine. "I saw him stop at the boilers."
"After him, then, lazy," cried Maheu.
The young girl ran forward; while a crowd of miners proceeded to the shaft,
yielding the fire to others.
Jeanlin, without waiting for his father, went also to take his lamp, together
with Bébert, a big, stupid boy, and Lydie, a small child of ten. Mouquette,
who was in front of them, called out in the black passage they were dirty
brats, and threatened to box their ears if they pinched her.
Étienne was, in fact, in the boiler building, talking with a stoker, who was
charging the furnaces with coal. He felt very cold at the thought of the night
into which he must return. But he was deciding to set out, when he felt a
hand placed on his shoulder.
"Come," said Catherine; "there's something for you."
At first he could not understand. Then he felt a spasm of joy, and vigorously
squeezed the young girl's hands.
"Thanks, mate. Ah! you're a good chap, you are!"

She began to laugh, looking at him in the red light of the furnaces, which lit
them up. It amused her that he should take her for a boy, still slender, with
her knot of hair hidden beneath the cap. He also was laughing, with
satisfaction, and they remained, for a moment, both laughing in each other's
faces with radiant cheeks.
Maheu, squatting down before his box in the shed, was taking off his sabots
and his coarse woollen stockings. When Étienne arrived everything was
settled in three or four words: thirty sous a day, hard work, but work that he
would easily learn. The pikeman advised him to keep his shoes, and lent
him an old cap, a leather hat for the protection of his skull, a precaution
which the father and his children disdained. The tools were taken out of the
chest, where also was found Fleurance's shovel. Then, when Maheu had
shut up their sabots, their stockings, as well as Étienne's bundle, he
suddenly became impatient.
"What is that lazy Chaval up to? Another girl given a tumble on a pile of
stones? We are half an hour late to-day."
Zacharie and Levaque were quietly roasting their shoulders. The former
said at last:
"Is it Chaval you're waiting for? He came before us, and went down at
once."
"What! you knew that, and said nothing? Come, come, look sharp!"
Catherine, who was warming her hands, had to follow the band. Étienne
allowed her to pass, and went behind her. Again he journeyed through a
maze of staircases and obscure corridors in which their naked feet produced
the soft sound of old slippers. But the lamp-cabin was glittering—a glass
house, full of hooks in rows, holding hundreds of Davy lamps, examined
and washed the night before, and lighted like candles in a mortuary chapel.
At the barrier each workman took his own, stamped with his number; then
he examined it and shut it himself, while the marker, seated at a table,
inscribed on the registers the hour of descent. Maheu had to intervene to
obtain a lamp for his new putter, and there was still another precaution: the
workers defiled before an examiner, who assured himself that all the lamps
were properly closed.
"Golly! It's not warm here," murmured Catherine, shivering.

Étienne contented himself with nodding his head. He was in front of the
shaft, in the midst of a vast hall swept by currents of air. He certainly
considered himself brave, but he felt a disagreeable emotion at his chest
amid this thunder of trams, the hollow blows of the signals, the stifled
howling of the trumpet, the continual flight of those cables, unrolled and
rolled at full speed by the drums of the engine. The cages rose and sank
with the gliding movement of a nocturnal beast, always engulfing men,
whom the throat of the hole seemed to drink. It was his turn now. He felt
very cold, and preserved a nervous silence which made Zacharie and
Levaque grin; for both of them disapproved of the hiring of this unknown
man, especially Levaque, who was offended that he had not been consulted.
So Catherine was glad to hear her father explain things to the young man.
"Look! above the cage there is a parachute with iron grapnels to catch into
the guides in case of breakage. Does it work? Oh, not always. Yes, the shaft
is divided into three compartments, closed by planking from top to bottom;
in the middle the cages, on the left the passage for the ladders——"
But he interrupted himself to grumble, though taking care not to raise his
voice much.
"What are we stuck here for, blast it? What right have they to freeze us in
this way?"
The captain, Richomme, who was going down himself, with his naked lamp
fixed by a nail into the leather of his cap, heard him.
"Careful! Look out for ears," he murmured paternally, as an old miner with
a affectionate feeling for comrades. "Workmen must do what they can. Hold
on! here we are; get in with your fellows."
The cage, provided with iron bands and a small-meshed lattice work, was in
fact awaiting them on the bars. Maheu, Zacharie, and Catherine slid into a
tram below, and as all five had to enter, Étienne in his turn went in, but the
good places were taken; he had to squeeze himself near the young girl,
whose elbow pressed into his belly. His lamp embarrassed him; they
advised him to fasten it to the button-hole of his jacket. Not hearing, he
awkwardly kept it in his hand. The embarkation continued, above and
below, a confused packing of cattle. They did not, however, set out. What,
then, was happening? It seemed to him that his impatience lasted for many

minutes. At last he felt a shock, and the light grew dim, everything around
him seemed to fly, while he experienced the dizzy anxiety of a fall
contracting his bowels. This lasted as long as he could see light, through the
two reception stories, in the midst of the whirling by of the scaffolding.
Then, having fallen into the blackness of the pit, he became stunned, no
longer having any clear perception of his sensations.
"Now we are off," said Maheu quietly.
They were all at their ease. He asked himself at times if he was going up or
down. Now and then, when the cage went straight without touching the
guides, there seemed to be no motion, but rough shocks were afterwards
produced, a sort of dancing amid the joists, which made him fear a
catastrophe. For the rest he could not distinguish the walls of the shaft
behind the lattice work, to which he pressed his face. The lamps feebly
lighted the mass of bodies at his feet. Only the captain's naked light, in the
neighbouring tram, shone like a lighthouse.
"This is four metres in diameter," continued Maheu, to instruct him. "The
tubbing wants doing over again, for the water comes in everywhere. Stop!
we are reaching the bottom: do you hear?"
Étienne was, in fact, now asking himself the meaning of this noise of falling
rain. A few large drops had at first sounded on the roof of the cage, like the
beginning of a shower, and now the rain increased, streaming down,
becoming at last a deluge. The roof must be full of holes, for a thread of
water was flowing on to his shoulder and wetting him to the skin. The cold
became icy and they were buried in black humidity, when they passed
through a sudden flash of light, the vision of a cavern in which men were
moving. But already they had fallen back into darkness.
Maheu said:
"That is the first main level. We are at three hundred and twenty metres. See
the speed."
Raising his lamp he lighted up a joist of the guides which fled by like a rail
beneath a train going at full speed; and beyond, as before, nothing could be
seen. They passed three other levels in flashes of light. The deafening rain
continued to strike through the darkness.
"How deep it is!" murmured Étienne.

This fall seemed to last for hours. He was suffering for the cramped position
he had taken, not daring to move, and especially tortured by Catherine's
elbow. She did not speak a word; he only felt her against him and it warmed
him. When the cage at last stopped at the bottom, at five hundred and fifty-
four metres, he was astonished to learn that the descent had lasted exactly
one minute. But the noise of the bolts fixing themselves, the sensation of
solidity beneath, suddenly cheered him; and he was joking when he said to
Catherine:
"What have you got under your skin to be so warm? I've got your elbow in
my belly, sure enough."
Then she also burst out laughing. Stupid of him, still to take her for a boy!
Were his eyes out?
"It's in your eye that you've got my elbow!" she replied, in the midst of a
storm of laughter which the astonished young man could not account for.
The cage voided its burden of workers, who crossed the pit-eye hall, a
chamber cut in the rock, vaulted with masonry, and lighted up by three large
lamps. Over the iron flooring the porters were violently rolling laden trams.
A cavernous odour exhaled from the walls, a freshness of saltpetre in which
mingled hot breaths from the neighbouring stable. The openings of four
galleries yawned here.
"This way," said Maheu to Étienne. "You're not there yet. It is still two
kilometres."
The workmen separated, and were lost in groups in the depths of these
black holes. Some fifteen went off into that on the left, and Étienne walked
last, behind Maheu, who was preceded by Catherine, Zacharie, and
Levaque. It was a large gallery for wagons, through a bed of solid rock,
which had only needed walling here and there. In single file they still went
on without a word, by the tiny flame of the lamps. The young man stumbled
at every step, and entangled his feet in the rails. For a moment a hollow
sound disturbed him, the sound of a distant storm, the violence of which
seemed to increase and to come from the bowels of the earth. Was it the
thunder of a landslip bringing on to their heads the enormous mass which
separated them from the light? A gleam pierced the night, he felt the rock
tremble, and when he had placed himself close to the wall, like his

comrades, he saw a large white horse close to his face, harnessed to a train
of wagons. On the first, and holding the reins, was seated Bébert, while
Jeanlin, with his hands leaning on the edge of the last, was running
barefooted behind.
They again began their walk. Farther on they reached crossways, where two
new galleries opened, and the band divided again, the workers gradually
entering all the stalls of the mine.
Now the wagon-gallery was constructed of wood; props of timber
supported the roof, and made for the crumbly rock a screen of scaffolding,
behind which one could see the plates of schist glimmering with mica, and
the coarse masses of dull, rough sandstone. Trains of tubs, full or empty,
continually passed, crossing each other with their thunder, borne into the
shadow by vague beasts trotting by like phantoms. On the double way of a
shunting line a long, black serpent slept, a train at standstill, with a snorting
horse, whose crupper looked like a block fallen from the roof. Doors for
ventilation were slowly opening and shutting. And as they advanced the
gallery became more narrow and lower, and the roof irregular, forcing them
to bend their backs constantly.
Étienne struck his head hard; without his leather cap he would have broken
his skull. However, he attentively followed the slightest gestures of Maheu,
whose sombre profile was seen against the glimmer of the lamps. None of
the workmen knocked themselves; they evidently knew each boss, each
knot of wood or swelling in the rock. The young man also suffered from the
slippery soil, which became damper and damper. At times he went through
actual puddles, only revealed by the muddy splash of his feet. But what
especially astonished him were the sudden changes of temperature. At the
bottom of the shaft it was very chilly, and in the wagon-gallery, through
which all the air of the mine passed, an icy breeze was blowing, with the
violence of a tempest, between the narrow walls. Afterwards, as they
penetrated more deeply along other passages which only received a meagre
share of air, the wind fell and the heat increased, a suffocating heat as heavy
as lead.
Maheu had not again opened his mouth. He turned down another gallery to
the right, simply saying to Étienne, without looking round:
"The Guillaume seam."

It was the seam which contained their cutting. At the first step, Étienne hurt
his head and elbows. The sloping roof descended so low that, for twenty or
thirty metres at a time, he had to walk bent double. The water came up to
his ankles. After two hundred metres of this, he saw Levaque, Zacharie, and
Catherine disappear, as though they had flown through a narrow fissure
which was open in front of him.
"We must climb," said Maheu. "Fasten your lamp to a button-hole and hang
on to the wood." He himself disappeared, and Étienne had to follow him.
This chimney-passage left in the seam was reserved for miners, and led to
all the secondary passages. It was about the thickness of the coal-bed,
hardly sixty centimetres. Fortunately the young man was thin, for, as he was
still awkward, he hoisted himself up with a useless expense of muscle,
flattening his shoulders and hips, advancing by the strength of his wrists,
clinging to the planks. Fifteen metres higher they came on the first
secondary passage, but they had to continue, as the cutting of Maheu and
his mates was in the sixth passage, in hell, as they said; every fifteen metres
the passages were placed over each other in never-ending succession
through this cleft, which scraped back and chest. Étienne groaned as if the
weight of the rocks had pounded his limbs; with torn hands and bruised
legs, he also suffered from lack of air, so that he seemed to feel the blood
bursting through his skin. He vaguely saw in one passage two squatting
beasts, a big one and a little one, pushing trams: they were Lydie and
Mouquette already at work. And he had still to climb the height of two
cuttings! He was blinded by sweat, and he despaired of catching up the
others, whose agile limbs he heard brushing against the rock with a long
gliding movement.
"Cheer up! here we are!" said Catherine's voice.
He had, in fact, arrived, and another voice cried from the bottom of the
cutting:
"Well, is this the way to treat people? I have two kilometres to walk from
Montsou and I am here first." It was Chaval, a tall, lean, bony fellow of
twenty-five, with strongly marked features, who was in a bad humour at
having to wait. When he saw Étienne he asked, with contemptuous surprise:
"What's that?"

And when Maheu had told him the story he added between his teeth:
"These men are eating the bread of girls."
The two men exchanged a look, lighted up by one of those instinctive
hatreds which suddenly flame up. Étienne had felt the insult without yet
understanding it. There was silence, and they got to work. At last all the
seams were gradually filled, and the cuttings were in movement at every
level and at the end of every passage. The devouring shaft had swallowed
its daily ration of men: nearly seven hundred hands, who were now at work
in this giant ant-hill, everywhere making holes in the earth, drilling it like
an old worm-eaten piece of wood. And in the middle of the heavy silence
and crushing weight of the strata one could hear, by placing one's ear to the
rock, the movement of these human insects at work, from the flight of the
cable which moved the cage up and down, to the biting of the tools cutting
out the coal at the end of the stalls. Étienne, on turning round, found himself
again pressed close to Catherine. But this time he caught a glimpse of the
developing curves of her breast: he suddenly understood the warmth which
had penetrated him.
"You are a girl, then!" he exclaimed, stupefied.
She replied in her cheerful way, without blushing:
"Of course. You've taken your time to find it out!"

CHAPTER IV

The four pikemen had spread themselves one above the other over the
whole face of the cutting. Separated by planks, hooked on to retain the
fallen coal, they each occupied about four metres of the seam, and this seam
was so thin, scarcely more than fifty centimetres thick at this spot, that they
seemed to be flattened between the roof and the wall, dragging themselves
along by their knees and elbows, and unable to turn without crushing their
shoulders. In order to attack the coal, they had to lie on their sides with their
necks twisted and arms raised, brandishing, in a sloping direction, their
short-handled picks.

Below there was, first, Zacharie; Levaque and Chaval were on the stages
above, and at the very top was Maheu. Each worked at the slaty bed, which
he dug out with blows of the pick; then he made two vertical cuttings in the
bed and detached the block by burying an iron wedge in its upper part. The
coal was rich; the block broke and rolled in fragments along their bellies
and thighs. When these fragments, retained by the plank, had collected
round them, the pikemen disappeared, buried in the narrow cleft.
Maheu suffered most. At the top the temperature rose to thirty-five degrees,
and the air was stagnant, so that in the long run it became lethal. In order to
see, he had been obliged to fix his lamp to a nail near his head, and this
lamp, close to his skull, still further heated his blood. But his torment was
especially aggravated by the moisture. The rock above him, a few
centimetres from his face, streamed with water, which fell in large
continuous rapid drops with a sort of obstinate rhythm, always at the same
spot. It was vain for him to twist his head or bend back his neck. They fell
on his face, dropping unceasingly. In a quarter of an hour he was soaked,
and at the same time covered with sweat, smoking as with the hot steam of
a laundry. This morning a drop beating upon his eye made him swear. He
would not leave his picking, he dealt great strokes which shook him
violently between the two rocks, like a fly caught between two leaves of a
book and in danger of being completely flattened.
Not a word was exchanged. They all hammered; one only heard these
irregular blows, which seemed veiled and remote. The sounds had a
sonorous hoarseness, without any echo in the dead air. And it seemed that
the darkness was an unknown blackness, thickened by the floating coal
dust, made heavy by the gas which weighed on the eyes. The wicks of the
lamps beneath their caps of metallic tissue only showed as reddish points.
One could distinguish nothing. The cutting opened out above like a large
chimney, flat and oblique, in which the soot of ten years had amassed a
profound night. Spectral figures were moving in it, the gleams of light
enabled one to catch a glimpse of a rounded hip, a knotty arm, a vigorous
head, besmeared as if for a crime. Sometimes, blocks of coal shone
suddenly as they became detached, illuminated by a crystalline reflection.
Then everything fell back into darkness, pickaxes struck great hollow
blows; one only heard panting chests, the grunting of discomfort and
weariness beneath the weight of the air and the rain of the springs.

Zacharie, with arms weakened by a spree of the night before, soon left his
work on the pretence that more timbering was necessary. This allowed him
to forget himself in quiet whistling, his eyes vaguely resting in the shade.
Behind the pikemen nearly three metres of the seam were clear, and they
had not yet taken the precaution of supporting the rock, having grown
careless of danger and miserly of their time.
"Here, you swell," cried the young man to Étienne, "hand up some wood."
Étienne, who was learning from Catherine how to manage his shovel, had
to raise the wood in the cutting. A small supply had remained over from
yesterday. It was usually sent down every morning ready cut to fit the bed.
"Hurry up there, damn it!" shouted Zacharie, seeing the new putter hoist
himself up awkwardly in the midst of the coal, his arms embarrassed by
four pieces of oak.
He made a hole in the roof with his pickaxe, and then another in the wall,
and wedged in the two ends of the wood, which thus supported the rock. In
the afternoon the workers in the earth cutting took the rubbish left at the
bottom of the gallery by the pikemen, and cleared out the exhausted section
of the seam, in which they destroyed the wood, being only careful about the
lower and upper roads for the haulage.
Maheu ceased to groan. At last he had detached his block, and he wiped his
streaming face on his sleeve. He was worried about what Zacharie was
doing behind him.
"Let it be," he said, "we will see after breakfast. Better go on hewing, if we
want to make up our share of trams."
"It's because it's sinking," replied the young man. "Look, there's a crack. It
may slip."
But the father shrugged his shoulders. Ah! nonsense! Slip! And if it did, it
would not be the first time; they would get out of it all right. He grew angry
at last, and sent his son to the front of the cutting.
All of them, however, were now stretching themselves. Levaque, resting on
his back, was swearing as he examined his left thumb which had been
grazed by the fall of a piece of sandstone. Chaval had taken off his shirt in a
fury, and was working with bare chest and back for the sake of coolness.

They were already black with coal, soaked in a fine dust diluted with sweat
which ran down in streams and pools. Maheu first began again to hammer,
lower down, with his head level with the rock. Now the drop struck his
forehead so obstinately that he seemed to feel it piercing a hole in the bone
of his skull.
"You mustn't mind," explained Catherine to Étienne, "they are always
howling."
And like a good-natured girl she went on with her lesson. Every laden tram
arrived at the top in the same condition as it left the cutting, marked with a
special metal token so that the receiver might put it to the reckoning of the
stall. It was necessary, therefore, to be very careful to fill it, and only to take
clean coal, otherwise it was refused at the receiving office.
The young man, whose eyes were now becoming accustomed to the
darkness, looked at her, still white with her chlorotic complexion, and he
could not have told her age; he thought she must be twelve, she seemed to
him so slight. However, he felt she must be older, with her boyish freedom,
a simple audacity which confused him a little; she did not please him: he
thought her too roguish with her pale Pierrot head, framed at the temples by
the cap. But what astonished him was the strength of this child, a nervous
strength which was blended with a good deal of skill. She filled her tram
faster than he could, with quick small regular strokes of the shovel; she
afterwards pushed it to the inclined way with a single slow push, without a
hitch, easily passing under the low rocks. He tore himself to pieces, got off
the rails, and was reduced to despair.
It was certainly not a convenient road. It was sixty metres from the cutting
to the upbrow, and the passage, which the miners in the earth cutting had
not yet enlarged, was a mere tube with a very irregular roof swollen by
innumerable bosses; at certain spots the laden tram could only just pass; the
putter had to flatten himself, to push on his knees, in order not to break his
head, and besides this the wood was already bending and yielding. One
could see it broken in the middle in long pale rents like an over-weak
crutch. One had to be careful not to graze oneself in these fractures; and
beneath the slow crushing, which caused the splitting of billets of oak as
large as the thigh, one had to glide almost on one's belly with a secret fear
of suddenly hearing one's back break.

"Again!" said Catherine, laughing.
Étienne's tram had gone off the rails at the most difficult spot. He could not
roll straight on these rails which sank in the damp earth, and he swore,
became angry, and fought furiously with the wheels, which he could not get
back into place in spite of exaggerated efforts.
"Wait a bit," said the young girl. "If you get angry it will never go."
Skilfully she had glided down and thrust her buttocks beneath the tram, and
by putting the weight on her loins she raised it and replaced it. The weight
was seven hundred kilograms. Surprised and ashamed, he stammered
excuses.
She was obliged to show him how to straddle his legs and brace his feet
against the planking on both sides of the gallery, in order to give himself a
more solid fulcrum. The body had to be bent, the arms made stiff so as to
push with all the muscles of the shoulders and hips. During the journey he
followed her and watched her proceed with tense back, her fists so low that
she seemed trotting on all fours, like one of those dwarf beasts that perform
at circuses. She sweated, panted, her joints cracked, but without a
complaint, with the indifference of custom, as if it were the common
wretchedness of all to live thus bent double. But he could not succeed in
doing as much; his shoes troubled him, his body seemed broken by walking
in this way with lowered head. At the end of a few minutes the position
became a torture, an intolerable anguish, so painful that he got on his knees
for a moment to straighten himself and breathe.
Then at the upbrow there was more labour. She taught him to fill his tram
quickly. At the top and bottom of this inclined plane, which served all the
cuttings from one level to the other, there was a trammer—the brakesman
above, the receiver below. These scamps of twelve to fifteen years shouted
abominable words to each other, and to warn them it was necessary to yell
still more violently. Then, as soon as there was an empty tram to send back,
the receiver gave the signal and the putter embarked her full tram, the
weight of which made the other ascend when the brakesman loosened his
brake. Below, in the bottom gallery, were formed the trains which the
horses drew to the shaft.
"Here, you confounded rascals," cried Catherine in the inclined way, which
was wood-lined, about a hundred metres long, and resounded like a gigantic

trumpet.
The trammers must have been resting, for neither of them replied. On all the
levels haulage had stopped. A shrill girl's voice said at last:
"One of them must be on Mouquette, sure enough!"
There was a roar of laughter, and the putters of the whole seam held their
sides.
"Who is that?" asked Étienne of Catherine.
The latter named little Lydie, a scamp who knew more than she ought, and
who pushed her tram as stoutly as a woman in spite of her doll's arms. As to
Mouquette, she was quite capable of being with both the trammers at once.
But the voice of the receiver arose, shouting out to load. Doubtless a captain
was passing beneath. Haulage began again on the nine levels, and one only
heard the regular calls of the trammers, and the snorting of the putters
arriving at the upbrow and steaming like over-laden mares. It was the
element of bestiality which breathed in the pit, the sudden desire of the
male, when a miner met one of these girls on all fours, with her flanks in
the air and her hips bursting through her boy's breeches.
And on each journey Étienne found again at the bottom the stuffiness of the
cutting, the hollow and broken cadence of the axes, the deep painful sighs
of the pikemen persisting in their work. All four were naked, mixed up with
the coal, soaked with black mud up to the cap. At one moment it had been
necessary to free Maheu, who was gasping, and to remove the planks so
that the coal could fall into the passage. Zacharie and Levaque became
enraged with the seam, which was now hard, they said, and which would
make the condition of their account disastrous. Chaval turned, lying for a
moment on his back, abusing Étienne, whose presence decidedly
exasperated him.
"A sort of worm; hasn't the strength of a girl! Are you going to fill your tub?
It's to spare your arms, eh? Damned if I don't keep back the ten sous if you
get us one refused!"
The young man avoided replying, too happy at present to have found this
convict's labour and accepting the brutal rule of the worker by master
worker. But he could no longer walk, his feet were bleeding, his limbs torn

by horrible cramps, his body confined in an iron girdle. Fortunately it was
ten o'clock, and the stall decided to have breakfast.
Maheu had a watch, but he did not even look at it. At the bottom of this
starless night he was never five minutes out. All put on their shirts and
jackets. Then, descending from the cutting they squatted down, their elbows
to their sides, their buttocks on their heels, in that posture so habitual with
miners that they keep it even when out of the mine, without feeling the need
of a stone or a beam to sit on. And each, having taken out his brick, bit
seriously at the thick slice, uttering occasional words on the morning's
work. Catherine, who remained standing, at last joined Étienne, who had
stretched himself out farther along, across the rails, with his back against
the planking. There was a place there almost dry.
"You don't eat?" she said to him, with her mouth full and her brick in her
hand.
Then she remembered that this youth, wandering about at night without a
sou, perhaps had not a bit of bread.
"Will you share with me?"
And as he refused, declaring that he was not hungry, while his voice
trembled with the gnawing in his stomach, she went on cheerfully:
"Ah! if you are fastidious! But here, I've only bitten on that side. I'll give
you this."
She had already broken the bread and butter into two pieces. The young
man, taking his half, restrained himself from devouring it all at once, and
placed his arms on his thighs, so that she should not see how he trembled.
With her quiet air of good comradeship she lay beside him, at full length on
her stomach, with her chin in one hand, slowly eating with the other. Their
lamps, placed between them, lit up their faces.
Catherine looked at him a moment in silence. She must have found him
handsome, with his delicate face and black moustache. She vaguely smiled
with pleasure.
"Then you are an engine-driver, and they sent you away from your railway.
Why?"
"Because I struck my chief."

She remained stupefied, overwhelmed, with her hereditary ideas of
subordination and passive obedience.
"I ought to say that I had been drinking," he went on, and when I drink I get
mad—I could devour myself, and I could devour other people. Yes; I can't
swallow two small glasses without wanting to kill someone. Then I am ill
for two days."
"You mustn't drink," she said, seriously.
"Ah, don't be afraid. I know myself."
And he shook his head. He hated brandy with the hatred of the last child of
a race of drunkards, who suffered in his flesh from all those ancestors,
soaked and driven mad by alcohol to such a point that the least drop had
become poison to him.
"It is because of mother that I didn't like being turned into the street," he
said, after having swallowed a mouthful. "Mother is not happy, and I used
to send her a five-franc piece now and then."
"Where is she, then, your mother?"
"At Paris. Laundress, Rue de la Goutte-d'or."
There was silence. When he thought of these things a tremor dimmed his
dark eyes, the sudden anguish of the injury he brooded over in his fine
youthful strength. For a moment he remained with his looks buried in the
darkness of the mine; and at that depth, beneath the weight and suffocation
of the earth, he saw his childhood again, his mother still beautiful and
strong, forsaken by his father, then taken up again after having married
another man, living with the two men who ruined her, rolling with them in
the gutter in drink and ordure. It was down there, he recalled the street, the
details came back to him; the dirty linen in the middle of the shop, the
drunken carousals that made the house stink, and the jaw-breaking blows.
"Now," he began again, in a slow voice, "I haven't even thirty sous to make
her presents with. She will die of misery, sure enough."
He shrugged his shoulders with despair, and again bit at his bread and
butter.

"Will you drink?" asked Catherine, uncorking her tin. "Oh, it's coffee, it
won't hurt you. One gets dry when one eats like that."
But he refused; it was quite enough to have taken half her bread. However,
she insisted good-naturedly, and said at last:
"Well, I will drink before you since you are so polite. Only you can't refuse
now, it would be rude."
She held out her tin to him. She had got on to her knees and he saw her
quite close to him, lit up by the two lamps. Why had he found her ugly?
Now that she was black, her face powdered with fine charcoal, she seemed
to him singularly charming. In this face surrounded by shadow, the teeth in
the broad mouth shone with whiteness, while the eyes looked large and
gleamed with a greenish reflection, like a cat's eyes. A lock of red hair
which had escaped from her cap tickled her ear and made her laugh. She no
longer seemed so young, she might be quite fourteen.
"To please you," he said, drinking and giving her back the tin.
She swallowed a second mouthful and forced him to take one too, wishing
to share, she said; and that little tin that went from one mouth to the other
amused them. He suddenly asked himself if he should not take her in his
arms and kiss her lips. She had large lips of a pale rose colour, made vivid
by the coal, which tormented him with increasing desire. But he did not
dare, intimidated before her, only having known girls on the streets at Lille
of the lowest order, and not realizing how one ought to behave with a work-
girl still living with her family.
"You must be about fourteen then?" he asked, after having gone back to his
bread. She was astonished, almost angry.
"What? fourteen! But I am fifteen! It's true I'm not big. Girls don't grow
quick with us."
He went on questioning her and she told everything without boldness or
shame. For the rest she was not ignorant concerning man and woman,
although he felt that her body was virginal, with the virginity of a child
delayed in her sexual maturity by the environment of bad air and weariness
in which she lived. When he spoke of Mouquette, in order to embarrass her,
she told some horrible stories in a quiet voice, with much amusement. Ah!
she did some fine things! And as he asked if she herself had no lovers, she

replied jokingly that she did not wish to vex her mother, but that it must
happen some day. Her shoulders were bent. She shivered a little from the
coldness of her garments soaked in sweat, with a gentle resigned air, ready
to submit to things and men.
"People can find lovers when they all live together, can't they?"
"Sure enough!"
"And then it doesn't hurt any one. One doesn't tell the priest."
"Oh! the priest! I don't care for him! But there is the Black Man."
"What do you mean, the Black Man?"
"The old miner who comes back into the pit and wrings naughty girls'
necks."
He looked at her, afraid that she was making fun of him.
"You believe in those stupid things? Then you don't know anything."
"Yes, I do. I can read and write. That is useful among us; in father and
mother's time they learnt nothing."
She was certainly very charming. When she had finished her bread and
butter, he would take her and kiss her on her large rosy lips. It was the
resolution of timidity, a thought of violence which choked his voice. These
boy's clothes—this jacket and these breeches—on the girl's flesh excited
and troubled him. He had swallowed his last mouthful. He drank from the
tin and gave it back for her to empty. Now the moment for action had come,
and he cast a restless glance at the miners farther on. But a shadow blocked
the gallery.
For a moment Chaval stood and looked at them from afar. He came
forward, having assured himself that Maheu could not see him; and as
Catherine was seated on the earth he seized her by the shoulders, drew her
head back, and tranquilly crushed her mouth beneath a brutal kiss, affecting
not to notice Étienne. There was in that kiss an act of possession, a sort of
jealous resolution.
However, the young girl was offended.
"Let me go, do you hear?"

He kept hold of her head and looked into her eyes. His moustache and small
red beard flamed in his black face with its large eagle nose. He let her go at
last, and went away without speaking a word.
A shudder had frozen Étienne. It was stupid to have waited. He could
certainly not kiss her now, for she would, perhaps, think that he wished to
behave like the other. In his wounded vanity he experienced real despair.
"Why did you lie?" he said, in a low voice. "He's your lover."
"But no, I swear," she cried. "There is not that between us. Sometimes he
likes a joke; he doesn't even belong here; it's six months since he came from
the Pas-de-Calais."
Both rose; work was about to be resumed. When she saw him so cold she
seemed annoyed. Doubtless she found him handsomer than the other; she
would have preferred him perhaps. The idea of some amiable, consoling
relationship disturbed her; and when the young man saw with surprise that
his lamp was burning blue with a large pale ring, she tried at least to amuse
him.
"Come, I will show you something," she said, in a friendly way.
When she had led him to the bottom of the cutting, she pointed out to him a
crevice in the coal. A slight bubbling escaped from it, a little noise like the
warbling of a bird.
"Put your hand there; you'll feel the wind. It's fire-damp."
He was surprised. Was that all? Was that the terrible thing which blew
everything up? She laughed, she said there was a good deal of it to-day to
make the flame of the lamps so blue.
"Now, if you've done chattering, lazy louts!" cried Maheu's rough voice.
Catherine and Étienne hastened to fill their trams, and pushed them to the
upbrow with stiffened back, crawling beneath the bossy roof of the passage.
Even after the second journey, the sweat ran off them and their joints began
to crack.
The pikemen had resumed work in the cutting. The men often shortened
their breakfast to avoid getting cold; and their bricks, eaten in this way, far
from the sun, with silent voracity, loaded their stomachs with lead.

Stretched on their sides they hammered more loudly, with the one fixed idea
of filling a large number of trams. Every thought disappeared in this rage
for gain which was so hard to earn. They no longer felt the water which
streamed on them and swelled their limbs, the cramps of forced attitudes,
the suffocation of the darkness in which they grew pale, like plants put in a
cellar. Yet, as the day advanced, the air became more poisoned and heated
with the smoke of the lamps, with the pestilence of their breaths, with the
asphyxia of the fire-damp—blinding to the eyes like spiders' webs—which
only the aeration of the night could sweep away. At the bottom of their
mole-hill, beneath the weight of the earth, with no more breath in their
inflamed lungs, they went on hammering.

CHAPTER V

Maheu, without looking at his watch which he had left in his jacket, stopped
and said:
"One o'clock directly. Zacharie, is it done?"
The young man had just been at the planking. In the midst of his labour he
had been lying on his back, with dreamy eyes, thinking over a game of
hockey of the night before. He woke up and replied:
"Yes, it will do; we shall see to-morrow."
And he came back to take his place at the cutting. Levaque and Chaval had
also dropped their picks. They were all resting. They wiped their faces on
their naked arms and looked at the roof, in which slaty masses were
cracking. They only spoke about their work.
"Another chance," murmured Chaval, "of getting into loose earth. They
didn't take account of that in the bargain."
"Rascals!" growled Levaque. "They only want to bury us in it."
Zacharie began to laugh. He cared little for the work and the rest, but it
amused him to hear the Company abused. In his placid way Maheu
explained that the nature of the soil changed every twenty metres. One must

be just; they could not foresee everything. Then, when the two others went
on talking against the masters, he became restless, and looked around him.
"Hush! that's enough."
"You're right," said Levaque, also lowering his voice; "it isn't wholesome."
A morbid dread of spies haunted them, even at this depth, as if the
shareholders' coal, while still in the seam, might have ears.
"That won't prevent me," added Chaval loudly, in a defiant manner, "from
lodging a brick in the belly of that damned Dansaert, if he talks to me as he
did the other day. I won't prevent him, I won't, from buying pretty girls with
a white skin."
This time Zacharie burst out laughing. The head captain's love for Pierronne
was a constant joke in the pit. Even Catherine rested on her shovel at the
bottom of the cutting, holding her sides, and in a few words told Étienne the
joke; while Maheu became angry, seized by a fear which he could not
conceal.
"Will you hold your tongue, eh? Wait till you're alone if you want to get
into trouble."
He was still speaking when the sound of steps was heard in the upper
gallery. Almost immediately the engineer of the mine, little Négrel, as the
workmen called him among themselves, appeared at the top of the cutting,
accompanied by Dansaert, the head captain.
"Didn't I say so?" muttered Maheu. "There's always someone there, rising
out of the ground."
Paul Négrel, M. Hennebeau's nephew, was a young man of twenty-six,
refined and handsome, with curly hair and brown moustache. His pointed
nose and sparkling eyes gave him the air of an amiable ferret of sceptical
intelligence, which changed into an abrupt authoritative manner in his
relations with the workmen. He was dressed like them, and like them
smeared with coal; to make them respect him he exhibited a dare-devil
courage, passing through the most difficult spots and always first when
landslips or fire-damp explosions occurred.
"Here we are, are we not, Dansaert?" he asked.

The head captain, a coarse-faced Belgian, with a large sensual nose, replied
with exaggerated politeness:
"Yes, Monsieur Négrel. Here is the man who was taken on this morning."
Both of them had slid down into the middle of the cutting. They made
Étienne come up. The engineer raised his lamp and looked at him without
asking any questions.
"Good," he said at last. "But I don't like unknown men to be picked up from
the road. Don't do it again."
He did not listen to the explanations given to him, the necessities of work,
the desire to replace women by men for the haulage. He had begun to
examine the roof while the pikemen had taken up their picks again.
Suddenly he called out:
"I say there, Maheu; have you no care for life? By heavens! you will all be
buried here!"
"Oh! it's solid," replied the workman tranquilly.
"What! solid! but the rock is giving already, and you are planting props at
more than two metres, as if you grudged it! Ah! you are all alike. You will
let your skull be flattened rather than leave the seam to give the necessary
time to the timbering! I must ask you to prop that immediately. Double the
timbering—do you understand?"
And in face of the unwillingness of the miners who disputed the point,
saying that they were good judges of their safety, he became angry.
"Go along! when your heads are smashed, is it you who will have to bear
the consequences? Not at all! it will be the Company which will have to pay
you pensions, you or your wives. I tell you again that we know you; in
order to get two extra trams by evening you would sell your skins."
Maheu, in spite of the anger which was gradually mastering him, still
answered steadily:
"If they paid us enough we should prop it better."
The engineer shrugged his shoulders without replying. He had descended
the cutting, and only said in conclusion, from below:

"You have an hour. Set to work, all of you; and I give you notice that the
stall is fined three francs."
A low growl from the pikemen greeted these words. The force of the system
alone restrained them, that military system which, from the trammer to the
head captain, ground one beneath the other. Chaval and Levaque, however,
made a furious gesture, while Maheu restrained them by a glance, and
Zacharie shrugged his shoulders chaffingly. But Étienne was, perhaps, most
affected. Since he had found himself at the bottom of this hell a slow
rebellion was rising within him. He looked at the resigned Catherine, with
her lowered back. Was it possible to kill oneself at this hard toil, in this
deadly darkness, and not even to gain the few pence to buy one's daily
bread?
However, Négrel went off with Dansaert, who was content to approve by a
continual movement of his head. And their voices again rose; they had just
stopped once more, and were examining the timbering in the gallery, which
the pikemen were obliged to look after for a length of ten metres behind the
cutting.
"Didn't I tell you that they care nothing?" cried the engineer. "And you!
why, in the devil's name, don't you watch them?"
"But I do—I do," stammered the head captain. "One gets tired of repeating
things."
Négrel called loudly:
"Maheu! Maheu!"
They all came down. He went on:
"Do you see that? Will that hold? It's a twopenny-halfpenny construction!
Here is a beam which the posts don't carry already, it was done so hastily.
By Jove! I understand how it is that the mending costs us so much. It'll do,
won't it? if it lasts as long as you have the care of it; and then it may go
smash, and the Company is obliged to have an army of repairers. Look at it
down there; it is mere botching!"
Chaval wished to speak, but he silenced him.
"No! I know what you are going to say. Let them pay you more, eh? Very
well! I warn you that you will force the managers to do something: they

will pay you the planking separately, and proportionately reduce the price
of the trams. We shall see if you will gain that way! Meanwhile, prop that
over again, at once; I shall pass to-morrow."
Amid the dismay caused by this threat he went away. Dansaert, who had
been so humble, remained behind a few moments, to say brutally to the
men:
"You get me into a row, you here. I'll give you something more than three
francs fine, I will. Look out!"
Then, when he had gone, Maheu broke out in his turn:
"By God! what's fair is fair! I like people to be calm, because that's the only
way of getting along, but at last they make you mad. Did you hear? The
tram lowered, and the planking separately! Another way of paying us less.
By God it is!"
He looked for someone upon whom to vent his anger, and saw Catherine
and Étienne swinging their arms.
"Will you just fetch me some wood! What does it matter to you? I'll put my
foot into you somewhere!"
Étienne went to carry it without rancour for this rough speech, so furious
himself against the masters that he thought the miners too good-natured. As
for the others, Levaque and Chaval had found relief in strong language. All
of them, even Zacharie, were timbering furiously. For nearly half an hour
one only heard the creaking of wood wedged in by blows of the hammer.
They no longer spoke, they snorted, became enraged with the rock, which
they would have hustled and driven back by the force of their shoulders if
they had been able.
"That's enough," said Maheu at last, worn out with anger and fatigue. "An
hour and a half! A fine day's work! We shan't get fifty sous! I'm off. This
disgusts me."
Though there was still half an hour of work left he dressed himself. The
others imitated him. The mere sight of the cutting enraged them. As the
putter had gone back to the haulage they called her, irritated at her zeal: let
the coal take care of itself. And the six, their tools under their arms, set out

to walk the two kilometres back, returning to the shaft by the road of the
morning.
At the chimney Catherine and Étienne were delayed while the pikemen slid
down. They met little Lydie, who stopped in a gallery to let them pass, and
told them of the disappearance of Mouquette, whose nose had been
bleeding so much that she had been away an hour, bathing her face
somewhere, no one knew where. Then, when they left her, the child began
again to push her tram, weary and muddy, stiffening her insect-like arms
and legs like a lean black ant struggling with a load that was too heavy for
it. They let themselves down on their backs, flattening their shoulders for
fear of scratching the skin on their foreheads, and they walked so close to
the polished rock at the back of the stalls that they were obliged from time
to time to hold on to the woodwork, so that their backsides should not catch
fire, as they said jokingly.
Below they found themselves alone. Red stars disappeared afar at a bend in
the passage. Their cheerfulness fell, they began to walk with the heavy step
of fatigue, she in front, he behind. Their lamps were blackened. He could
scarcely see her, drowned in a sort of smoky mist; and the idea that she was
a girl disturbed him because he felt that it was stupid not to embrace her,
and yet the recollection of the other man prevented him. Certainly she had
lied to him: the other was her lover, they lay together on all those heaps of
slaty coal, for she had a loose woman's gait. He sulked without reason, as if
she had deceived him. She, however, every moment turned round, warned
him of obstacles, and seemed to invite him to be affectionate. They were so
lost here, it would have been so easy to laugh together like good friends! At
last they entered the large haulage gallery; it was a relief to the indecision
from which he was suffering; while she once more had a saddened look, the
regret for a happiness which they would not find again.
Now the subterranean life rumbled around them with a continual passing of
captains, the come and go of the trams drawn by trotting horses. Lamps
starred the night everywhere. They had to efface themselves against the
rock to leave the path free to shadowy men and beasts, whose breath came
against their faces. Jeanlin, running barefooted behind his tram, cried out
some naughtiness to them which they could not hear amid the thunder of
the wheels. They still went on, she now silent, he not recognizing the
turnings and roads of the morning, and fancying that she was leading him

deeper and deeper into the earth; and what specially troubled him was the
cold, an increasing cold which he had felt on emerging from the cutting,
and which caused him to shiver the more the nearer they approached the
shaft. Between the narrow walls the column of air now blew like a tempest.
He despaired of ever coming to the end, when suddenly they found
themselves in the pit-eye hall.
Chaval cast a sidelong glance at them, his mouth drawn with suspicion. The
others were there, covered with sweat in the icy current, silent like himself,
swallowing their grunts of rage. They had arrived too soon and could not be
taken to the top for half an hour, more especially since some complicated
manœuvres were going on for lowering a horse. The porters were still
rolling the trams with the deafening sound of old iron in movement, and the
cages were flying up, disappearing in the rain which fell from the black
hole. Below, the sump, a cesspool ten metres deep, filled with this
streaming water, also exhaled its muddy moisture. Men were constantly
moving around the shaft, pulling the signal cords, pressing on the arms of
levers, in the midst of this spray in which their garments were soaked. The
reddish light of three open lamps cut out great moving shadows and gave to
this subterranean hall the air of a villainous cavern, some bandits' forge near
a torrent.
Maheu made one last effort. He approached Pierron, who had gone on duty
at six o'clock.
"Here! you might as well let us go up."
But the porter, a handsome fellow with strong limbs and a gentle face,
refused with a frightened gesture.
"Impossible: ask the captain. They would fine me."
Fresh growls were stifled. Catherine bent forward and said in Étienne's ear:
"Come and see the stable, then. That's a comfortable place!"
And they had to escape without being seen, for it was forbidden to go there.
It was on the left, at the end of a short gallery. Twenty-five metres in length
and nearly four high, cut in the rock and vaulted with bricks, it could
contain twenty horses. It was, in fact, comfortable there. There was a
pleasant warmth of living beasts, the good odour of fresh and well-kept
litter. The only lamp threw out the calm rays of a night-light. There were

horses there, at rest, who turned their heads, with their large infantine eyes,
then went back to their hay, without haste, like fat well-kept workers, loved
by everybody.
But as Catherine was reading aloud their names, written on zinc plates over
the mangers, she uttered a slight cry, seeing something suddenly rise before
her. It was Mouquette, who emerged in fright from a pile of straw in which
she was sleeping. On Monday, when she was overtired with her Sunday's
spree, she gave herself a violent blow on the nose, and left her cutting under
the pretence of seeking water, to bury herself here with the horses in the
warm litter. Her father, being weak with her, allowed it, at the risk of getting
into trouble.
Just then, Mouque, the father, entered, a short, bald, worn-out looking man,
but still stout, which is rare in an old miner of fifty. Since he had been made
a groom, he chewed to such a degree that his gums bled in his black mouth.
On seeing the two with his daughter, he became angry.
"What are you up to there, all of you? Come! up! The jades, bringing a man
here! It's a fine thing to come and do your dirty tricks in my straw."
Mouquette thought it funny, and held her sides. But Étienne, feeling
awkward, moved away, while Catherine smiled at him. As all three returned
to the pit-eye, Bébert and Jeanlin arrived there also with a train of tubs.
There was a stoppage for the manœuvring of the cages, and the young girl
approached their horse, caressed it with her hand, and talked about it to her
companion. It was Bataille, the doyen of the mine, a white horse who had
lived below for ten years. These ten years he had lived in this hole,
occupying the same corner of the stable, doing the same task along the
black galleries without ever seeing daylight. Very fat, with shining coat and
a good-natured air, he seemed to lead the existence of a sage, sheltered from
the evils of the world above. In this darkness, too, he had become very
cunning. The passage in which he worked had grown so familiar to him that
he could open the ventilation doors with his head, and he lowered himself
to avoid knocks at the narrow spots. Without doubt, also, he counted his
turns, for when he had made the regulation number of journeys he refused
to do any more, and had to be led back to his manger. Now that old age was
coming on, his cat's eyes were sometimes dimmed with melancholy.
Perhaps he vaguely saw again, in the depths of his obscure dreams, the mill

at which he was born, near Marchiennes, a mill placed on the edge of the
Scarpe, surrounded by large fields over which the wind always blew.
Something burnt in the air—an enormous lamp, the exact appearance of
which escaped his beast's memory—and he stood with lowered head,
trembling on his old feet, making useless efforts to recall the sun.
Meanwhile, the manœuvres went on in the shaft, the signal hammer had
struck four blows, and the horse was being lowered; there was always
excitement at such a time, for it sometimes happened that the beast was
seized by such terror that it was landed dead. When put into a net at the top
it struggled fiercely; then, when it felt the ground no longer beneath it, it
remained as if petrified and disappeared without a quiver of the skin, with
enlarged and fixed eyes. This animal being too big to pass between the
guides, it had been necessary, when hooking it beneath the cage, to pull
down the head and attach it to the flanks. The descent lasted nearly three
minutes, the engine being slowed as a precaution. Below, the excitement
was increasing. What then? Was he going to be left on the road, hanging in
the blackness? At last he appeared in his stony immobility, his eye fixed and
dilated with terror. It was a bay horse hardly three years of age, called
Trompette.
"Attention!" cried Father Mouque, whose duty it was to receive it. "Bring
him here, don't undo him yet."
Trompette was soon placed on the metal floor in a mass. Still he did not
move: he seemed in a nightmare in this obscure infinite hole, this deep hall
echoing with tumult. They were beginning to unfasten him when Bataille,
who had just been unharnessed, approached and stretched out his neck to
smell this companion who lay on the earth. The workmen jokingly enlarged
the circle. Well! what pleasant odour did he find in him? But Bataille, deaf
to mockery, became animated. He probably found in him the good odour of
the open air, the forgotten odour of the sun on the grass. And he suddenly
broke out into a sonorous neigh, full of musical gladness, in which there
seemed to be the emotion of a sob. It was a greeting, the joy of those
ancient things of which a gust had reached him, the melancholy of one
more prisoner who would not ascend again until death.
"Ah! that animal Bataille!" shouted the workmen, amused at the antics of
their favourite, "he's talking with his mate."

Trompette was unbound, but still did not move. He remained on his flank,
as if he still felt the net restraining him, garrotted by fear. At last they got
him up with a lash of the whip, dazed and his limbs quivering. And Father
Mouque led away the two beasts, fraternizing together.
"Here! Is it ready yet?" asked Maheu.
It was necessary to clear the cages, and besides it was yet ten minutes
before the hour for ascending. Little by little the stalls emptied, and the
miners returned from all the galleries. There were already some fifty men
there, damp and shivering, their inflamed chests panting on every side.
Pierron, in spite of his mawkish face, struck his daughter Lydie, because she
had left the cutting before time. Zacharie slyly pinched Mouquette, with a
joke about warming himself. But the discontent increased; Chaval and
Levaque narrated the engineer's threat, the tram to be lowered in price, and
the planking paid separately. And exclamations greeted this scheme, a
rebellion was germinating in this little corner, nearly six hundred metres
beneath the earth. Soon they could not restrain their voices; these men,
soiled by coal, and frozen by the delay, accused the Company of killing half
their workers at the bottom, and starving the other half to death. Étienne
listened, trembling.
"Quick, quick!" repeated the captain, Richomme, to the porters.
He hastened the preparations for the ascent, not wishing to be hard,
pretending not to hear. However, the murmurs became so loud that he was
obliged to notice them. They were calling out behind him that this would
not last always, and that one fine day the whole affair would be smashed up.
"You're sensible," he said to Maheu; "make them hold their tongues. When
one hasn't got power one must have sense."
But Maheu, who was getting calm, and had at last become anxious, did not
interfere. Suddenly the voices fell; Négrel and Dansaert, returning from
their inspection, entered from a gallery, both of them sweating. The habit of
discipline made the men stand in rows while the engineer passed through
the group without a word. He got into one tram, and the head captain into
another, the signal was sounded five times, ringing for the butcher's meat,
as they said for the masters; and the cage flew up in the air in the midst of a
gloomy silence.

CHAPTER VI

As he ascended in the cage heaped up with four others, Étienne resolved to
continue his famished course along the roads. One might as well die at once
as go down to the bottom of that hell, where it was not even possible to earn
one's bread. Catherine, in the tram above him, was no longer at his side with
her pleasant enervating warmth; and he preferred to avoid foolish thoughts
and to go away, for with his wider education he felt nothing of the
resignation of this flock; he would end by strangling one of the masters.
Suddenly he was blinded. The ascent had been so rapid that he was stunned
by the daylight, and his eyelids quivered in the brightness to which he had
already grown unaccustomed. It was none the less a relief to him to feel the
cage settle on to the bars. A lander opened the door, and a flood of workmen
leapt out of the trams.
"I say, Mouquet," whispered Zacharie in the lander's ear, "are we off to the
Volcan to-night?"
The Volcan was a café-concert at Montsou. Mouquet winked his left eye
with a silent laugh which made his jaws gape. Short and stout like his
father, he had the impudent face of a fellow who devours everything
without care for the morrow. Just then Mouquette came out in her turn, and
he gave her a formidable smack on the flank by way of fraternal tenderness.
Étienne hardly recognized the lofty nave of the receiving-hall, which had
before looked imposing in the ambiguous light of the lanterns. It was
simply bare and dirty; a dull light entered through the dusty windows. The
engine alone shone at the end with its copper; the well-greased steel cables
moved like ribbons soaked in ink, and the pulleys above, the enormous
scaffold which supported them, the cages, the trams, all this prodigality of
metal made the hall look sombre with their hard grey tones of old iron.
Without ceasing, the rumbling of the wheels shook the metal floor; while
from the coal thus put in motion there arose a fine charcoal powder which
powdered black the soil, the walls, even the joists of the steeple.
But Chaval, after glancing at the table of counters in the receiver's little
glass office, came back furious. He had discovered that two of their trams

had been rejected, one because it did not contain the regulation amount, the
other because the coal was not clean.
"This finishes the day," he cried. "Twenty sous less again! This is because
we take on lazy rascals who use their arms as a pig does his tail!"
And his sidelong look at Étienne completed his thought.
The latter was tempted to reply by a blow. Then he asked himself what
would be the use since he was going away. This decided him absolutely.
"It's not possible to do it right the first day," said Maheu, to restore peace;
"he'll do better to-morrow."
They were all none the less soured, and disturbed by the need to quarrel. As
they passed to the lamp cabin to give up their lamps, Levaque began to
abuse the lamp-man, whom he accused of not properly cleaning his lamp.
They only slackened down a little in the shed where the fire was still
burning. It had even been too heavily piled up, for the stove was red and the
vast room, without a window, seemed to be in flames, to such a degree did
the reflection make bloody the walls. And there were grunts of joy, all the
backs were roasted at a distance till they smoked like soup. When their
flanks were burning they cooked their bellies. Mouquette had tranquilly let
down her breeches to dry her chemise. Some lads were making fun of her;
they burst out laughing because she suddenly showed them her posterior, a
gesture which in her was the extreme expression of contempt.
"I'm off," said Chaval, who had shut up his tools in his box.
No one moved. Only Mouquette hastened, and went out behind him on the
pretext that they were both going back to Montsou. But the others went on
joking; they knew that he would have no more to do with her.
Catherine, however, who seemed preoccupied, was speaking in a low voice
to her father. The latter was surprised; then he agreed with a nod; and
calling Étienne to give him back his bundle:
"Listen," he said: "you haven't a sou; you will have time to starve before the
fortnight's out. Shall I try and get you credit somewhere?"
The young man stood for a moment confused. He had been just about to
claim his thirty sous and go. But shame restrained him before the young

girl. She looked at him fixedly; perhaps she would think he was shirking the
work.
"You know I can promise you nothing," Maheu went on. "They can but
refuse us."
Then Étienne consented. They would refuse. Besides, it would bind him to
nothing, he could still go away after having eaten something. Then he was
dissatisfied at not having refused, seeing Catherine's joy, a pretty laugh, a
look of friendship, happy at having been useful to him. What was the good
of it all?
When they had put on their sabots and shut their boxes, the Maheus left the
shed, following their comrades, who were leaving one by one after they had
warmed themselves. Étienne went behind. Levaque and his urchin joined
the band. But as they crossed the screening place a scene of violence
stopped them.
It was in a vast shed, with beams blackened by the powder, and large
shutters, through which blew a constant current of air. The coal trams
arrived straight from the receiving-room, and were then overturned by the
tipping-cradles on to hoppers, long iron slides; and to right and to left of
these the screeners, mounted on steps and armed with shovels and rakes,
separated the stone and swept together the clean coal, which afterwards fell
through funnels into the railway wagons beneath the shed.
Philoméne Levaque was there, thin and pale, with the sheep-like face of a
girl who spat blood. With head protected by a fragment of blue wool, and
hands and arms black to the elbows, she was screening beneath an old
witch, the mother of Pierronne, the Brulé, as she was called, with terrible
owl's eyes, and a mouth drawn in like a miser's purse. They were abusing
each other, the young one accusing the elder of raking her stones so that she
could not get a basketful in ten minutes. They were paid by the basket, and
these quarrels were constantly arising. Hair was flying, and hands were
making black marks on red faces.
"Give it her bloody well!" cried Zacharie, from above, to his mistress.
All the screeners laughed. But the Brulé turned snappishly on the young
man.

"Now, then, dirty beast! You'd better to own the two kids you have filled her
with. Fancy that, a slip of eighteen, who can't stand straight!"
Maheu had to prevent his son from descending to see, as he said, the colour
of this carcass's skin.
A foreman came up and the rakes again began to move the coal. One could
only see, all along the hoppers, the round backs of women squabbling
incessantly over the stones.
Outside, the wind had suddenly quieted; a moist cold was falling from a
grey sky. The colliers thrust out their shoulders, folded their arms, and set
forth irregularly, with a rolling gait which made their large bones stand out
beneath their thin garments. In the daylight they looked like a band of
Negroes thrown into the mud. Some of them had not finished their bricks;
and the remains of the bread carried between the shirt and the jacket made
them humpbacked.
"Hallo! there's Bouteloup," said Zacharie, grinning.
Levaque without stopping exchanged two sentences with his lodger, a big
dark fellow of thirty-five with a placid, honest air:
"Is the soup ready, Louis?"
"I believe it is."
"Then the wife is good-humoured to-day."
"Yes, I believe she is."
Other miners bound for the earth-cutting came up, new bands which one by
one were engulfed in the pit. It was the three o'clock descent, more men for
the pit to devour, the gangs who would replace the sets of the pikemen at
the bottom of the passages. The mine never rested; day and night human
insects were digging out the rock six hundred metres below the beetroot
fields.
However, the youngsters went ahead. Jeanlin confided to Bébert a
complicated plan for getting four sous' worth of tobacco on credit, while
Lydie followed respectfully at a distance. Catherine came with Zacharie and
Étienne. None of them spoke. And it was only in front of the Avantage inn
that Maheu and Levaque rejoined them.

"Here we are," said the former to Étienne; "will you come in?"
They separated. Catherine had stood a moment motionless, gazing once
more at the young man with her large eyes full of greenish limpidity like
spring water, the crystal deepened the more by her black face. She smiled
and disappeared with the others on the road that led up to the settlement.
The inn was situated between the village and the mine, at the crossing of
two roads. It was a two-storied brick house, whitewashed from top to
bottom, enlivened around the windows by a broad pale-blue border. On a
square sign-board nailed above the door, one read in yellow letters: A
l'Avantage, licensed to Rasseneur. Behind stretched a skittle-ground
enclosed by a hedge. The Company, who had done everything to buy up the
property placed within its vast territory, was in despair over this inn in the
open fields, at the very entrance of the Voreux.
"Go in," said Maheu to Étienne.
The little parlour was quite bare with its white walls, its three tables and its
dozen chairs, its deal counter about the size of a kitchen dresser. There were
a dozen glasses at most, three bottles of liqueur, a decanter, a small zinc
tank with a pewter tap to hold the beer; and nothing else—not a figure, not
a little table, not a game. In the metal fireplace, which was bright and
polished, a coal fire was burning quietly. On the flags a thin layer of white
sand drank up the constant moisture of this water-soaked land.
"A glass," ordered Maheu of a big fair girl, a neighbour's daughter who
sometimes took charge of the place. "Is Rasseneur in?"
The girl turned the tap, replying that the master would soon return. In a
long, slow gulp, the miner emptied half his glass to sweep away the dust
which filled his throat. He offered nothing to his companion. One other
customer, a damp and besmeared miner, was seated before the table,
drinking his beer in silence, with an air of deep meditation. A third entered,
was served in response to a gesture, paid and went away without uttering a
word.
But a stout man of thirty-eight, with a round shaven face and a good-
natured smile, now appeared. It was Rasseneur, a former pikeman whom
the Company had dismissed three years ago, after a strike. A very good
workman, he could speak well, put himself at the head of every opposition,

and had at last become the chief of the discontented. His wife already held a
license, like many miners' wives; and when he was thrown on to the street
he became an innkeeper himself; having found the money, he placed his inn
in front of the Voreux as a provocation to the Company. Now his house had
prospered; it had become a centre, and he was enriched by the animosity he
had gradually fostered in the hearts of his old comrades.
"This is a lad I hired this morning," said Maheu at once. "Have you got one
of your two rooms free, and will you give him credit for a fortnight?"
Rasseneur's broad face suddenly expressed great suspicion. He examined
Étienne with a glance, and replied, without giving himself the trouble to
express any regret:
"My two rooms are taken. Can't do it."
The young man expected this refusal; but it hurt him nevertheless, and he
was surprised at the sudden grief he experienced in going. No matter; he
would go when he had received his thirty sous. The miner who was
drinking at a table had left. Others, one by one, continued to come in to
clear their throats, then went on their road with the same slouching gait. It
was a simple swilling without joy or passion, the silent satisfaction of a
need.
"Then, there's no news?" Rasseneur asked in a peculiar tone of Maheu, who
was finishing his beer in small gulps.
The latter turned his head, and saw that only Étienne was near.
"There's been more squabbling. Yes, about the timbering." He told the story.
The innkeeper's face reddened, swelling with emotion, which flamed in his
skin and eyes. At last he broke out:
"Well, well! if they decide to lower the price they are done for."
Étienne constrained him. However he went on, throwing sidelong glances
in his direction. And there were reticences, and implications; he was talking
of the manager, M. Hennebeau, of his wife, of his nephew, the little Négrel,
without naming them, repeating that this could not go on, that things were
bound to smash up one of these fine days. The misery was too great; and he
spoke of the workshops that were closing, the workers who were going
away. During the last month he had given more than six pounds of bread a

day. He had heard the day before, that M. Deneulin, the owner of a
neighbouring pit, could scarcely keep going. He had also received a letter
from Lille full of disturbing details.
"You know," he whispered, "it comes from that person you saw here one
evening."
But he was interrupted. His wife entered in her turn, a tall woman, lean and
keen, with a long nose and violet cheeks. She was a much more radical
politician than her husband.
"Pluchart's letter," she said. "Ah! if that fellow was master things would
soon go better."
Étienne had been listening for a moment; he understood and became excited
over these ideas of misery and revenge. This name, suddenly uttered,
caused him to start. He said aloud, as if in spite of himself:
"I know him—Pluchart."
They looked at him. He had to add:
"Yes, I am an engine-man: he was my foreman at Lille. A capable man. I
have often talked with him."
Rasseneur examined him afresh; and there was a rapid change on his face, a
sudden sympathy. At last he said to his wife:
"It's Maheu who brings me this gentleman, one of his putters, to see if there
is a room for him upstairs, and if we can give him credit for a fortnight."
Then the matter was settled in four words. There was a room; the lodger
had left that morning. And the innkeeper, who was very excited, talked
more freely, repeating that he only asked possibilities from the masters,
without demanding, like so many others, things that were too hard to get.
His wife shrugged her shoulders and demanded justice, absolutely.
"Good evening," interrupted Maheu. "All that won't prevent men from
going down, and as long as they go there will be people working
themselves to death. Look how fresh you are, these three years that you've
been out of it."
"Yes, I'm very much better," declared Rasseneur, complacently.

Étienne went as far as the door, thanking the miner, who was leaving; but
the latter nodded his head without adding a word, and the young man
watched him painfully climb up the road to the settlement. Madame
Rasseneur, occupied with serving customers, asked him to wait a minute,
when she would show him his room, where he could clean himself. Should
he remain? He again felt hesitation, a discomfort which made him regret the
freedom of the open road, the hunger beneath the sun, endured with the joy
of being one's own master. It seemed to him that he had lived years from his
arrival on the pit-bank, in the midst of squalls, to those hours passed under
the earth on his belly in the black passages. And he shrank from beginning
again; it was unjust and too hard. His man's pride revolted at the idea of
becoming a crushed and blinded beast.
While Étienne was thus debating with himself, his eyes, wandering over the
immense plain, gradually began to see it clearly. He was surprised; he had
not imagined the horizon was like this, when old Bonnemort had pointed it
out to him in the darkness. Before him he plainly saw the Voreux in a fold
of the earth, with its wood and brick buildings, the tarred screening-shed,
the slate-covered steeple, the engine-room and the tall, pale red chimney, all
massed together with that evil air. But around these buildings the space
extended, and he had not imagined it so large, changed into an inky sea by
the ascending waves of coal soot, bristling with high trestles which carried
the rails of the foot-bridges, encumbered in one corner with the timber
supply, which looked like the harvest of a mown forest. Towards the right
the pit-bank hid the view, colossal as a barricade of giants, already covered
with grass in its older part, consumed at the other end by an interior fire
which had been burning for a year with a thick smoke, leaving at the
surface in the midst of the pale grey of the slates and sandstones long trails
of bleeding rust. Then the fields unrolled, the endless fields of wheat and
beetroot, naked at this season of the year, marshes with scanty vegetation,
cut by a few stunted willows, distant meadows separated by slender rows of
poplars. Very far away little pale patches indicated towns, Marchiennes to
the north, Montsou to the south; while the forest of Vandame to the east
bordered the horizon with the violet line of its leafless trees. And beneath
the livid sky, in the faint daylight of this winter afternoon, it seemed as if all
the blackness of the Voreux, and all its flying coal dust, had fallen upon the
plain, powdering the trees, sanding the roads, sowing the earth.

Étienne looked, and what especially surprised him was a canal, the
canalized stream of the Scarpe, which he had not seen in the night. From
the Voreux to Marchiennes this canal ran straight, like a dull silver ribbon
two leagues long, an avenue lined by large trees, raised above the low earth,
threading into space with the perspective of its green banks, its pale water
into which glided the vermilion of the boats. Near one pit there was a wharf
with moored vessels which were laden directly from the trams at the foot-
bridges. Afterwards the canal made a curve, sloping by the marshes; and the
whole soul of that smooth plain appeared to lie in this geometrical stream,
which traversed it like a great road, carting coal and iron.
Étienne's glance went up from the canal to the settlement built on the
height, of which he could only distinguish the red tiles. Then his eyes rested
again at the bottom of the clay slope, towards the Voreux, on two enormous
masses of bricks made and burnt on the spot. A branch of the Company's
railroad passed behind a paling, for the use of the pit. They must be sending
down the last miners to the earth-cutting. Only one shrill note came from a
truck pushed by men. One felt no longer the unknown darkness, the
inexplicable thunder, the flaming of mysterious stars. Afar, the blast
furnaces and the coke kilns had paled with the dawn. There only remained,
unceasingly, the escapement of the pump, always breathing with the same
thick, long breath, the ogre's breath of which he could now see the grey
steam, and which nothing could satiate.
Then Étienne suddenly made up his mind. Perhaps he seemed to see again
Catherine's clear eyes, up there, at the entrance to the settlement. Perhaps,
rather, it was the wind of revolt which came from the Voreux. He did not
know, but he wished to go down again to the mine, to suffer and to fight.
And he thought fiercely of those people Bonnemort had talked of, the
crouching and sated god, to whom ten thousand starving men gave their
flesh without knowing it.

PART TWO

CHAPTER I

The Grégoires' property, Piolaine, was situated two kilometres to the east of
Montsou, on the Joiselle road. The house was a large square building,
without style, dating from the beginning of the last century. Of all the land
that once belonged to it there only remained some thirty hectares, enclosed
by walls, and easy to keep up. The orchard and kitchen garden especially
were everywhere spoken of, being famous for the finest fruit and vegetables
in the country. For the rest, there was no park, only a small wood. The
avenue of old limes, a vault of foliage three hundred metres long, reaching
from the gate to the porch, was one of the curiosities of this bare plain, on
which one could count the large trees between Marchiennes and Beaugnies.
On that morning the Grégoires got up at eight o'clock. Usually they never
stirred until an hour later, being heavy sleepers; but last night's tempest had
disturbed them. And while her husband had gone at once to see if the wind
had made any havoc, Madame Grégoire went down to the kitchen in her
slippers and flannel dressing-gown. She was short and stout, about fifty-
eight years of age, and retained a broad, surprised, dollish face beneath the
dazzling whiteness of her hair.
"Mélanie," she said to the cook, "suppose you were to make the brioche this
morning, since the dough is ready. Mademoiselle will not get up for half an
hour yet, and she can eat it with her chocolate. Eh? It will be a surprise."
The cook, a lean old woman who had served them for thirty years, laughed.
"That's true! it will be a famous surprise. My stove is alight, and the oven
must be hot; and then Honorine can help me a bit."
Honorine, a girl of some twenty years, who had been taken in as a child and
brought up in the house, now acted as housemaid. Besides these two
women, the only other servant was the coachman, Francis, who undertook
the heavy work. A gardener and his wife were occupied with the vegetables,
the fruit, the flowers, and the poultry-yard. And as service here was
patriarchal, this little world lived together, like one large family, on very
good terms.
Madame Grégoire, who had planned this surprise of the brioche in bed,
waited to see the dough put in the oven. The kitchen was very large, and

one guessed it was the most important room in the house by its extreme
cleanliness and by the arsenal of saucepans, utensils, and pots which filled
it. It gave an impression of good feeding. Provisions abounded, hanging
from hooks or in cupboards.
"And let it be well glazed, won't you?" Madame Grégoire said as she passed
into the dining-room.
In spite of the hot-air stove which warmed the whole house, a coal fire
enlivened this room. In other respects it exhibited no luxury; a large table,
chairs, a mahogany sideboard; only two deep easy-chairs betrayed a love of
comfort, long happy hours of digestion. They never went into the drawing-
room, they remained here in a family circle.
Just then M. Grégoire came back dressed in a thick fustian jacket; he also
was ruddy for his sixty years, with large, good-natured, honest features
beneath the snow of his curly hair. He had seen the coachman and the
gardener; there had been no damage of importance, nothing but a fallen
chimney-pot. Every morning he liked to give a glance round Piolaine,
which was not large enough to cause him anxiety, and from which he
derived all the happiness of ownership.
"And Cécile?" he asked, "isn't she up yet then?"
"I can't make it out," replied his wife. "I thought I heard her moving."
The table was set; there were three cups on the white cloth. They sent
Honorine to see what had become of mademoiselle. But she came back
immediately, restraining her laughter, stifling her voice, as if she were still
upstairs in the bedroom.
"Oh! if monsieur and madame could see mademoiselle! She sleeps; oh! she
sleeps like an angel. One can't imagine it! It's a pleasure to look at her."
The father and mother exchanged tender looks. He said, smiling:
"Will you come and see?"
"The poor little darling!" she murmured. "I'll come."
And they went up together. The room was the only luxurious one in the
house. It was draped in blue silk, and the furniture was lacquered white,
with blue tracery—a spoilt child's whim, which her parents had gratified. In

the vague whiteness of the bed, beneath the half-light which came through a
curtain that was drawn back, the young girl was sleeping with her cheek
resting on her naked arm. She was not pretty, too healthy, in too vigorous
condition, fully developed at eighteen; but she had superb flesh, the
freshness of milk, with her chestnut hair, her round face, and little willful
nose lost between her cheeks. The coverlet had slipped down, and she was
breathing so softly that her respiration did not even lift her already well-
developed bosom.
"That horrible wind must have prevented her from closing her eyes," said
the mother softly.
The father imposed silence with a gesture. Both of them leant down and
gazed with adoration on this girl, in her virgin nakedness, whom they had
desired so long, and who had come so late, when they had no longer hoped
for her. They found her perfect, not at all too fat, and could never feed her
sufficiently. And she went on sleeping, without feeling them near her, with
their faces against hers. However, a slight movement disturbed her
motionless face. They feared that they would wake her, and went out on
tiptoe.
"Hush!" said M. Grégoire, at the door. "If she has not slept we must leave
her sleeping."
"As long as she likes, the darling!" agreed Madame Grégoire. "We will
wait."
They went down and seated themselves in the easy-chairs in the dining-
room; while the servants, laughing at mademoiselle's sound sleep, kept the
chocolate on the stove without grumbling. He took up a newspaper; she
knitted at a large woollen quilt. It was very hot, and not a sound was heard
in the silent house.
The Grégoires' fortune, about forty thousand francs a year, was entirely
invested in a share of the Montsou mines. They would complacently narrate
its origin, which dated from the very formation of the Company.
Towards the beginning of the last century, there had been a mad search for
coal between Lille and Valenciennes. The success of those who held the
concession, which was afterwards to become the Anzin Company, had
turned all heads. In every commune the ground was tested; and societies

were formed and concessions grew up in a night. But among all the
obstinate seekers of that epoch, Baron Desrumaux had certainly left the
reputation for the most heroic intelligence. For forty years he had struggled
without yielding, in the midst of continual obstacles: early searches
unsuccessful, new pits abandoned at the end of long months of work,
landslips which filled up borings, sudden inundations which drowned the
workmen, hundreds of thousands of francs thrown into the earth; then the
squabbles of the management, the panics of the shareholders, the struggle
with the lords of the soil, who were resolved not to recognize royal
concessions if no treaty was first made with themselves. He had at last
founded the association of Desrumaux, Fauquenoix and Co. to exploit the
Montsou concession, and the pits began to yield a small profit when two
neighbouring concessions, that of Cougny, belonging to the Comte de
Cougny, and that of Joiselle, belonging to the Cornille and Jenard Company,
had nearly overwhelmed him beneath the terrible assault of their
competition. Happily, on the 25th August 1760, a treaty was made between
the three concessions, uniting them into a single one. The Montsou Mining
Company was created, such as it still exists to-day. In the distribution they
had divided the total property, according to the standard of the money of the
time, into twenty-four sous, of which each was subdivided into twelve
deniers, which made two hundred and eighty-eight deniers; and as the
denier was worth ten thousand francs the capital represented a sum of
nearly three millions. Desrumaux, dying but triumphant, received in this
division six sous and three deniers.
In those days the baron possessed Piolaine, which had three hundred
hectares belonging to it, and he had in his service as steward Honoré
Grégoire, a Picardy lad, the great-grandfather of Léon Grégoire, Cécile's
father. When the Montsou treaty was made, Honoré, who had laid up
savings to the amount of some fifty thousand francs, yielded tremblingly to
his master's unshakable faith. He took out ten thousand francs in fine
crowns, and took a denier, though with the fear of robbing his children of
that sum. His son Eugéne, in fact, received very small dividends; and as he
had become a bourgeois and had been foolish enough to throw away the
other forty thousand francs of the paternal inheritance in a company that
came to grief, he lived meanly enough. But the interest of the denier
gradually increased. The fortune began with Félicien, who was able to
realize a dream with which his grandfather, the old steward, had nursed his

childhood—the purchase of dismembered Piolaine, which he acquired as
national property for a ludicrous sum. However, bad years followed. It was
necessary to await the conclusion of the revolutionary catastrophes, and
afterwards Napoleon's bloody fall; and it was Léon Grégoire who profited
at a stupefying rate of progress by the timid and uneasy investment of his
great-grandfather. Those poor ten thousand francs grew and multiplied with
the Company's prosperity. From 1820 they had brought in one hundred per
cent, ten thousand francs. In 1844 they had produced twenty thousand; in
1850, forty. During two years the dividend had reached the prodigious
figure of fifty thousand francs; the value of the denier, quoted at the Lille
bourse at a million, had centupled in a century.
M. Grégoire, who had been advised to sell out when this figure of a million
was reached, had refused with his smiling paternal air. Six months later an
industrial crisis broke out; the denier fell to six hundred thousand francs.
But he still smiled; he regretted nothing, for the Grégoires had maintained
an obstinate faith in their mine. It would rise again: God Himself was not so
solid. Then with his religious faith was mixed profound gratitude towards
an investment which for a century had supported the family in doing
nothing. It was like a divinity of their own, whom their egoism surrounded
with a kind of worship, the benefactor of the hearth, lulling them in their
great bed of idleness, fattening them at their gluttonous table. From father
to son it had gone on. Why risk displeasing fate by doubting it? And at the
bottom of their fidelity there was a superstitious terror, a fear lest the
million of the denier might suddenly melt away if they were to realize it and
to put it in a drawer. It seemed to them more sheltered in the earth, from
which a race of miners, generations of starving people, extracted it for
them, a little every day, as they needed it.
For the rest, happiness rained on this house. M. Grégoire, when very young,
had married the daughter of a Marchiennes druggist, a plain, penniless girl,
whom he adored, and who repaid him with happiness. She shut herself up in
her household, and worshipped her husband, having no other will but his.
No difference of tastes separated them, their desires were mingled in one
idea of comfort; and they had thus lived for forty years, in affection and
little mutual services. It was a well-regulated existence; the forty thousand
francs were spent quietly, and the savings expended on Cécile, whose tardy
birth had for a moment disturbed the budget. They still satisfied all her

whims—a second horse, two more carriages, toilets sent from Paris. But
they tasted in this one more joy; they thought nothing too good for their
daughter, although they had such a horror of display that they had preserved
the fashions of their youth. Every unprofitable expense seemed foolish to
them.
Suddenly the door opened, and a loud voice called out:
"Hallo! What now? Having breakfast without me!"
It was Cécile, just come from her bed, her eyes heavy with sleep. She had
simply put up her hair and flung on a white woollen dressing-gown.
"No, no!" said the mother; "you see we are all waiting. Eh? has the wind
prevented you from sleeping, poor darling?"
The young girl looked at her in great surprise.
"Has it been windy? I didn't know anything about it. I haven't moved all
night."
Then they thought this funny, and all three began to laugh; the servants who
were bringing in the breakfast also broke out laughing, so amused was the
household at the idea that mademoiselle had been sleeping for twelve hours
right off. The sight of the brioche completed the expansion of their faces.
"What! Is it cooked, then?" said Cécile; "that must be a surprise for me!
That'll be good now, hot, with the chocolate!"
They sat down to table at last with the smoking chocolate in their cups, and
for a long time talked of nothing but the brioche. Mélanie and Honorine
remained to give details about the cooking and watched them stuffing
themselves with greasy lips, saying that it was a pleasure to make a cake
when one saw the masters enjoying it so much.
But the dogs began to bark loudly; perhaps they announced the music
mistress, who came from Marchiennes on Mondays and Fridays. A
professor of literature also came. All the young girl's education was thus
carried on at Piolaine in happy ignorance, with her childish whims,
throwing the book out of the window as soon as anything wearied her.
"It is M. Deneulin," said Honorine, returning.

Behind her, Deneulin, a cousin of M. Grégoire's, appeared without
ceremony; with his loud voice, his quick gestures, he had the appearance of
an old cavalry officer. Although over fifty, his short hair and thick
moustache were as black as ink.
"Yes! It is I. Good day! Don't disturb yourselves."
He had sat down amid the family's exclamations. They turned back at last to
their chocolate.
"Have you anything to tell me?" asked M. Grégoire.
"No! nothing at all," Deneulin hastened to reply. "I came out on horseback
to rub off the rust a bit, and as I passed your door I thought I would just
look in."
Cécile questioned him about Jeanne and Lucie, his daughters. They were
perfectly well, the first was always at her painting, while the other, the
elder, was training her voice at the piano from morning till night. And there
was a slight quiver in his voice, a disquiet which he concealed beneath
bursts of gaiety.
M. Grégoire began again:
"And everything goes well at the pit?"
"Well, I am upset over this dirty crisis. Ah! we are paying for the
prosperous years! They have built too many workshops, put down too many
railways, invested too much capital with a view to a large return, and today
the money is asleep. They can't get any more to make the whole thing work.
Luckily things are not desperate; I shall get out of it somehow."
Like his cousin he had inherited a denier in the Montsou mines. But being
an enterprising engineer, tormented by the desire for a royal fortune, he had
hastened to sell out when the denier had reached a million. For some
months he had been maturing a scheme. His wife possessed, through an
uncle, the little concession of Vandame, where only two pits were open—
Jean-Bart and Gaston-Marie—in an abandoned state, and with such
defective material that the output hardly covered the cost. Now he was
meditating the repair of Jean-Bart, the renewal of the engine, and the
enlargement of the shaft so as to facilitate the descent, keeping Gaston-
Marie only for exhaustion purposes. They ought to be able to shovel up

gold there, he said. The idea was sound. Only the million had been spent
over it, and this damnable industrial crisis broke out at the moment when
large profits would have shown that he was right. Besides, he was a bad
manager, with a rough kindness towards his workmen, and since his wife's
death he allowed himself to be pillaged, and also gave the rein to his
daughters, the elder of whom talked of going on the stage, while the
younger had already had three landscapes refused at the Salon, both of them
joyous amid the downfall, and exhibiting in poverty their capacity for good
household management.
"You see, Léon," he went on, in a hesitating voice, "you were wrong not to
sell out at the same time as I did; now everything is going down. You run
risk, and if you had confided your money to me you would have seen what
we should have done at Vandame in our mine!"
M. Grégoire finished his chocolate without haste. He replied peacefully:
"Never! You know that I don't want to speculate. I live quietly, and it would
be too foolish to worry my head over business affairs. And as for Montsou,
it may continue to go down, we shall always get our living out of it. It
doesn't do to be so diabolically greedy! Then, listen, it is you who will bite
your fingers one day, for Montsou will rise again and Cécile's grandchildren
will still get their white bread out of it."
Deneulin listened with a constrained smile.
"Then," he murmured, "if I were to ask you to put a hundred thousand
francs in my affair you would refuse?"
But seeing the Grégoires' disturbed faces he regretted having gone so far; he
put off his idea of a loan, reserving it until the case was desperate.
"Oh! I have not got to that! it is a joke. Good heavens! Perhaps you are
right; the money that other people earn for you is the best to fatten on."
They changed the conversation. Cécile spoke again of her cousins, whose
tastes interested, while at the same time they shocked her. Madame
Grégoire promised to take her daughter to see those dear little ones on the
first fine day. M. Grégoire, however, with a distracted air, did not follow the
conversation. He added aloud:

"If I were in your place I wouldn't persist any more; I would treat with
Montsou. They want it, and you will get your money back."
He alluded to an old hatred which existed between the concession of
Montsou and that of Vandame. In spite of the latter's slight importance, its
powerful neighbour was enraged at seeing, enclosed within its own sixty-
seven communes, this square league which did not belong to it, and after
having vainly tried to kill it had plotted to buy it at a low price when in a
failing condition. The war continued without truce. Each party stopped its
galleries at two hundred metres from the other; it was a duel to the last drop
of blood, although the managers and engineers maintained polite relations
with each other.
Deneulin's eyes had flamed up.
"Never!" he cried, in his turn. "Montsou shall never have Vandame as long
as I am alive. I dined on Thursday at Hennebeau's, and I saw him fluttering
around me. Last autumn, when the big men came to the administration
building, they made me all sorts of advances. Yes, yes, I know them—those
marquises, and dukes, and generals, and ministers! Brigands who would
take away even your shirt at the corner of a wood."
He could not cease. Besides, M. Grégoire did not defend the administration
of Montsou—the six stewards established by the treaty of 1760, who
governed the Company despotically, and the five survivors of whom on
every death chose the new member among the powerful and rich
shareholders. The opinion of the owner of Piolaine, with his reasonable
ideas, was that these gentlemen were sometimes rather immoderate in their
exaggerated love of money.
Mélanie had come to clear away the table. Outside the dogs were again
barking, and Honorine was going to the door, when Cécile, who was stifled
by heat and food, left the table.
"No, never mind! it must be for my lesson."
Deneulin had also risen. He watched the young girl go out, and asked,
smiling:
"Well! and the marriage with little Négrel?"

"Nothing has been settled," said Madame Grégoire; "it is only an idea. We
must reflect."
"No doubt!" he went on, with a gay laugh. "I believe that the nephew and
the aunt— What baffles me is that Madame Hennebeau should throw
herself so on Cécile's neck."
But M. Grégoire was indignant. So distinguished a lady, and fourteen years
older than the young man! It was monstrous; he did not like joking on such
subjects. Deneulin, still laughing, shook hands with him and left.
"Not yet," said Cécile, coming back. "It is that woman with the two
children. You know, mamma, the miner's wife whom we met. Are they to
come in here?"
They hesitated. Were they very dirty? No, not very; and they would leave
their sabots in the porch. Already the father and mother had stretched
themselves out in the depths of their large easy-chairs. They were digesting
there. The fear of change of air decided them.
"Let them come in, Honorine."
Then Maheude and her little ones entered, frozen and hungry, seized by
fright on finding themselves in this room, which was so warm and smelled
so nicely of the brioche.

CHAPTER II

The room remained shut up and the shutters had allowed gradual streaks of
daylight to form a fan on the ceiling. The confined air stupefied them so
that they continued their night's slumber: Lénore and Henri in each other's
arms, Alzire with her head back, lying on her hump; while Father
Bonnemort, having the bed of Zacharie and Jeanlin to himself, snored with
open mouth. No sound came from the closet where Maheude had gone to
sleep again while suckling Estelle, her breast hanging to one side, the child
lying across her belly, stuffed with milk, overcome also and stifling in the
soft flesh of the bosom.

The clock below struck six. Along the front of the settlement one heard the
sound of doors, then the clatter of sabots along the pavements; the screening
women were going to the pit. And silence again fell until seven o'clock.
Then shutters were drawn back, yawns and coughs were heard through the
walls. For a long time a coffee-mill scraped, but no one awoke in the room.
Suddenly a sound of blows and shouts, far away, made Alzire sit up. She
was conscious of the time, and ran barefooted to shake her mother.
"Mother, mother, it is late! you have to go out. Take care, you are crushing
Estelle."
And she saved the child, half-stifled beneath the enormous mass of the
breasts.
"Good gracious!" stammered Maheude, rubbing her eyes, "I'm so knocked
up I could sleep all day. Dress Lénore and Henri, I'll take them with me; and
you can take care of Estelle; I don't want to drag her along for fear of
hurting her, this dog's weather."
She hastily washed herself and put on an old blue skirt, her cleanest, and a
loose jacket of grey wool in which she had made two patches the evening
before.
"And the soup! Good gracious!" she muttered again.
When her mother had gone down, upsetting everything, Alzire went back
into the room taking with her Estelle, who had begun screaming. But she
was used to the little one's rages; at eight she had all a woman's tender
cunning in soothing and amusing her. She gently placed her in her still
warm bed, and put her to sleep again, giving her a finger to suck. It was
time, for now another disturbance broke out, and she had to make peace
between Lénore and Henri, who at last awoke. These children could never
get on together; it was only when they were asleep that they put their arms
round one another's necks. The girl, who was six years old, as soon as she
was awake set on the boy, her junior by two years, who received her blows
without returning them. Both of them had the same kind of head, which was
too large for them, as if blown out, with disorderly yellow hair. Alzire had
to pull her sister by the legs, threatening to take the skin off her bottom.
Then there was stamping over the washing, and over every garment that she

put on to them. The shutters remained closed so as not to disturb Father
Bonnemort's sleep. He went on snoring amid the children's frightful clatter.
"It's ready. Are you coming, up there?" shouted Maheude.
She had put back the blinds, and stirred up the fire, adding some coal to it.
Her hope was that the old man had not swallowed all the soup. But she
found the saucepan dry, and cooked a handful of vermicelli which she had
been keeping for three days in reserve. They could swallow it with water,
without butter, as there could not be any remaining from the day before, and
she was surprised to find that Catherine in preparing the bricks had
performed the miracle of leaving a piece as large as a nut. But this time the
cupboard was indeed empty: nothing, not a crust, not an odd fragment, not a
bone to gnaw. What was to become of them if Maigrat persisted in cutting
short their credit, and if the Piolaine people would not give them the five
francs? When the men and the girl returned from the pit they would want to
eat, for unfortunately it had not yet been found out how to live without
eating.
"Come down, will you?" she cried out, getting angry. "I ought to be gone by
this!"
When Alzire and the children were there she divided the vermicelli in three
small portions. She herself was not hungry, she said. Although Catherine
had already poured water on the coffee-dregs of the day before, she did so
over again, and swallowed two large glasses of coffee so weak that it
looked like rusty water. That would keep her up all the same.
"Listen!" she repeated to Alzire. "You must let your grandfather sleep; you
must watch that Estelle does not knock her head; and if she wakes, or if she
howls too much, here! take this bit of sugar and melt it and give it her in
spoonfuls. I know that you are sensible and won't eat it yourself."
"And school, mother?"
"School! well, that must be left for another day: I want you."
"And the soup? would you like me to make it if you come back late?"
"Soup, soup: no, wait till I come."
Alzire, with the precocious intelligence of a little invalid girl, could make
soup very well. She must have understood, for she did not insist. Now the

whole settlement was awake, bands of children were going to school, and
one heard the trailing noise of their clogs. Eight o'clock struck, and a
growing murmur of chatter arose on the left, among the Levaque people.
The women were commencing their day around the coffee-pots, with their
fists on their hips, their tongues turning without ceasing, like millstones. A
faded head, with thick lips and flattened nose, was pressed against a
window-pane, calling out:
"Got some news. Stop a bit."
"No, no! later on," replied Maheude. "I have to go out."
And for fear of giving way to the offer of a glass of hot coffee she pushed
Lénore and Henri, and set out with them. Up above, Father Bonnemort was
still snoring with a rhythmic snore which rocked the house.
Outside, Maheude was surprised to find that the wind was no longer
blowing. There had been a sudden thaw; the sky was earth-coloured, the
walls were sticky with greenish moisture, and the roads were covered with
pitch-like mud, a special kind of mud peculiar to the coal country, as black
as diluted soot, thick and tenacious enough to pull off her sabots. Suddenly
she boxed Lénore's ears, because the little one amused herself by piling the
mud on her clogs as on the end of a shovel. On leaving the settlement she
had gone along by the pit-bank and followed the road of the canal, making a
short cut through broken-up paths, across rough country shut in by mossy
palings. Sheds succeeded one another, long workshop buildings, tall
chimneys spitting out soot, and soiling this ravaged suburb of an industrial
district. Behind a clump of poplars the old Réquillart pit exhibited its
crumbling steeple, of which the large skeleton alone stood upright. And
turning to the right, Maheude found herself on the high road.
"Stop, stop, dirty pig! I'll teach you to make mincemeat."
Now it was Henri, who had taken a handful of mud and was moulding it.
The two children had their ears impartially boxed, and were brought into
good order, looking out of the corner of their eyes at the mud pies they had
made. They draggled along, already exhausted by their efforts to unstick
their shoes at every step.
On the Marchiennes side the road unrolled its two leagues of pavement,
which stretched straight as a ribbon soaked in cart grease between the

reddish fields. But on the other side it went winding down through
Montsou, which was built on the slope of a large undulation in the plain.
These roads in the Nord, drawn like a string between manufacturing towns,
with their slight curves, their slow ascents, gradually get lined with houses
and tend to make the department one laborious city. The little brick houses,
daubed over to enliven the climate, some yellow, others blue, others black
—the last, no doubt, in order to reach at once their final shade—went
serpentining down to right and to left to the bottom of the slope. A few large
two-storied villas, the dwellings of the heads of the workshops, made gaps
in the serried line of narrow facades. A church, also of brick, looked like a
new model of a large furnace, with its square tower already stained by the
floating coal dust. And amid the sugar works, the rope works, and the flour
mills, there stood out ballrooms, restaurants, and beershops, which were so
numerous that to every thousand houses there were more than five hundred
inns.
As she approached the Company's Yards, a vast series of storehouses and
workshops, Maheude decided to take Henri and Lénore by the hand, one on
the right, the other on the left. Beyond was situated the house of the
director, M. Hennebeau, a sort of vast chalet, separated from the road by a
grating, and then a garden in which some lean trees vegetated. Just then, a
carriage had stopped before the door and a gentleman with decorations and
a lady in a fur cloak alighted: visitors just arrived from Paris at the
Marchiennes station, for Madame Hennebeau, who appeared in the shadow
of the porch, was uttering exclamations of surprise and joy.
"Come along, then, dawdlers!" growled Maheude, pulling the two little
ones, who were standing in the mud.
When she arrived at Maigrat's, she was quite excited. Maigrat lived close to
the manager; only a wall separated the latter's ground from his own small
house, and he had there a warehouse, a long building which opened on to
the road as a shop without a front. He kept everything there, grocery,
cooked meats, fruit, and sold bread, beer, and saucepans. Formerly an
overseer at the Voreux, he had started with a small canteen; then, thanks to
the protection of his superiors, his business had enlarged, gradually killing
the Montsou retail trade. He centralized merchandise, and the considerable
custom of the settlements enabled him to sell more cheaply and to give

longer credit. Besides, he had remained in the Company's hands, and they
had built his small house and his shop.
"Here I am again, Monsieur Maigrat," said Maheude humbly, finding him
standing in front of his door.
He looked at her without replying. He was a stout, cold, polite man, and he
prided himself on never changing his mind.
"Now you won't send me away again, like yesterday. We must have bread
from now to Saturday. Sure enough, we owe you sixty francs these two
years."
She explained in short, painful phrases. It was an old debt contracted during
the last strike. Twenty times over they had promised to settle it, but they had
not been able; they could not even give him forty sous a fortnight. And then
a misfortune had happened two days before; she had been obliged to pay
twenty francs to a shoemaker who threatened to seize their things. And that
was why they were without a sou. Otherwise they would have been able to
go on until Saturday, like the others.
Maigrat, with protruded belly and folded arms, shook his head at every
supplication.
"Only two loaves, Monsieur Maigrat. I am reasonable, I don't ask for
coffee. Only two three-pound loaves a day."
"No," he shouted at last, at the top of his voice.
His wife had appeared, a pitiful creature who passed all her days over a
ledger, without even daring to lift her head. She moved away, frightened at
seeing this unfortunate woman turning her ardent, beseeching eyes towards
her. It was said that she yielded the conjugal bed to the putters among the
customers. It was a known fact that when a miner wished to prolong his
credit, he had only to send his daughter or his wife, plain or pretty, it
mattered not, provided they were complaisant.
Maheude, still imploring Maigrat with her look, felt herself uncomfortable
under the pale keenness of his small eyes, which seemed to undress her. It
made her angry; she would have understood before she had had seven
children, when she was young. And she went off, violently dragging Lénore

and Henri who were occupied in picking up nut-shells from the gutter
where they were making investigations.
"This won't bring you luck, Monsieur Maigrat, remember!"
Now there only remained the Piolaine people. If these would not throw her
a five-franc piece she might as well lie down and die. She had taken the
Joiselle road on the left. The administration building was there at the corner
of the road, a veritable brick palace, where the great people from Paris,
princes and generals and members of the Government, came every autumn
to give large dinners. As she walked she was already spending the five
francs, first bread, then coffee, afterwards a quarter of butter, a bushel of
potatoes for the morning soup and the evening stew; finally, perhaps, a bit
of pig's chitterlings, for the father needed meat.
The Curé of Montsou, Abbé Joire, was passing, holding up his cassock,
with the delicate air of a fat, well-nourished cat afraid of wetting its fur. He
was a mild man who pretended not to interest himself in anything, so as not
to vex either the workers or the masters.
"Good day, Monsieur le Curé."
Without stopping he smiled at the children, and left her planted in the
middle of the road. She was not religious, but she had suddenly imagined
that this priest would give her something.
And the journey began again through the black, sticky mud. There were still
two kilometres to walk, and the little ones dragged behind more than ever,
for they were frightened, and no longer amused themselves. To right and to
left of the path the same vague landscape unrolled, enclosed within mossy
palings, the same factory buildings, dirty with smoke, bristling with tall
chimneys. Then the flat land was spread out in immense open fields, like an
ocean of brown clods, without a tree-trunk, as far as the purplish line of the
forest of Vandame.
"Carry me, mother."
She carried them one after the other. Puddles made holes in the pathway,
and she pulled up her clothes, fearful of arriving too dirty. Three times she
nearly fell, so sticky was that confounded pavement. And as they at last
arrived before the porch, two enormous dogs threw themselves upon them,

barking so loudly that the little ones yelled with terror. The coachman was
obliged to take a whip to them.
"Leave your sabots, and come in," repeated Honorine. In the dining-room
the mother and children stood motionless, dazed by the sudden heat, and
very constrained beneath the gaze of this old lady and gentleman, who were
stretched out in their easy-chairs.
"Cécile," said the old lady, "fulfil your little duties."
The Grégoires charged Cécile with their charities. It was part of their idea
of a good education. One must be charitable. They said themselves that
their house was the house of God. Besides, they flattered themselves that
they performed their charity with intelligence, and they were exercised by a
constant fear lest they should be deceived, and so encourage vice. So they
never gave money, never! Not ten sous, not two sous, for it is a well-known
fact that as soon as a poor man gets two sous he drinks them. Their alms
were, therefore, always in kind, especially in warm clothing, distributed
during the winter to needy children.
"Oh! the poor dears!" exclaimed Cécile, '"how pale they are from the cold!
Honorine, go and look for the parcel in the cupboard."
The servants were also gazing at these miserable creatures with the pity and
vague uneasiness of girls who are in no difficulty about their own dinners.
While the housemaid went upstairs, the cook forgot her duties, leaving the
rest of the brioche on the table, and stood there swinging her empty hands.
"I still have two woollen dresses and some comforters," Cécile went on;
"you will see how warm they will be, the poor dears!"
Then Maheude found her tongue, and stammered:
"Thank you so much, mademoiselle. You are all too good."
Tears had filled her eyes, she thought herself sure of the five francs, and
was only preoccupied by the way in which she would ask for them if they
were not offered to her. The housemaid did not reappear, and there was a
moment of embarrassed silence. From their mother's skirts the little ones
opened their eyes wide and gazed at the brioche.
"You only have these two?" asked Madame Grégoire, in order to break the
silence.

"Oh, madame! I have seven."
M. Grégoire, who had gone back to his newspaper, sat up indignantly.
"Seven children! But why? good God!"
"It is imprudent," murmured the old lady.
Maheude made a vague gesture of apology. What would you have? One
doesn't think about it at all, they come quite naturally. And then, when they
grow up they bring something in, and that makes the household go. Take
their case, they could get on, if it was not for the grandfather who was
getting quite stiff, and if it was not that among the lot only two of her sons
and her eldest daughter were old enough to go down into the pit. It was
necessary, all the same, to feed the little ones who brought nothing in.
"Then," said Madame Grégoire, "you have worked for a long time at the
mines?"
A silent laugh lit up Maheude's pale face.
"Ah, yes! ah, yes! I went down till I was twenty. The doctor said that I
should stay down for good after I had been confined the second time,
because it seems that made something go wrong in my inside. Besides, then
I got married, and I had enough to do in the house. But on my husband's
side, you see, they have been down there for ages. It goes up from
grandfather to grandfather, one doesn't know how far back, quite to the
beginning when they first took the pick down there at Réquillart."
M. Grégoire thoughtfully contemplated this woman and these pitiful
children, with their waxy flesh, their discoloured hair, the degeneration
which stunted them, gnawed by anaemia, and with the melancholy ugliness
of starvelings. There was silence again, and one only heard the burning coal
as it gave out a jet of gas. The moist room had that heavy air of comfort in
which our middle-class nooks of happiness slumber.
"What is she doing, then?" exclaimed Cécile impatiently. "Mélanie, go up
and tell her that the parcel is at the bottom of the cupboard, on the left."
In the meanwhile, M. Grégoire repeated aloud the reflections inspired by
the sight of these starving ones.

"There is evil in this world, it is quite true; but, my good woman, it must
also be said that workpeople are never prudent. Thus, instead of putting
aside a few sous like our peasants, miners drink, get into debt, and end by
not having enough to support their families."
"Monsieur is right," replied Maheude sturdily. "They don't always keep to
the right path. That's what I'm always saying to the ne'er-do-wells when
they complain. Now, I have been lucky; my husband doesn't drink. All the
same, on feast Sundays he sometimes takes a drop too much; but it never
goes farther. It is all the nicer of him, since before our marriage he drank
like a hog, begging your pardon. And yet, you know, it doesn't help us much
that he is so sensible. There are days like to-day when you might turn out all
the drawers in the house and not find a farthing."
She wished to suggest to them the idea of the five-franc piece, and went on
in her low voice, explaining the fatal debt, small at first, then large and
overwhelming. They paid regularly for many fortnights. But one day they
got behind, and then it was all up. They could never catch up again. The
gulf widened, and the men became disgusted with work which did not even
allow them to pay their way. Do what they could, there was nothing but
difficulties until death. Besides, it must be understood that a collier needed
a glass to wash away the dust. It began there, and then he was always in the
inn when worries came. Without complaining of any one it might be that
the workmen did not earn as much as they ought to.
"I thought," said Madame Grégoire, "that the Company gave you lodging
and firing?"
Maheude glanced sideways at the flaming coal in the fireplace.
"Yes, yes, they give us coal, not very grand, but it burns. As to lodging, it
only costs six francs a month; that sounds like nothing, but it is often pretty
hard to pay. To-day they might cut me up into bits without getting two sous
out of me. Where there's nothing, there's nothing."
The lady and gentleman were silent, softly stretched out, and gradually
wearied and disquieted by the exhibition of this wretchedness. She feared
she had wounded them, and added, with the stolid and just air of a practical
woman:

"Oh! I didn't want to complain. Things are like this, and one has to put up
with them; all the more that it's no good struggling, perhaps we shouldn't
change anything. The best is, is it not, to try and live honestly in the place in
which the good God has put us?"
M. Grégoire approved this emphatically.
"With such sentiments, my good woman, one is above misfortune."
Honorine and Mélanie at last brought the parcel.
Cécile unfastened it and took out the two dresses. She added comforters,
even stockings and mittens. They would all fit beautifully; she hastened and
made the servants wrap up the chosen garments; for her music mistress had
just arrived; and she pushed the mother and children towards the door.
"We are very short," stammered Maheude; "if we only had a five-franc
piece—"
The phrase was stifled, for the Maheus were proud and never begged.
Cécile looked uneasily at her father; but the latter refused decisively, with
an air of duty.
"No, it is not our custom. We cannot do it."
Then the young girl, moved by the mother's overwhelmed face, wished to
do all she could for the children. They were still looking fixedly at the
brioche; she cut it in two and gave it to them.
"Here! this is for you."
Then, taking the pieces back, she asked for an old newspaper:
"Wait, you must share with your brothers and sisters."
And beneath the tender gaze of her parents she finally pushed them out of
the room. The poor starving urchins went off, holding the brioche
respectfully in their benumbed little hands.
Maheude dragged her children along the road, seeing neither the desert
fields, nor the black mud, nor the great livid sky. As she passed through
Montsou she resolutely entered Maigrat's shop, and begged so persistently
that at last she carried away two loaves, coffee, butter, and even her five-
franc piece, for the man also lent money by the week. It was not her that he

wanted, it was Catherine; she understood that when he advised her to send
her daughter for provisions. They would see about that. Catherine would
box his ears if he came too close under her nose.

CHAPTER III

Eleven o'clock struck at the little church in the Deux-Cent-Quarante
settlement, a brick chapel to which Abbé Joire came to say mass on
Sundays. In the school beside it, also of brick, one heard the faltering voices
of the children, in spite of windows closed against the outside cold. The
wide passages, divided into little gardens, back to back, between the four
large blocks of uniform houses, were deserted; and these gardens,
devastated by the winter, exhibited the destitution of their marly soil,
lumped and spotted by the last vegetables. They were making soup,
chimneys were smoking, a woman appeared at distant intervals along the
fronts, opened a door and disappeared. From one end to the other, on the
pavement, the pipes dripped into tubs, although it was no longer raining, so
charged was this grey sky with moistness. And the village, built altogether
in the midst of the vast plain, and edged by its black roads as by a mourning
border, had no touch of joyousness about it save the regular bands of its red
tiles, constantly washed by showers.
When Maheude returned, she went out of her way to buy potatoes from an
overseer's wife whose crop was not yet exhausted. Behind a curtain of
sickly poplars, the only trees in these flat regions, was a group of isolated
buildings, houses placed four together, and surrounded by their gardens. As
the Company reserved this new experiment for the captains, the workpeople
called this corner of the hamlet the settlement of the Bas-de-Soie, just as
they called their own settlement Paie-tes-Dettes, in good-humoured irony of
their wretchedness.
"Eh! Here we are," said Maheude, laden with parcels, pushing in Lénore
and Henri, covered with mud and quite tired out.
In front of the fire Estelle was screaming, cradled in Alzire's arms. The
latter, having no more sugar and not knowing how to soothe her, had

decided to pretend to give her the breast. This ruse often succeeded. But this
time it was in vain for her to open her dress, and to press the mouth against
the lean breast of an eight-year-old invalid; the child was enraged at biting
the skin and drawing nothing.
"Pass her to me," cried the mother as soon as she found herself free; "she
won't let us say a word."
When she had taken from her bodice a breast as heavy as a leather bottle, to
the neck of which the brawler hung, suddenly silent, they were at last able
to talk. Otherwise everything was going on well; the little housekeeper had
kept up the fire and had swept and arranged the room. And in the silence
they heard upstairs the grandfather's snoring, the same rhythmic snoring
which had not stopped for a moment.
"What a lot of things!" murmured Alzire, smiling at the provisions. "If you
like, mother, I'll make the soup."
The table was encumbered: a parcel of clothes, two loaves, potatoes, butter,
coffee, chicory, and half a pound of pig's chitterlings.
"Oh! the soup!" said Maheude with an air of fatigue. "We must gather some
sorrel and pull up some leeks. No! I will make some for the men afterwards.
Put some potatoes on to boil; we'll eat them with a little butter and some
coffee, eh? Don't forget the coffee!"
But suddenly she thought of the brioche. She looked at the empty hands of
Lénore and Henri who were fighting on the floor, already rested and lively.
These gluttons had slyly eaten the brioche on the road. She boxed their ears,
while Alzire, who was putting the saucepan on the fire, tried to appease her.
"Let them be, mother. If the brioche was for me, you know I don't mind a
bit. They were hungry, walking so far."
Midday struck; they heard the clogs of the children coming out of school.
The potatoes were cooked, and the coffee, thickened by a good half of
chicory, was passing through the percolator with a singing noise of large
drops. One corner of the table was free; but the mother only was eating
there. The three children were satisfied with their knees; and all the time the
little boy with silent voracity looked, without saying anything, at the
chitterlings, excited by the greasy paper.

Maheude was drinking her coffee in little sips, with her hands round the
glass to warm them, when Father Bonnemort came down. Usually he rose
late, and his breakfast waited for him on the fire. But to-day he began to
grumble because there was no soup. Then, when his daughter-in-law said to
him that one cannot always do what one likes, he ate his potatoes in silence.
From time to time he got up to spit in the ashes for cleanliness, and, settled
in his chair, he rolled his food round in his mouth, with lowered head and
dull eyes.
"Ah! I forgot, mother," said Alzire. "The neighbour came—"
Her mother interrupted her.
"She bothers me!"
There was a deep rancour against the Levaque woman, who had pleaded
poverty the day before to avoid lending her anything; while she knew that
she was just then in comfort, since her lodger, Bouteloup, had paid his
fortnight in advance. In the settlement they did not usually lend from
household to household.
"Here! you remind me," said Maheude. "Wrap up a millful of coffee. I will
take it to Pierronne; I owe it her from the day before yesterday."
And when her daughter had prepared the packet she added that she would
come back immediately to put the men's soup on the fire. Then she went out
with Estelle in her arms, leaving old Bonnemort to chew his potatoes
leisurely, while Lénore and Henri fought for the fallen parings.
Instead of going round, Maheude went straight across through the gardens,
for fear lest Levaque's wife should call her. Her garden was just next to that
of the Pierrons, and in the dilapidated trellis-work which separated them
there was a hole through which they fraternized. The common well was
there, serving four households. Beside it, behind a clump of feeble lilacs,
was situated the shed, a low building full of old tools, in which were
brought up the rabbits which were eaten on feast days. One o'clock struck;
it was the hour for coffee, and not a soul was to be seen at the doors or
windows. Only a workman belonging to the earth-cutting, waiting the hour
for descent, was digging up his patch of vegetable ground without raising
his head. But as Maheude arrived opposite the other block of buildings, she
was surprised to see a gentleman and two ladies in front of the church. She

stopped a moment and recognized them; it was Madame Hennebeau
bringing her guests, the decorated gentleman and the lady in the fur mantle,
to see the settlement.
"Oh! why did you take this trouble?" exclaimed Pierronne, when Maheude
had returned the coffee. "There was no hurry."
She was twenty-eight, and was considered the beauty of the settlement,
dark, with a low forehead, large eyes, straight mouth, and coquettish as
well; with the neatness of a cat, and with a good figure, for she had had no
children. Her mother, Brulé, the widow of a pikeman who died in the mine,
after having sent her daughter to work in a factory, swearing that she should
never marry a collier, had never ceased to be angry since she had married,
somewhat late, Pierron, a widower with a girl of eight. However, the
household lived very happily, in the midst of chatter, of scandals which
circulated concerning the husband's complaisance and the wife's lovers. No
debts, meat twice a week, a house kept so clean that one could see oneself
in the saucepans. As an additional piece of luck, thanks to favours, the
Company had authorized her to sell bon-bons and biscuits, jars of which she
exhibited, on two boards, behind the window-panes. This was six or seven
sous profit a day, and sometimes twelve on Sundays. The only drawback to
all this happiness was Mother Brulé, who screamed with all the rage of an
old revolutionary, having to avenge the death of her man on the masters,
and little Lydie, who pocketed, in the shape of frequent blows, the passions
of the family.
"How big she is already!" said Pierronne, simpering at Estelle.
"Oh! the trouble that it gives! Don't talk of it!" said Maheude. "You are
lucky not to have any. At least you can keep clean."
Although everything was in order in her house, and she scrubbed every
Saturday, she glanced with a jealous housekeeper's eye over this clean
room, in which there was even a certain coquetry, gilt vases on the
sideboard, a mirror, three framed prints.
Pierronne was about to drink her coffee alone, all her people being at the
pit.
"You'll have a glass with me?" she said.
"No, thanks; I've just swallowed mine."

"What does that matter?"
In fact, it mattered nothing. And both began drinking slowly. Between the
jars of biscuits and bon-bons their eyes rested on the opposite houses, of
which the little curtains in the windows formed a row, revealing by their
greater or less whiteness the virtues of the housekeepers. Those of the
Levaques were very dirty, veritable kitchen clouts, which seemed to have
wiped the bottoms of the saucepans.
"How can they live in such dirt?" murmured Pierronne.
Then Maheude began and did not stop. Ah! if she had had a lodger like that
Bouteloup she would have made the household go. When one knew how to
do it, a lodger was an excellent thing. Only one ought not to sleep with him.
And then the husband had taken to drink, beat his wife, and ran after the
singers at the Montsou café-concerts.
Pierronne assumed an air of profound disgust. These singers gave all sort of
diseases. There was one at Joiselle who had infected a whole pit.
"What surprises me is that you let your son go with their girl."
"Ah, yes! but just stop it then! Their garden is next to ours. Zacharie was
always there in summer with Philoméne behind the lilacs, and they didn't
put themselves out on the shed; one couldn't draw water at the well without
surprising them."
It was the usual history of the promiscuities of the settlement; boys and girls
became corrupted together, throwing themselves on their backsides, as they
said, on the low, sloping roof of the shed when twilight came on. All the
putters got their first child there when they did not take the trouble to go to
Réquillart or into the cornfields. It was of no consequence; they married
afterwards, only the mothers were angry when their lads began too soon, for
a lad who married no longer brought anything into the family.
"In your place I would have done with it," said Pierronne, sensibly. "Your
Zacharie has already filled her twice, and they will go on and get spliced.
Anyhow, the money is gone."
Maheude was furious and raised her hands.
"Listen to this: I will curse them if they get spliced. Doesn't Zacharie owe
us any respect? He has cost us something, hasn't he? Very well. He must

return it before getting a wife to hang on him. What will become of us, eh,
if our children begin at once to work for others? Might as well die!"
However, she grew calm.
"I'm speaking in a general way; we shall see later. It is fine and strong, your
coffee; you make it proper."
And after a quarter of an hour spent over other stories, she ran off,
exclaiming that the men's soup was not yet made. Outside, the children
were going back to school; a few women were showing themselves at their
doors, looking at Madame Hennebeau, who, with lifted finger, was
explaining the settlement to her guests. This visit began to stir up the
village. The earth-cutting man stopped digging for a moment, and two
disturbed fowls took fright in the gardens.
As Maheude returned, she ran against the Levaque woman who had come
out to stop Dr. Vanderhaghen, a doctor of the Company, a small hurried
man, overwhelmed by work, who gave his advice as he walked.
"Sir," she said, "I can't sleep; I feel ill everywhere. I must tell you about it."
He spoke to them all familiarly, and replied without stopping:
"Just leave me alone; you drink too much coffee."
"And my husband, sir," said Maheude in her turn, "you must come and see
him. He always has those pains in his legs."
"It is you who take too much out of him. Just leave me alone!"
The two women were left to gaze at the doctor's retreating back.
"Come in, then," said the Levaque woman, when she had exchanged a
despairing shrug with her neighbour. "You know, there is something new.
And you will take a little coffee. It is quite fresh."
Maheude refused, but without energy. Well! a drop, at all events, not to
disoblige. And she entered.
The room was black with dirt, the floor and the walls spotted with grease,
the sideboard and the table sticky with filth; and the stink of a badly kept
house took you by the throat. Near the fire, with his elbows on the table and
his nose in his plate, Bouteloup, a broad stout placid man, still young for

thirty-five, was finishing the remains of his boiled beef, while standing in
front of him, little Achille, Philoméne's first-born, who was already in his
third year, was looking at him in the silent, supplicating way of a gluttonous
animal. The lodger, very kind behind his big brown beard, from time to
time stuffed a piece of meat into his mouth.
"Wait till I sugar it," said the Levaque woman, putting some brown sugar
beforehand into the coffee-pot.
Six years older than he was, she was hideous and worn out, with her bosom
hanging on her belly, and her belly on her thighs, with a flattened muzzle,
and greyish hair always uncombed. He had taken her naturally, without
choosing, the same as he did his soup in which he found hairs, or his bed of
which the sheets lasted for three months. She was part of the lodging; the
husband liked repeating that good reckonings make good friends.
"I was going to tell you," she went on, "that Pierronne was seen yesterday
prowling about on the Bas-de-Soie side. The gentleman you know of was
waiting for her behind Rasseneur's, and they went off together along the
canal. Eh! that's nice, isn't it? A married woman!"
"Gracious!" said Maheude; "Pierron, before marrying her, used to give the
captain rabbits; now it costs him less to lend his wife."
Bouteloup began to laugh enormously, and threw a fragment of sauced
bread into Achille's mouth. The two women went on relieving themselves
with regard to Pierronne—a flirt, no prettier than any one else, but always
occupied in looking after every freckle of her skin, in washing herself, and
putting on pomade. Anyhow, it was the husband's affair, if he liked that sort
of thing. There were men so ambitious that they would wipe the masters'
behinds to hear them say thank you. And they were only interrupted by the
arrival of a neighbour bringing in a little urchin of nine months, Désirée,
Philoméne's youngest; Philoméne, taking her breakfast at the screening-
shed, had arranged that they should bring her little one down there, where
she suckled it, seated for a moment in the coal.
"I can't leave mine for a moment, she screams directly," said Maheude,
looking at Estelle, who was asleep in her arms.
But she did not succeed in avoiding the domestic affair which she had read
in the other's eyes.

"I say, now we ought to get that settled."
At first the two mothers, without need for talking about it, had agreed not to
conclude the marriage. If Zacharie's mother wished to get her son's wages
as long as possible, Philoméne's mother was enraged at the idea of
abandoning her daughter's wages. There was no hurry; the second mother
had even preferred to keep the little one, as long as there was only one; but
when it began to grow and eat and another one came, she found that she
was losing, and furiously pushed on the marriage, like a woman who does
not care to throw away her money.
"Zacharie has drawn his lot," she went on, "and there's nothing in the way.
When shall it be?"
"Wait till the fine weather," replied Maheude, constrainedly. "They are a
nuisance, these affairs! As if they couldn't wait to be married before going
together! My word! I would strangle Catherine if I knew that she had done
that."
The other woman shrugged her shoulders.
"Let be! she'll do like the others."
Bouteloup, with the tranquillity of a man who is at home, searched about on
the dresser for bread. Vegetables for Levaque's soup, potatoes and leeks, lay
about on a corner of the table, half-peeled, taken up and dropped a dozen
times in the midst of continual gossiping. The woman was about to go on
with them again when she dropped them anew and planted herself before
the window.
"What's that there? Why, there's Madame Hennebeau with some people.
They are going into Pierronne's."
At once both of them started again on the subject of Pierronne. Oh!
whenever the Company brought any visitors to the settlement they never
failed to go straight to her place, because it was clean. No doubt they never
told them stories about the head captain. One can afford to be clean when
one has lovers who earn three thousand francs, and are lodged and warmed,
without counting presents. If it was clean above it was not clean
underneath. And all the time that the visitors remained opposite, they went
on chattering.

"There, they are coming out," said the Levaque woman at last. "They are
going all around. Why, look, my dear—I believe they are going into your
place."
Maheude was seized with fear. Who knows whether Alzire had sponged
over the table? And her soup, also, which was not yet ready! She stammered
a good-day, and ran off home without a single glance aside.
But everything was bright. Alzire, very seriously, with a cloth in front of
her, had set about making the soup, seeing that her mother did not return.
She had pulled up the last leeks from the garden, gathered the sorrel, and
was just then cleaning the vegetables, while a large kettle on the fire was
heating the water for the men's baths when they should return. Henri and
Lénore were good for once, being absorbed in tearing up an old almanac.
Father Bonnemort was smoking his pipe in silence. As Maheude was
getting her breath Madame Hennebeau knocked.
"You will allow me, will you not, my good woman?"
Tall and fair, a little heavy in her superb maturity of forty years, she smiled
with an effort of affability, without showing too prominently her fear of
soiling her bronze silk dress and black velvet mantle.
"Come in, come in," she said to her guests. "We are not disturbing any one.
Now, isn't this clean again! And this good woman has seven children! All
our households are like this. I ought to explain to you that the Company
rents them the house at six francs a month. A large room on the ground
floor, two rooms above, a cellar, and a garden."
The decorated gentleman and the lady in the fur cloak, arrived that morning
by train from Paris, opened their eyes vaguely, exhibiting on their faces
their astonishment at all these new things which took them out of their
element.
"And a garden!" repeated the lady. "One could live here! It is charming!"
"We give them more coal than they can burn," went on Madame
Hennebeau. "A doctor visits them twice a week; and when they are old they
receive pensions, although nothing is held back from their wages."
"A Thebaid! a real land of milk and honey!" murmured the gentleman in
delight.

Maheude had hastened to offer chairs. The ladies refused. Madame
Hennebeau was already getting tired, happy for a moment to amuse herself
in the weariness of her exile by playing the part of exhibiting the beasts, but
immediately disgusted by the sickly odour of wretchedness, in spite of the
special cleanliness of the houses into which she ventured. Besides, she was
only repeating odd phrases which she had overheard, without ever troubling
herself further about this race of workpeople who were labouring and
suffering beside her.
"What beautiful children!" murmured the lady, who thought them hideous,
with their large heads beneath their bushy, straw-coloured hair.
And Maheude had to tell their ages; they also asked her questions about
Estelle, out of politeness. Father Bonnemort respectfully took his pipe out
of his mouth; but he was not the less a subject of uneasiness, so worn out by
his forty years underground, with his stiff limbs, deformed body, and earthy
face; and as a violent spasm of coughing took him he preferred to go and
spit outside, with the idea that his black expectoration would make people
uncomfortable.
Alzire received all the compliments. What an excellent little housekeeper,
with her cloth! They congratulated the mother on having a little daughter so
sensible for her age. And none spoke of the hump, though looks of uneasy
compassion were constantly turned towards the poor little invalid.
"Now!" concluded Madame Hennebeau, "if they ask you about our
settlements at Paris you will know what to reply. Never more noise than
this, patriarchal manners, all happy and well off as you see, a place where
you might come to recruit a little, on account of the good air and the
tranquillity."
"It is marvellous, marvellous!" exclaimed the gentleman, in a final outburst
of enthusiasm.
They left with that enchanted air with which people leave a booth in a fair,
and Maheude, who accompanied them, remained on the threshold while
they went away slowly, talking very loudly. The streets were full of people,
and they had to pass through several groups of women, attracted by the
news of their visit, which was hawked from house to house.

Just then, Levaque, in front of her door, had stopped Pierronne, who was
drawn by curiosity. Both of them affected a painful surprise. What now?
Were these people going to bed at the Maheus'? But it was not so very
delightful a place.
"Always without a sou, with all that they earn! Lord! when people have
vices!"
"I have just heard that she went this morning to beg at Piolaine, and
Maigrat, who had refused them bread, has given them something. We know
how Maigrat pays himself!"
"On her? Oh, no! that would need some courage. It's Catherine that he's
after."
"Why, didn't she have the cheek to say just now that she would strangle
Catherine if she were to come to that? As if big Chaval for ever so long had
not put her backside on the shed!"
"Hush! here they are!"
Then Levaque and Pierronne, with a peaceful air and without impolite
curiosity, contented themselves with watching the visitors out of the corners
of their eyes. Then by a gesture they quickly called Maheude, who was still
carrying Estelle in her arms. And all three, motionless, watched the well-
clad backs of Madame Hennebeau and her guests slowly disappear. When
they were some thirty paces off, the gossiping recommenced with redoubled
vigour.
"They carry plenty of money on their skins; worth more than themselves,
perhaps."
"Ah, sure! I don't know the other, but the one that belongs here, I wouldn't
give four sous for her, big as she is. They do tell stories—"
"Eh? What stories?"
"Why, she has men! First, the engineer."
"That lean, little creature! Oh, he's too small! She would lose him in the
sheets."
"What does that matter, if it amuses her? I don't trust a woman who puts on
such proud airs and never seems to be pleased where she is. Just look how

she wags her rump, as if she felt contempt for us all. Is that nice?"
The visitors went along at the same slow pace, still talking, when a carriage
stopped in the road, before the church. A gentleman of about forty-eight got
out of it, dressed in a black frock-coat, and with a very dark complexion
and an authoritative, correct expression.
"The husband," murmured Levaque, lowering her voice, as if he could hear
her, seized by that hierarchical fear which the manager inspired in his ten
thousand workpeople. "It's true, though, that he has a cuckold's head, that
man."
Now the whole settlement was out of doors. The curiosity of the women
increased. The groups approached each other, and were melted into one
crowd; while bands of urchins, with unwiped noses and gaping mouths,
dawdled along the pavements. For a moment the schoolmaster's pale head
was also seen behind the school-house hedge. Among the gardens, the man
who was digging stood with one foot on his spade, and with rounded eyes.
And the murmur of gossiping gradually increased, with a sound of rattles,
like a gust of wind among dry leaves.
It was especially before the Levaques' door that the crowd was thickest.
Two women had come forward, then ten, then twenty. Pierronne was
prudently silent now that there were too many ears about. Maheude, one of
the more reasonable, also contented herself with looking on; and to calm
Estelle, who was awake and screaming, she had tranquilly drawn out her
suckling animal's breast, which hung swaying as if pulled down by the
continual running of its milk. When M. Hennebeau had seated the ladies in
the carriage, which went off in the direction of Marchiennes, there was a
final explosion of clattering voices, all the women gesticulating and talking
in each other's faces in the midst of a tumult as of an ant-hill in revolution.
But three o'clock struck. The workers of the earth-cutting, Bouteloup and
the others, had set out. Suddenly around the church appeared the first
colliers returning from the pit with black faces and damp garments, folding
their arms and expanding their backs. Then there was confusion among the
women: they all began to run home with the terror of housekeepers who had
been led astray by too much coffee and too much tattle, and one heard
nothing more than this restless cry, pregnant with quarrels:

"Good Lord, and my soup! and my soup which isn't ready!"

CHAPTER IV

When Maheu came in after having left Étienne at Rasseneur's, he found
Catherine, Zacharie, and Jeanlin seated at the table finishing their soup. On
returning from the pit they were always so hungry that they ate in their
damp clothes, without even cleaning themselves; and no one was waited
for, the table was laid from morning to night; there was always someone
there swallowing his portion, according to the chances of work.
As he entered the door Maheu saw the provisions. He said nothing, but his
uneasy face lighted up. All the morning the emptiness of the cupboard, the
thought of the house without coffee and without butter, had been troubling
him; the recollection came to him painfully while he was hammering at the
seam, stifled at the bottom of the cutting. What would his wife do, and what
would become of them if she were to return with empty hands? And now,
here was everything! She would tell him about it later on. He laughed with
satisfaction.
Catherine and Jeanlin had risen, and were taking their coffee standing;
while Zacharie, not filled with the soup, cut himself a large slice of bread
and covered it with butter. Although he saw the chitterlings on a plate he did
not touch them, for meat was for the father, when there was only enough for
one. All of them had washed down their soup with a big bumper of fresh
water, the good, clear drink of the fortnight's end.
"I have no beer," said Maheude, when the father had seated himself in his
turn. "I wanted to keep a little money. But if you would like some the little
one can go and fetch a pint."
He looked at her in astonishment. What! she had money, too!
"No, no," he said, "I've had a glass, it's all right."
And Maheu began to swallow by slow spoonfuls the paste of bread,
potatoes, leeks, and sorrel piled up in the bowl which served him as a plate.
Maheude, without putting Estelle down, helped Alzire to give him all that

he required, pushed near him the butter and the meat, and put his coffee on
the fire to keep it quite hot.
In the meanwhile, beside the fire, they began to wash themselves in the half
of a barrel transformed into a tub. Catherine, whose turn came first, had
filled it with warm water; and she undressed herself tranquilly, took off her
cap, her jacket, her breeches, and even her chemise, habituated to this since
the age of eight, having grown up without seeing any harm in it. She only
turned with her stomach to the fire, then rubbed herself vigorously with
black soap. No one looked at her, even Lénore and Henri were no longer
inquisitive to see how she was made. When she was clean she went up the
stairs quite naked, leaving her damp chemise and other garments in a heap
on the floor. But a quarrel broke out between the two brothers: Jeanlin had
hastened to jump into the tub under the pretence that Zacharie was still
eating; and the latter hustled him, claiming his turn, and calling out that he
was polite enough to allow Catherine to wash herself first, but he did not
wish to have the rinsings of the young urchins, all the less since, when
Jeanlin had been in, it would do to fill the school ink-pots. They ended by
washing themselves together, also turning towards the fire, and they even
helped each other, rubbing one another's backs. Then, like their sister, they
disappeared up the staircase naked.
"What a slop they do make!" murmured Maheude, taking up their garments
from the floor to put them to dry. "Alzire, just sponge up a bit."
But a disturbance on the other side of the wall cut short her speech. One
heard a man's oaths, a woman's crying, a whole stampede of battle, with
hollow blows that sounded like the shock of an empty gourd.
"Levaque's wife is catching it," Maheu peacefully stated as he scraped the
bottom of his bowl with the spoon. "It's queer; Bouteloup made out that the
soup was ready."
"Ah, yes! ready," said Maheude. "I saw the vegetables on the table, not even
cleaned."
The cries redoubled, and there was a terrible push which shook the wall,
followed by complete silence. Then the miner, swallowing the last spoonful,
concluded, with an air of calm justice:
"If the soup is not ready, one can understand."

And after having drunk a glassful of water, he attacked the chitterlings. He
cut square pieces, stuck the point of his knife into them and ate them on his
bread without a fork. There was no talking when the father was eating. He
himself was hungry in silence; he did not recognize the usual taste of
Maigrat's provisions; this must come from somewhere else; however, he put
no question to his wife. He only asked if the old man was still sleeping
upstairs. No, the grandfather had gone out for his usual walk. And there was
silence again.
But the odour of the meat made Lénore and Henri lift up their heads from
the floor, where they were amusing themselves with making rivulets with
the spilt water. Both of them came and planted themselves near their father,
the little one in front. Their eyes followed each morsel, full of hope when it
set out from the plate and with an air of consternation when it was engulfed
in the mouth. At last the father noticed the gluttonous desire which made
their faces pale and their lips moist.
"Have the children had any of it?" he asked.
And as his wife hesitated:
"You know I don't like injustice. It takes away my appetite when I see them
there, begging for bits."
"But they've had some of it," she exclaimed, angrily. "If you were to listen
to them you might give them your share and the others', too; they would fill
themselves till they burst. Isn't it true, Alzire, that we have all had some?"
"Sure enough, mother," replied the little humpback, who under such
circumstances could tell lies with the self-possession of a grown-up person.

Lénore and Henri stood motionless, shocked and rebellious at such lying,
when they themselves were whipped if they did not tell the truth. Their little
hearts began to swell, and they longed to protest, and to say that they, at all
events, were not there when the others had some.
"Get along with you," said the mother, driving them to the other end of the
room. "You ought to be ashamed of being always in your father's plate; and
even if he was the only one to have any, doesn't he work, while all you, a lot
of good-for-nothings, can't do anything but spend! Yes, and the more the
bigger you are."
Maheu called them back. He seated Lénore on his left thigh, Henri on the
right; then he finished the chitterlings by playing at dinner with them. He
cut small pieces, and each had his share. The children devoured with
delight.
When he had finished, he said to his wife:
"No, don't give me my coffee. I'm going to wash first; and just give me a
hand to throw away this dirty water."
They took hold of the handles of the tub and emptied it into the gutter
before the door, when Jeanlin came down in dry garments, breeches and a
woollen blouse, too large for him, which were weary of fading on his
brother's back. Seeing him slinking out through the open door, his mother
stopped him.
"Where are you off to?"
"Over there."
"Over where? Listen to me. You go and gather a dandelion salad for this
evening. Eh, do you hear? If you don't bring a salad back you'll have to deal
with me."
"All right!"
Jeanlin set out with hands in his pockets, trailing his sabots and slouching
along, with his slender loins of a ten-year-old urchin, like an old miner. In
his turn, Zacharie came down, more carefully dressed, his body covered by
a black woollen knitted jacket with blue stripes. His father called out to him
not to return late; and he left, nodding his head with his pipe between his

teeth, without replying. Again the tub was filled with warm water. Maheu
was already slowly taking off his jacket. At a look, Alzire led Lénore and
Henri outside to play. The father did not like washing en famille, as was
practised in many houses in the settlement. He blamed no one, however; he
simply said that it was good for the children to dabble together.
"What are you doing up there?" cried Maheude, up the staircase.
"I'm mending my dress that I tore yesterday," replied Catherine.
"All right. Don't come down, your father is washing."
Then Maheu and Maheude were left alone. The latter decided to place
Estelle on a chair, and by a miracle, finding herself near the fire the child
did not scream, but turned towards her parents the vague eyes of a little
creature without intelligence. He was crouching before the tub quite naked,
having first plunged his head into it, well rubbed with that black soap the
constant use of which discoloured and made yellow the hair of the race.
Afterwards he got into the water, lathered his chest, belly, arms, and thighs,
scraping them energetically with both fists. His wife, standing by, watched
him.
"Well, then," she began, "I saw your eyes when you came in. You were
bothered, eh? and it eased you, those provisions. Fancy! those Piolaine
people didn't give me a sou! Oh! they are kind enough; they have dressed
the little ones and I was ashamed to ask them, for it crosses me to ask for
things."
She interrupted herself a moment to wedge Estelle into the chair lest she
should tip over. The father continued to work away at his skin, without
hastening by a question this story which interested him, patiently waiting
for light.
"I must tell you that Maigrat had refused me, oh! straight! like one kicks a
dog out of doors. Guess if I was on a spree! They keep you warm, woollen
garments, but they don't put anything into your stomach, eh!"
He lifted his head, still silent. Nothing at Piolaine, nothing at Maigrat's:
then where? But, as usual, she was pulling up her sleeves to wash his back
and those parts which he could not himself easily reach. Besides, he liked
her to soap him, to rub him everywhere till she almost broke her wrists. She

took soap and worked away at his shoulders while he held himself stiff so
as to resist the shock.
"Then I returned to Maigrat's, and said to him, ah, I said something to him!
And that it didn't do to have no heart, and that evil would happen to him if
there were any justice. That bothered him; he turned his eyes and would like
to have got away."
From the back she had got down to the buttocks and was pushing into the
folds, not leaving any part of the body without passing over it, making him
shine like her three saucepans on Saturdays after a big clean. Only she
began to sweat with this tremendous exertion of her arms, so exhausted and
out of breath that her words were choked.
"At last he called me an old nuisance. We shall have bread until Saturday,
and the best is that he has lent me five francs. I have got butter, coffee, and
chicory from him. I was even going to get the meat and potatoes there, only
I saw that he was grumbling. Seven sous for the chitterlings, eighteen for
the potatoes, and I've got three francs seventy-five left for a ragout and a
meat soup. Eh, I don't think I've wasted my morning!"
Now she began to wipe him, plugging with a towel the parts that would not
dry. Feeling happy and without thinking of the future debt, he burst out
laughing and took her in his arms.
"Leave me alone, stupid! You are damp, and wetting me. Only I'm afraid
Maigrat has ideas——"
She was about to speak of Catherine, but she stopped. What was the good of
disturbing him? It would only lead to endless discussion.
"What ideas?" he asked.
"Why, ideas of robbing us. Catherine will have to examine the bill
carefully."
He took her in his arms again, and this time did not let her go. The bath
always finished in this way: she enlivened him by the hard rubbing, and
then by the towels which tickled the hairs of his arms and chest. Besides,
among all his mates of the settlement it was the hour for stupidities, when
more children were planted than were wanted. At night all the family were
about. He pushed her towards the table, jesting like a worthy man who was

enjoying the only good moment of the day, calling that taking his dessert,
and a dessert which cost him nothing. She, with her loose figure and breast,
struggled a little for fun.
"You are stupid! My Lord! you are stupid! And there's Estelle looking at us.
Wait till I turn her head."
"Oh, bosh! at three months; as if she understood!"
When he got up Maheu simply put on a dry pair of breeches. He liked,
when he was clean and had taken his pleasure with his wife, to remain
naked for a while. On his white skin, the whiteness of an anaemic girl, the
scratches and gashes of the coal left tattoo-marks, grafts as the miners
called them; and he was proud of them, and exhibited his big arms and
broad chest shining like veined marble. In summer all the miners could be
seen in this condition at their doors. He even went there for a moment now,
in spite of the wet weather, and shouted out a rough joke to a comrade,
whose breast was also naked, on the other side of the gardens. Others also
appeared. And the children, trailing along the pathways, raised their heads
and also laughed with delight at all this weary flesh of workers displayed in
the open air.
While drinking his coffee, without yet putting on a shirt, Maheu told his
wife about the engineer's anger over the planking. He was calm and unbent,
and listened with a nod of approval to the sensible advice of Maheude, who
showed much common sense in such affairs. She always repeated to him
that nothing was gained by struggling against the Company. She afterwards
told him about Madame Hennebeau's visit. Without saying so, both of them
were proud of this.
"Can I come down yet?" asked Catherine, from the top of the staircase.
"Yes, yes; your father is drying himself."
The young girl had put on her Sunday dress, an old frock of rough blue
poplin, already faded and worn in the folds. She had on a very simple
bonnet of black tulle.
"Hallo! you're dressed. Where are you going to?"
"I'm going to Montsou to buy a ribbon for my bonnet. I've taken off the old
one; it was too dirty."

"Have you got money, then?"
"No! but Mouquette promised to lend me half a franc."
The mother let her go. But at the door she called her back.
"Here! don't go and buy that ribbon at Maigrat's. He will rob you, and he
will think that we are rolling in wealth."
The father, who was crouching down before the fire to dry his neck and
shoulders more quickly, contented himself with adding:
"Try not to dawdle about at night on the road."
In the afternoon, Maheu worked in his garden. Already he had sown
potatoes, beans, and peas; and he now set about replanting cabbage and
lettuce plants, which he had kept fresh from the night before. This bit of
garden furnished them with vegetables, except potatoes of which they never
had enough. He understood gardening very well, and could even grow
artichokes, which was treated as sheer display by the neighbours. As he was
preparing the bed, Levaque just then came out to smoke a pipe in his own
square, looking at the cos lettuces which Bouteloup had planted in the
morning; for without the lodger's energy in digging nothing would have
grown there but nettles. And a conversation arose over the trellis. Levaque,
refreshed and excited by thrashing his wife, vainly tried to take Maheu off
to Rasseneur's. Why, was he afraid of a glass? They could have a game at
skittles, lounge about for a while with the mates, and then come back to
dinner. That was the way of life after leaving the pit. No doubt there was no
harm in that, but Maheu was obstinate; if he did not replant his lettuces they
would be faded by to-morrow. In reality he refused out of good sense, not
wishing to ask a farthing from his wife out of the change of the five-franc
piece.
Five o'clock was striking when Pierronne came to know if it was with
Jeanlin that her Lydie had gone off. Levaque replied that it must be
something of that sort, for Bébert had also disappeared, and those rascals
always went prowling about together. When Maheu had quieted them by
speaking of the dandelion salad, he and his comrade set about joking the
young woman with the coarseness of good-natured devils. She was angry,
but did not go away, in reality tickled by the strong words which made her
scream with her hands to her sides. A lean woman came to her aid,

stammering with anger like a clucking hen. Others in the distance on their
doorsteps confided their alarms. Now the school was closed; and all the
children were running about, there was a swarm of little creatures shouting
and tumbling and fighting; while those fathers who were not at the public-
house were resting in groups of three or four, crouching on their heels as
they did in the mine, smoking their pipes with an occasional word in the
shelter of a wall. Pierronne went off in a fury when Levaque wanted to feel
if her thighs were firm; and he himself decided to go alone to Rasseneur's,
since Maheu was still planting.
Twilight suddenly came on; Maheude lit the lamp, irritated because neither
her daughter nor the boys had come back. She could have guessed as much;
they never succeeded in taking together the only meal of the day at which it
was possible for them to be all round the table. Then she was waiting for the
dandelion salad. What could he be gathering at this hour, in this blackness
of an oven, that nuisance of a child! A salad would go so well with the stew
which was simmering on the fire—potatoes, leeks, sorrel, fricasseed with
fried onion. The whole house smelt of that fried onion, that good odour
which gets rank so soon, and which penetrates the bricks of the settlements
with such infection that one perceives it far off in the country, the violent
flavour of the poor man's kitchen.
Maheu, when he left the garden at nightfall, at once fell into a chair with his
head against the wall. As soon as he sat down in the evening he went to
sleep. The clock struck seven; Henri and Lénore had just broken a plate in
persisting in helping Alzire, who was laying the table, when Father
Bonnemort came in first, in a hurry to dine and go back to the pit. Then
Maheude woke up Maheu.
"Come and eat! So much the worse! They are big enough to find the house.
The nuisance is the salad!"

CHAPTER V

At Rasseneur's, after having eaten his soup, Étienne went back into the
small chamber beneath the roof and facing the Voreux, which he was to

occupy, and fell on to his bed dressed as he was, overcome with fatigue. In
two days he had not slept four hours. When he awoke in the twilight he was
dazed for a moment, not recognizing his surroundings; and he felt such
uneasiness and his head was so heavy that he rose, painfully, with the idea
of getting some fresh air before having his dinner and going to bed for the
night.
Outside, the weather was becoming milder: the sooty sky was growing
copper-coloured, laden with one of those warm rains of the Nord, the
approach of which one feels by the moist warmth of the air, and the night
was coming on in great mists which drowned the distant landscape of the
plain. Over this immense sea of reddish earth the low sky seemed to melt
into black dust, without a breath of wind now to animate the darkness. It
was the wan and deathly melancholy of a funeral.
Étienne walked straight ahead at random, with no other aim but to shake off
his fever. When he passed before the Voreux, already growing gloomy at
the bottom of its hole and with no lantern yet shining from it, he stopped a
moment to watch the departure of the day-workers. No doubt six o'clock
had struck; landers, porters from the pit-eye, and grooms were going away
in bands, mixed with the vague and laughing figures of the screening girls
in the shade.
At first it was Brulé and her son-in-law, Pierron. She was abusing him
because he had not supported her in a quarrel with an overseer over her
reckoning of stones.
"Get along! damned good-for-nothing! Do you call yourself a man to lower
yourself like that before one of these beasts who devour us?"
Pierron followed her peacefully, without replying. At last he said:
"I suppose I ought to jump on the boss? Thanks for showing me how to get
into a mess!"
"Bend your backside to him, then," she shouted. "By God! if my daughter
had listened to me! It's not enough for them to kill the father. Perhaps you'd
like me to say 'thank you.' No, I'll have their skins first!"
Their voices were lost. Étienne saw her disappear, with her eagle nose, her
flying white hair, her long, lean arms that gesticulated furiously. But the
conversation of two young people behind caused him to listen. He had

recognized Zacharie, who was waiting there, and who had just been
addressed by his friend Mouquet.
"Are you here?" said the latter. "We will have something to eat, and then off
to the Volcan."
"Directly. I've something to attend to."
"What, then?"
The lander turned and saw Philoméne coming out of the screening-shed. He
thought he understood.
"Very well, if it's that. Then I go ahead."
"Yes, I'll catch you up."
As he went away, Mouquet met his father, old Mouque, who was also
coming out of the Voreux. The two men simply wished each other good
evening, the son taking the main road while the father went along by the
canal.
Zacharie was already pushing Philoméne in spite of her resistance into the
same solitary path. She was in a hurry, another time; and the two wrangled
like old housemates. There was no fun in only seeing one another out of
doors, especially in winter, when the earth is moist and there are no
wheatfields to lie in.
"No, no, it's not that," he whispered impatiently. "I've something to say to
you." He led her gently with his arm round her waist. Then, when they were
in the shadow of the pit-bank, he asked if she had any money.
"What for?" she demanded.
Then he became confused, spoke of a debt of two francs which had reduced
his family to despair.
"Hold your tongue! I've seen Mouquet; you're going again to the Volcan
with him, where those dirty singer-women are."
He defended himself, struck his chest, gave his word of honour. Then, as
she shrugged her shoulders, he said suddenly:
"Come with us if it will amuse you. You see that you don't put me out. What
do I want to do with the singers? Will you come?"

"And the little one?" she replied. "How can one stir with a child that's
always screaming? Let me go back, I guess they're not getting on at the
house."
But he held her and entreated. See! it was only not to look foolish before
Mouquet to whom he had promised. A man could not go to bed every
evening like the fowls. She was overcome, and pulled up the skirt of her
gown; with her nail she cut the thread and drew out some half-franc pieces
from a corner of the hem. For fear of being robbed by her mother she hid
there the profit of the overtime work she did at the pit.
"I've got five, you see," she said, "I'll give you three. Only you must swear
that you'll make your mother decide to let us marry. We've had enough of
this life in the open air. And mother reproaches me for every mouthful I eat.
Swear first."
She spoke with the soft voice of a big, delicate girl, without passion, simply
tired of her life. He swore, exclaimed that it was a sacred promise; then,
when he had got the three pieces, he kissed her, tickled her, made her laugh,
and would have pushed things to an extreme in this corner of the pit-bank,
which was the winter chamber of their household, if she had not again
refused, saying that it would not give her any pleasure. She went back to the
settlement alone, while he cut across the fields to rejoin his companion.
Étienne had followed them mechanically, from afar, without understanding,
regarding it as a simple rendezvous. The girls were precocious in the pits;
and he recalled the Lille work-girls whom he had waited for behind the
factories, those bands of girls, corrupted at fourteen, in the abandonment of
their wretchedness. But another meeting surprised him more. He stopped.
At the bottom of the pit-bank, in a hollow into which some large stones had
slipped, little Jeanlin was violently snubbing Lydie and Bébert, seated one
at his right, the other at his left.
"What do you say? Eh? I'll slap each of you if you want more. Who thought
of it first, eh?"
In fact, Jeanlin had had an idea. After having roamed about in the meadows,
along the canal, for an hour, gathering dandelions with the two others, it had
occurred to him, before this pile of salad, that they would never eat all that
at home; and instead of going back to the settlement he had gone to

Montsou, keeping Bébert to watch, and making Lydie ring at the houses and
offer the dandelions. He was experienced enough to know that, as he said,
girls could sell what they liked. In the ardour of business, the entire pile had
disappeared; but the girl had gained eleven sous. And now, with empty
hands, the three were dividing the profits.
"That's not fair!" Bébert declared. "Must divide into three. If you keep
seven sous we shall only have two each."
"What? not fair!" replied Jeanlin furiously. "I gathered more first of all."
The other usually submitted with timid admiration and a credulity which
always made him the dupe. Though older and stronger, he even allowed
himself to be struck. But this time the sight of all that money excited him to
rebellion.
"He's robbing us, Lydie, isn't he? If he doesn't share, we'll tell his mother."
Jeanlin at once thrust his fist beneath the other's nose.
"Say that again! I'll go and say at your house that you sold my mother's
salad. And then, you silly beast, how can I divide eleven sous into three?
Just try and see, if you're so clever. Here are your two sous each. Just look
sharp and take them, or I'll put them in my pocket."
Bébert was vanquished and accepted the two sous. Lydie, who was
trembling, had said nothing, for with Jeanlin she experienced the fear and
the tenderness of a little beaten woman. When he held out the two sous to
her she advanced her hand with a submissive laugh. But he suddenly
changed his mind.
"Eh! what will you do with all that? Your mother will nab them, sure
enough, if you don't know how to hide them from her. I'd better keep them
for you. When you want money you can ask me for it."
And the nine sous disappeared. To shut her mouth he had put his arms
around her laughingly and was rolling with her over the pit-bank. She was
his little wife, and in the dark corners they used to try together the love
which they heard and saw in their homes behind partitions, through the
cracks of doors. They knew everything, but they were able to do nothing,
being too young, fumbling and playing for hours at the games of vicious
puppies. He called that playing at papa and mama; and when he chased her

she ran away and let herself be caught with the delicious trembling of
instinct, often angry, but always yielding, in the expectation of something
which never came.
As Bébert was not admitted to these games and received a cuffing whenever
he wanted to touch Lydie, he was always constrained, agitated by anger and
uneasiness when the other two were amusing themselves, which they did
not hesitate to do in his presence. His one idea, therefore, was to frighten
them and disturb them, calling out that someone could see them.
"It's all up! There's a man looking."
This time he told the truth; it was Étienne, who had decided to continue his
walk. The children jumped up and ran away, and he passed by round the
bank, following the canal, amused at the terror of these little rascals. No
doubt it was too early at their age, but they saw and heard so much that one
would have to tie them up to restrain them. Yet Étienne became sad.
A hundred paces farther on he came across more couples. He had arrived at
Réquillart, and there, around the old ruined mine, all the girls of Montsou
prowled about with their lovers. It was the common rendezvous, the remote
and deserted spot to which the putters came to get their first child when
they dared not risk the shed. The broken palings opened to every one the
old yard, now become a nondescript piece of ground, obstructed by the
ruins of the two sheds which had fallen in, and by the skeletons of the large
buttresses which were still standing. Derelict trams were lying about, and
piles of old rotting wood, while a dense vegetation was reconquering this
corner of ground, displaying itself in thick grass, and springing up in young
trees that were already vigorous. Every girl found herself at home here;
there were concealed holes for all; their lovers placed them over beams,
behind the timber, in the trams; they even lay elbow to elbow without
troubling about their neighbours. And it seemed that around this
extinguished engine, near this shaft weary of disgorging coal, there was a
revenge of creation in the free love which, beneath the lash of instinct,
planted children in the bellies of these girls who were yet hardly women.
Yet a caretaker lived there, old Mouque, to whom the Company had given
up, almost beneath the destroyed tower, two rooms which were constantly
threatened by destruction from the expected fall of the last walls. He had
even been obliged to shore up a part of the roof, and he lived there very

comfortably with his family, he and Mouquet in one room, Mouquette in
the other. As the windows no longer possessed a single pane, he had
decided to close them by nailing up boards; one could not see well, but it
was warm. For the rest, this caretaker cared for nothing: he went to look
after his horses at the Voreux, and never troubled himself about the ruins of
Réquillart, of which the shaft only was preserved, in order to serve as a
chimney for a fire which ventilated the neighbouring pit.
It was thus that Father Mouque was ending his old age in the midst of love.
Ever since she was ten Mouquette had been lying about in all the corners of
the ruins, not as a timid and still green little urchin like Lydie, but as a girl
who was already big, and a mate for bearded lads. The father had nothing to
say, for she was considerate, and never introduced a lover into the house.
Then he was used to this sort of accident. When he went to the Voreux,
when he came back, whenever he came out of his hole, he could scarcely
put a foot down without treading on a couple in the grass; and it was worse
if he wanted to gather wood to heat his soup or look for burdocks for his
rabbit at the other end of the enclosure. Then he saw one by one the
voluptuous noses of all the girls of Montsou rising up around him, while he
had to be careful not to knock against the limbs stretched out level with the
paths. Besides, these meetings had gradually ceased to disturb either him
who was simply taking care not to stumble, or the girls whom he allowed to
finish their affairs, going away with discreet little steps like a worthy man
who was at peace with the ways of nature. Only just as they now knew him
he at last also knew them, as one knows the rascally magpies who become
corrupted in the pear-trees in the garden. Ah! youth! youth! how it goes on,
how wild it is! Sometimes he wagged his chin with silent regret, turning
away from the noisy wantons who were breathing too loudly in the
darkness. Only one thing put him out of temper: two lovers had acquired
the bad habit of embracing outside his wall. It was not that it prevented him
from sleeping, but they leaned against the wall so heavily that at last they
damaged it.
Every evening old Mouque received a visit from his friend, Father
Bonnemort, who regularly before dinner took the same walk. The two old
men spoke little, scarcely exchanging ten words during the half-hour that
they spent together. But it cheered them thus to think over the days of old,
to chew their recollections over again without need to talk of them. At

Réquillart they sat on a beam side by side, saying a word and then sinking
into their dreams, with faces bent towards the earth. No doubt they were
becoming young again. Around them lovers were turning over their
sweethearts; there was a murmur of kisses and laughter; the warm odour of
the girls arose in the freshness of the trodden grass. It was now forty-three
years since Father Bonnemort had taken his wife behind the pit; she was a
putter, so slight that he had placed her on a tram to embrace her at ease. Ah!
those were fine days. And the two old men, shaking their heads, at last left
each other, often without saying good night.
That evening, however, as Étienne arrived, Father Bonnemort, who was
getting up from the beam to return to the settlement, said to Mouque:
"Good night, old man. I say, you knew Roussie?"
Mouque was silent for a moment, rocked his shoulders; then, returning to
the house:
"Good night, good night, old man."
Étienne came and sat on the beam, in his turn. His sadness was increasing,
though he could not tell why. The old man, whose disappearing back he
watched, recalled his arrival in the morning, and the flood of words which
the piercing wind had dragged from his silence. What wretchedness! And
all these girls, worn out with fatigue, who were still stupid enough in the
evening to fabricate little ones, to yield flesh for labour and suffering! It
would never come to an end if they were always filling themselves with
starvelings. Would it not be better if they were to shut up their bellies, and
press their thighs together, as at the approach of misfortune? Perhaps these
gloomy ideas only stirred confusedly in him because he was alone, while all
the others at this hour were going about taking their pleasure in couples.
The mild weather stifled him a little, occasional drops of rain fell on his
feverish hands. Yes, they all came to it; it was something stronger than
reason.
Just then, as Étienne remained seated motionless in the shadow, a couple
who came down from Montsou rustled against him without seeing him as
they entered the uneven Réquillart ground. The girl, certainly a virgin, was
struggling and resisting with low whispered supplications, while the lad in
silence was pushing her towards the darkness of a corner of the shed, still

upright, under which there were piles of old mouldy rope. It was Catherine
and big Chaval. But Étienne had not recognized them in passing, and his
eyes followed them; he was watching for the end of the story, touched by a
sensuality which changed the course of his thoughts. Why should he
interfere? When girls refuse it is because they like first to be forced.
On leaving the settlement of the Deux-Cent-Quarante Catherine had gone to
Montsou along the road. From the age of ten, since she had earned her
living at the pit, she went about the country alone in the complete liberty of
the colliers' families; and if no man had possessed her at fifteen it was
owing to the tardy awakening of her puberty, the crisis of which had not yet
arrived. When she was in front of the Company's Yards she crossed the road
and entered a laundress's where she was certain to find Mouquette; for the
latter stayed there from morning till night, among women who treated each
other with coffee all round. But she was disappointed; Mouquette had just
then been regaling them in her turn so thoroughly that she was not able to
lend the half-franc she had promised. To console her they vainly offered a
glass of hot coffee. She was not even willing that her companion should
borrow from another woman. An idea of economy had come to her, a sort of
superstitious fear, the certainty that that ribbon would bring her bad luck if
she were to buy it now.
She hastened to regain the road to the settlement, and had reached the last
houses of Montsou when a man at the door of the Piquette Estaminet called
her:
"Eh! Catherine! where are you off to so quick?"
It was lanky Chaval. She was vexed, not because he displeased her, but
because she was not inclined to joke.
"Come in and have a drink. A little glass of sweet, won't you?"
She refused politely; the night was coming on, they were expecting her at
home. He had advanced, and was entreating her in a low voice in the
middle of the road. It had been his idea for a long time to persuade her to
come up to the room which he occupied on the first story of the Estaminet
Piquette, a fine room for a household, with a large bed. Did he frighten her,
that she always refused? She laughed good-naturedly, and said that she
would come up some day when children didn't grow. Then, one thing

leading to another, she told him, without knowing how, about the blue
ribbon which she had not been able to buy.
"But I'll pay for it," he exclaimed.
She blushed, feeling that it would be best to refuse again, but possessed by
a strong desire to have the ribbon. The idea of a loan came back to her, and
at last she accepted on condition that she should return to him what he spent
on her. They began to joke again: it was agreed that if she did not sleep with
him she should return him the money. But there was another difficulty when
he talked of going to Maigrat's.
"No, not Maigrat's; mother won't let me."
"Why? is there any need to say where one goes? He has the best ribbons in
Montsou."
When Maigrat saw lanky Chaval and Catherine coming to his shop like two
lovers who are buying their engagement gifts, he became very red, and
exhibited his pieces of blue ribbon with the rage of a man who is being
made fun of. Then, when he had served the young people, he planted
himself at the door to watch them disappear in the twilight; and when his
wife came to ask him a question in a timid voice, he fell on her, abusing her,
and exclaiming that he would make them repent some day, the filthy
creatures, who had no gratitude, when they ought all to be on the ground
licking his feet.
Lanky Chaval accompanied Catherine along the road. He walked beside
her, swinging his arms; only he pushed her by the hip, conducting her
without seeming to do so. She suddenly perceived that he had made her
leave the pavement and that they were taking the narrow Réquillart road.
But she had no time to be angry; his arm was already round her waist, and
he was dazing her with a constant caress of words. How stupid she was to
be afraid! Did he want to hurt such a little darling, who was as soft as silk,
so tender that he could have devoured her? And he breathed behind her ear,
in her neck, so that a shudder passed over the skin of her whole body. She
felt stifled, and had nothing to reply. It was true that he seemed to love her.
On Saturday evenings, after having blown out the candle, she had asked
herself what would happen if he were to take her in this way; then, on going
to sleep, she had dreamed that she would no longer refuse, quite overcome

by pleasure. Why, then, at the same idea to-day did she feel repugnance and
something like regret? While he was tickling her neck with his moustache
so softly that she closed her eyes, the shadow of another man, of the lad she
had seen that morning, passed over the darkness of her closed eyelids.
Catherine suddenly looked around her. Chaval had conducted her into the
ruins of Réquillart and she recoiled, shuddering, from the darkness of the
fallen shed.
"Oh! no! oh, no!" she murmured, "please let me go!" The fear of the male
had taken hold of her, that fear which stiffens the muscles in an impulse of
defence, even when girls are willing, and feel the conquering approach of
man. Her virginity which had nothing to learn took fright as at a threatening
blow, a wound of which she feared the unknown pain.
"No, no! I don't want to! I tell you that I am too young. It's true! Another
time, when I am quite grown up."
He growled in a low voice:
"Stupid! There's nothing to fear. What does that matter?"
But without speaking more he had seized her firmly and pushed her beneath
the shed. And she fell on her back on the old ropes; she ceased to protest,
yielding to the male before her time, with that hereditary submission which
from childhood had thrown down in the open air all the girls of her race.
Her frightened stammering grew faint, and only the ardent breath of the
man was heard.
Étienne, however, had listened without moving. Another who was taking
the leap! And now that he had seen the comedy he got up, overcome by
uneasiness, by a kind of jealous excitement in which there was a touch of
anger. He no longer restrained himself; he stepped over the beams, for those
two were too much occupied now to be disturbed. He was surprised,
therefore, when he had gone a hundred paces along the path, to find that
they were already standing up, and that they appeared, like himself, to be
returning to the settlement. The man again had his arm round the girl's
waist, and was squeezing her, with an air of gratitude, still speaking in her
neck; and it was she who seemed in a hurry, anxious to return quickly, and
annoyed at the delay.

Then Étienne was tormented by the desire to see their faces. It was foolish,
and he hastened his steps, so as not to yield to it; but his feet slackened of
their own accord, and at the first lamppost he concealed himself in the
shade. He was petrified by horror when he recognized Catherine and lanky
Chaval. He hesitated at first: was it indeed she, that young girl in the coarse
blue dress, with that bonnet? Was that the urchin whom he had seen in
breeches, with her head in the canvas cap? That was why she could pass so
near him without his recognizing her. But he no longer doubted; he had
seen her eyes again, with their greenish limpidity of spring water, so clear
and so deep. What a wench! And he experienced a furious desire to avenge
himself on her with contempt, without any motive. Besides, he did not like
her as a girl: she was frightful.
Catherine and Chaval had passed him slowly. They did not know that they
were watched. He held her to kiss her behind the ear, and she began to
slacken her steps beneath his caresses, which made her laugh. Left behind,
Étienne was obliged to follow them, irritated because they barred the road
and because in spite of himself he had to witness these things which
exasperated him. It was true, then, what she had sworn to him in the
morning: she was not any one's mistress; and he, who had not believed her,
who had deprived himself of her in order not to act like the other! and who
had let her be taken beneath his nose, pushing his stupidity so far as to be
dirtily amused at seeing them! It made him mad! he clenched his hands, he
could have devoured that man in one of those impulses to kill in which he
saw everything red.
The walk lasted for half an hour. When Chaval and Catherine approached
the Voreux they slackened their pace still more; they stopped twice beside
the canal, three times along the pit-bank, very cheerful now and occupied
with little tender games. Étienne was obliged to stop also when they
stopped, for fear of being perceived. He endeavoured to feel nothing but a
brutal regret: that would teach him to treat girls with consideration through
being well brought up! Then, after passing the Voreux, and at last free to go
and dine at Rasseneur's, he continued to follow them, accompanying them
to the settlement, where he remained standing in the shade for a quarter of
an hour, waiting until Chaval left Catherine to enter her home. And when he
was quite sure that they were no longer together, he set off walking afresh,

going very far along the Marchiennes road, stamping, and thinking of
nothing, too stifled and too sad to shut himself up in a room.
It was not until an hour later, towards nine o'clock, that Étienne again
passed the settlement, saying to himself that he must eat and sleep, if he
was to be up again at four o'clock in the morning. The village was already
asleep, and looked quite black in the night. Not a gleam shone from the
closed shutters, the house fronts slept, with the heavy sleep of snoring
barracks. Only a cat escaped through the empty gardens. It was the end of
the day, the collapse of workers falling from the table to the bed, overcome
with weariness and food.
At Rasseneur's, in the lighted room, an engine-man and two day-workers
were drinking. But before going in Étienne stopped to throw one last glance
into the darkness. He saw again the same black immensity as in the
morning when he had arrived in the wind. Before him the Voreux was
crouching, with its air of an evil beast, its dimness pricked with a few
lantern lights. The three braziers of the bank were burning in the air, like
bloody moons, now and then showing the vast silhouettes of Father
Bonnemort and his yellow horse. And beyond, in the flat plain, shade had
submerged everything, Montsou, Marchiennes, the forest of Vandame, the
immense sea of beetroot and of wheat, in which there only shone, like
distant lighthouses, the blue fires of the blast furnaces, and the red fires of
the coke ovens. Gradually the night came on, the rain was now falling
slowly, continuously, burying this void in its monotonous streaming. Only
one voice was still heard, the thick, slow respiration of the pumping engine,
breathing both by day and by night.

PART THREE

CHAPTER I

On the next day, and the days that followed, Étienne continued his work at
the pit. He grew accustomed to it; his existence became regulated by this
labour and to these new habits which had seemed so hard to him at first.
Only one episode interrupted the monotony of the first fortnight: a slight
fever which kept him in bed for forty-eight hours with aching limbs and
throbbing head, dreaming in a state of semi-delirium that he was pushing
his tram in a passage that was so narrow that his body would not pass
through. It was simply the exhaustion of his apprenticeship, an excess of
fatigue from which he quickly recovered.
And days followed days, until weeks and months had slipped by. Now, like
his mates, he got up at three o'clock, drank his coffee, and carried off the
double slice of bread and butter which Madame Rasseneur had prepared for
him the evening before. Regularly as he went every morning to the pit, he
met old Bonnemort who was going home to sleep, and on leaving in the
afternoon he crossed Bouteloup who was going to his task. He had his cap,
his breeches and canvas jacket, and he shivered and warmed his back in the
shed before the large fire. Then came the waiting with naked feet in the
receiving-room, swept by furious currents of air. But the engine, with its
great steel limbs starred with copper shining up above in the shade, no
longer attracted his attention, nor the cables which flew by with the black
and silent motion of a nocturnal bird, nor the cages rising and plunging
unceasingly in the midst of the noise of signals, of shouted orders, of trams
shaking the metal floor. His lamp burnt badly, that confounded lamp-man
could not have cleaned it; and he only woke up when Mouquet bundled
them all off, roguishly smacking the girls' flanks. The cage was unfastened,
and fell like a stone to the bottom of a hole without causing him even to lift
his head to see the daylight vanish. He never thought of a possible fall; he
felt himself at home as he sank into the darkness beneath the falling rain.
Below at the pit-eye, when Pierron had unloaded them with his air of
hypocritical mildness, there was always the same tramping as of a flock, the
yard-men each going away to his cutting with trailing steps. He now knew
the mine galleries better than the streets of Montsou; he knew where he had
to turn, where he had to stoop, and where he had to avoid a puddle. He had
grown so accustomed to these two kilometres beneath the earth, that he
could have traversed them without a lamp, with his hands in his pockets.
And every time the same meetings took place: a captain lighting up the
faces of the passing workmen, Father Mouque leading a horse, Bébert

conducting the snorting Bataille, Jeanlin running behind the tram to close
the ventilation doors, and big Mouquette and lean Lydie pushing their
trams.
After a time, also, Étienne suffered much less from the damp and closeness
of the cutting. The chimney or ascending passage seemed to him more
convenient for climbing up, as if he had melted and could pass through
cracks where before he would not have risked a hand. He breathed the coal-
dust without difficulty, saw clearly in the obscurity, and sweated tranquilly,
having grown accustomed to the sensation of wet garments on his body
from morning to night. Besides, he no longer spent his energy recklessly; he
had gained skill so rapidly that he astonished the whole stall. In three weeks
he was named among the best putters in the pit; no one pushed a tram more
rapidly to the upbrow, nor loaded it afterwards so correctly. His small figure
allowed him to slip about everywhere, and though his arms were as delicate
and white as a woman's, they seemed to be made of iron beneath the smooth
skin, so vigorously did they perform their task. He never complained, out of
pride no doubt, even when he was panting with fatigue. The only thing they
had against him was that he could not take a joke, and grew angry as soon
as any one trod on his toes. In all other respects he was accepted and looked
upon as a real miner, reduced beneath this pressure of habit, little by little,
to a machine.
Maheu regarded Étienne with special friendship, for he respected work that
was well done. Then, like the others, he felt that this lad had more education
than himself; he saw him read, write, and draw little plans; he heard him
talking of things of which he himself did not know even the existence. This
caused him no astonishment, for miners are rough fellows who have thicker
heads than engine-men; but he was surprised at the courage of this little
chap, and at the cheerful way he had bitten into the coal to avoid dying of
hunger. He had never met a workman who grew accustomed to it so
quickly. So when hewing was urgent, and he did not wish to disturb a
pikeman, he gave the timbering over to the young man, being sure of the
neatness and solidity of his work. The bosses were always bothering him
about the damned planking question; he feared every hour the appearance
of the engineer Négrel, followed by Dansaert, shouting, discussing,
ordering everything to be done over again, and he remarked that his putter's
timbering gave greater satisfaction to these gentlemen, in spite of their air

of never being pleased with anything, and their repeated assertions that the
Company would one day or another take radical measures. Things dragged
on; a deep discontent was fomenting in the pit, and Maheu himself, in spite
of his calmness, was beginning to clench his fists.
There was at first some rivalry between Zacharie and Étienne. One evening
they were even coming to blows. But the former, a good lad though careless
of everything but his own pleasure, was quickly appeased by the friendly
offer of a glass, and soon yielded to the superiority of the new-comer.
Levaque was also on good terms with him, talking politics with the putter,
who, as he said, had his own ideas. The only one of the men in whom he
felt a deep hostility was lanky Chaval: not that they were cool towards each
other, for, on the contrary, they had become companions; only when they
joked their eyes seemed to devour each other. Catherine continued to move
among them as a tired, resigned girl, bending her back, pushing her tram,
always good-natured with her companion in the putting, who aided her in
his turn, and submissive to the wishes of her lover, whose caresses she now
received openly. It was an accepted situation, a recognized domestic
arrangement to which the family itself closed its eyes to such a degree that
Chaval every evening led away the putter behind the pit-bank, then brought
her back to her parents' door, where he finally embraced her before the
whole settlement. Étienne, who believed that he had reconciled himself to
the situation, often teased her about these walks, making crude remarks by
way of joke, as lads and girls will at the bottom of the cuttings; and she
replied in the same tone, telling in a swaggering way what her lover had
done to her, yet disturbed and growing pale when the young man's eyes
chanced to meet hers. Then both would turn away their heads, not speaking
again, perhaps, for an hour, looking as if they hated each other because of
something buried within them and which they could never explain to each
other.
The spring had come. On emerging from the pit one day Étienne had
received in his face a warm April breeze, a good odour of young earth, of
tender greenness, of large open air; and now, every time he came up the
spring smelt sweeter, warmed him more, after his ten hours of labour in the
eternal winter at the bottom, in the midst of that damp darkness which no
summer had ever dissipated. The days grew longer and longer; at last, in
May, he went down at sunrise when a vermilion sky lit up the Voreux with a

mist of dawn in which the white vapour of the pumping-engine became
rose-coloured. There was no more shivering, a warm breath blew across the
plain, while the larks sang far above. Then at three o'clock he was dazzled
by the now burning sun which set fire to the horizon, and reddened the
bricks beneath the filth of the coal. In June the wheat was already high, of a
blue green, which contrasted with the black green of the beetroots. It was an
endless vista undulating beneath the slightest breeze; and he saw it spread
and grow from day to day, and was sometimes surprised, as if he had found
it in the evening more swollen with verdure than it had been in the morning.
The poplars along the canal were putting on their plumes of leaves. Grass
was invading the pit-bank, flowers were covering the meadows, a whole life
was germinating and pushing up from this earth beneath which he was
groaning in misery and fatigue.
When Étienne now went for a walk in the evening he no longer startled
lovers behind the pit-bank. He could follow their track in the wheat and
divine their wanton birds' nests by eddies among the yellowing blades and
the great red poppies. Zacharie and Philoméne came back to it out of old
domestic habit; Mother Brulé, always on Lydie's heels, was constantly
hunting her out with Jeanlin, buried so deeply together that one had to tread
on them before they made up their minds to get up; and as to Mouquette,
she lay about everywhere—one could not cross a field without seeing her
head plunge down while only her feet emerged as she lay at full length. But
all these were quite free; the young man found nothing guilty there except
on the evenings when he met Catherine and Chaval. Twice he saw them on
his approach tumble down in the midst of a field, where the motionless
stalks afterwards remained dead. Another time, as he was going along a
narrow path, Catherine's clear eyes appeared before him, level with the
wheat, and immediately sank. Then the immense plain seemed to him too
small, and he preferred to pass the evening at Rasseneur's, in the Avantage.
"Give me a glass, Madame Rasseneur. No, I'm not going out to-night; my
legs are too stiff."
And he turned towards a comrade, who always sat at the bottom table with
his head against the wall.
"Souvarine, won't you have one?"
"No, thanks; nothing."

Étienne had become acquainted with Souvarine through living there side by
side. He was an engine-man at the Voreux, and occupied the furnished room
upstairs next to his own. He must have been about thirty years old, fair and
slender, with a delicate face framed by thick hair and a slight beard. His
white pointed teeth, his thin mouth and nose, with his rosy complexion,
gave him a girlish appearance, an air of obstinate gentleness, across which
the grey reflection of his steely eyes threw savage gleams. In his poor
workman's room there was nothing but a box of papers and books. He was a
Russian, and never spoke of himself, so that many stories were afloat
concerning him. The colliers, who are very suspicious with strangers,
guessing from his small middle-class hands that he belonged to another
caste, had at first imagined a romance, some assassination, and that he was
escaping punishment. But then he had behaved in such a fraternal way with
them, without any pride, distributing to the youngsters of the settlement all
the sous in his pockets, that they now accepted him, reassured by the term
"political refugee" which circulated about him—a vague term, in which
they saw an excuse even for crime, and, as it were, a companionship in
suffering.
During the first weeks, Étienne had found him timid and reserved, so that
he only discovered his history later on. Souvarine was the latest born of a
noble family in the Government of Tula. At St. Petersburg, where he studied
medicine, the socialistic enthusiasm which then carried away all the youth
in Russia had decided him to learn a manual trade, that of a mechanic, so
that he could mix with the people, in order to know them and help them as a
brother. And it was by this trade that he was now living after having fled, in
consequence of an unsuccessful attempt against the tsar's life: for a month
he had lived in a fruiterer's cellar, hollowing out a mine underneath the
road, and charging bombs, with the constant risk of being blown up with the
house. Renounced by his family, without money, expelled from the French
workshops as a foreigner who was regarded as a spy, he was dying of
starvation when the Montsou Company had at last taken him on at a
moment of pressure. For a year he had laboured there as a good, sober,
silent workman, doing day-work one week and night-work the next week,
so regularly that the masters referred to him as an example to the others.
"Are you never thirsty?" said Étienne to him, laughing.
And he replied with his gentle voice, almost without an accent:

"I am thirsty when I eat."
His companion also joked him about the girls, declaring that he had seen
him with a putter in the wheat on the Bas-de-Soie side. Then he shrugged
his shoulders with tranquil indifference. What should he do with a putter?
Woman was for him a boy, a comrade, when she had the fraternal feeling
and the courage of a man. What was the good of having a possible act of
cowardice on one's conscience? He desired no bond, either woman or
friend; he would be master of his own life and those of others.
Every evening towards nine o'clock, when the inn was emptying, Étienne
remained thus talking with Souvarine. He drank his beer in small sips,
while the engine-man smoked constant cigarettes, of which the tobacco had
at last stained his slender fingers. His vague mystic's eyes followed the
smoke in the midst of a dream; his left hand sought occupation by
nervously twitching; and he usually ended by installing a tame rabbit on his
knees, a large doe with young, who lived at liberty in the house. This rabbit,
which he had named Poland, had grown to worship him; she would come
and smell his trousers, fawn on him and scratch him with her paws until he
took her up like a child. Then, lying in a heap against him, her ears laid
back, she would close her eyes; and without growing tired, with an
unconscious caressing gesture, he would pass his hand over her grey silky
fur, calmed by that warm living softness.
"You know I have had a letter from Pluchart," said Étienne one evening.
Only Rasseneur was there. The last client had departed for the settlement,
which was now going to bed.
"Ah!" exclaimed the innkeeper, standing up before his two lodgers. "How
are things going with Pluchart?"
During the last two months, Étienne had kept up a constant correspondence
with the Lille mechanician, whom he had told of his Montsou engagement,
and who was now indoctrinating him, having been struck by the
propaganda which he might carry on among the miners.
"The association is getting on very well. It seems that they are coming in
from all sides."
"What have you got to say, eh, about their society?" asked Rasseneur of
Souvarine.

The latter, who was softly scratching Poland's head, blew out a puff of
smoke and muttered, with his tranquil air:
"More foolery!"
But Étienne grew enthusiastic. A predisposition for revolt was throwing
him, in the first illusions of his ignorance, into the struggle of labour against
capital. It was the International Working Men's Association that they were
concerned with, that famous International which had just been founded in
London. Was not that a superb effort, a campaign in which justice would at
last triumph? No more frontiers; the workers of the whole world rising and
uniting to assure to the labourer the bread that he has earned. And what a
simple and great organization! Below, the section which represents the
commune; then the federation which groups the sections of the same
province; then the nation; and then, at last, humanity incarnated in a general
council in which each nation was represented by a corresponding secretary.
In six months it would conquer the world, and would be able to dictate laws
to the masters should they prove obstinate.
"Foolery!" repeated Souvarine. "Your Karl Marx is still only thinking about
letting natural forces act. No politics, no conspiracies, is it not so?
Everything in the light of day, and simply to raise wages. Don't bother me
with your evolution! Set fire to the four corners of the town, mow down the
people, level everything, and when there is nothing more of this rotten
world left standing, perhaps a better one will grow up in its place."
Étienne began to laugh. He did not always take in his comrade's sayings;
this theory of destruction seemed to him an affectation. Rasseneur, who was
still more practical, like a man of solid common sense did not condescend
to get angry. He only wanted to have things clear.
"Then, what? Are you going to try and create a section at Montsou?"
This was what was desired by Pluchart, who was secretary to the Federation
of the Nord. He insisted especially on the services which the association
would render to the miners should they go out on strike. Étienne believed
that a strike was imminent: this timbering business would turn out badly;
any further demands on the part of the Company would cause rebellion in
all the pits.

"It's the subscriptions that are the nuisance," Rasseneur declared, in a
judicial tone. "Half a franc a year for the general fund, two francs for the
section; it looks like nothing, but I bet that many will refuse to give it."
"All the more," added Étienne, "because we must first have here a
Provident Fund, which we can use if need be as an emergency fund. No
matter, it is time to think about these things. I am ready if the others are."
There was silence. The petroleum lamp smoked on the counter. Through the
large open door they could distinctly hear the shovel of a stoker at the
Voreux stoking the engine.
"Everything is so dear!" began Madame Rasseneur, who had entered and
was listening with a gloomy air as if she had grown up in her everlasting
black dress. "When I tell you that I've paid twenty-two sous for eggs! It will
have to burst up."
All three men this time were of the same opinion. They spoke one after the
other in a despairing voice, giving expression to their complaints. The
workers could not hold out; the Revolution had only aggravated their
wretchedness; only the bourgeois had grown fat since '89, so greedily that
they had not even left the bottom of the plates to lick. Who could say that
the workers had had their reasonable share in the extraordinary increase of
wealth and comfort during the last hundred years? They had made fun of
them by declaring them free. Yes, free to starve, a freedom of which they
fully availed themselves. It put no bread into your cupboard to go and vote
for fine fellows who went away and enjoyed themselves, thinking no more
of the wretched voters than of their old boots. No! one way or another it
would have to come to an end, either quietly by laws, by an understanding
in good fellowship, or like savages by burning everything and devouring
one another. Even if they never saw it, their children would certainly see it,
for the century could not come to an end without another revolution, that of
the workers this time, a general hustling which would cleanse society from
top to bottom, and rebuild it with more cleanliness and justice.
"It will have to burst up," Madame Rasseneur repeated energetically.
"Yes, yes," they all three cried. "It will have to burst up." Souvarine was
now tickling Poland's ears, and her nose was curling with pleasure. He said
in a low voice, with abstracted gaze, as if to himself:

"Raise wages—how can you? They're fixed by an iron law to the smallest
possible sum, just the sum necessary to allow the workers to eat dry bread
and get children. If they fall too low, the workers die, and the demand for
new men makes them rise. If they rise too high, more men come, and they
fall. It is the balance of empty bellies, a sentence to a perpetual prison of
hunger."
When he thus forgot himself, entering into the questions that stir an
educated socialist, Étienne and Rasseneur became restless, disturbed by his
despairing statements which they were unable to answer.
"Do you understand?" he said again, gazing at them with his habitual
calmness; "we must destroy everything, or hunger will reappear. Yes,
anarchy and nothing more; the earth washed in blood and purified by fire!
Then we shall see!"
"Monsieur is quite right," said Madame Rasseneur, who, in her
revolutionary violence, was always very polite.
Étienne, in despair at his ignorance, would argue no longer. He rose,
remarking:
"Let's go to bed. All this won't save one from getting up at three o'clock."
Souvarine, having blown away the cigarette-end which was sticking to his
lips, was already gently lifting the big rabbit beneath the belly to place it on
the ground. Rasseneur was shutting up the house. They separated in silence
with buzzing ears, as if their heads had swollen with the grave questions
they had been discussing.
And every evening there were similar conversations in the bare room
around the single glass which Étienne took an hour to empty. A crowd of
obscure ideas, asleep within him, were stirring and expanding. Especially
consumed by the need of knowledge, he had long hesitated to borrow books
from his neighbour, who unfortunately had hardly any but German and
Russian works. At last he had borrowed a French book on Co-operative
Societies—mere foolery, said Souvarine; and he also regularly read a
newspaper which the latter received, the Combat, an Anarchist journal
published at Geneva. In other respects, notwithstanding their daily relations,
he found him as reserved as ever, with his air of camping in life, without
interests or feelings or possessions of any kind.

Towards the first days of July, Étienne's situation began to improve. In the
midst of this monotonous life, always beginning over again, an accident had
occurred. The stalls in the Guillaume seam had come across a shifting of the
strata, a general disturbance in the layers, which certainly announced that
they were approaching a fault; and, in fact, they soon came across this fault
which the engineers, in spite of considerable knowledge of the soil, were
still ignorant of. This upset the pit; nothing was talked of but the lost seam,
which was to be found, no doubt, lower down on the other side of the fault.
The old miners were already expanding their nostrils, like good dogs, in a
chase for coal. But, meanwhile, the hewers could not stand with folded
arms, and placards announced that the Company would put up new
workings to auction.
Maheu, on coming out one day, accompanied Étienne and offered to take
him on as a pikeman in his working, in place of Levaque who had gone to
another yard. The matter had already been arranged with the head captain
and the engineer, who were very pleased with the young man. So Étienne
merely had to accept this rapid promotion, glad of the growing esteem in
which Maheu held him.
In the evening they returned together to the pit to take note of the placards.
The cuttings put up to auction were in the Filonniére seam in the north
gallery of the Voreux. They did not seem very advantageous, and the miner
shook his head when the young man read out the conditions. On the
following day when they had gone down, he took him to see the seam, and
showed him how far away it was from the pit-eye, the crumbly nature of the
earth, the thinness and hardness of the coal. But if they were to eat they
would have to work. So on the following Sunday they went to the auction,
which took place in the shed and was presided over by the engineer of the
pit, assisted by the head captain, in the absence of the divisional engineer.
From five to six hundred miners were there in front of the little platform,
which was placed in the corner, and the bidding went on so rapidly that one
only heard a deep tumult of voices, of shouted figures drowned by other
figures.
For a moment Maheu feared that he would not be able to obtain one of the
forty workings offered by the Company. All the rivals went lower,
disquieted by the rumours of a crisis and the panic of a lock-out. Négrel, the
engineer, did not hurry in the face of this panic, and allowed the offers to

fall to the lowest possible figures, while Dansaert, anxious to push matters
still further, lied with regard to the quality of the workings. In order to get
his fifty metres, Maheu struggled with a comrade who was also obstinate; in
turn they each took off a centime from the tram; and if he conquered in the
end it was only by lowering the wage to such an extent, that the captain
Richomme, who was standing behind him, muttered between his teeth, and
nudged him with his elbow, growling angrily that he could never do it at
that price.
When they came out Étienne was swearing. And he broke out before
Chaval, who was returning from the wheatfields in company with
Catherine, amusing himself while his father-in-law was absorbed in serious
business.
"By God!" he exclaimed, "it's simply slaughter! Today it is the worker who
is forced to devour the worker!"
Chaval was furious. He would never have lowered it, he wouldn't. And
Zacharie, who had come out of curiosity, declared that it was disgusting.
But Étienne with a violent gesture silenced them.
"It will end some day, we shall be the masters!"
Maheu, who had been mute since the auction, appeared to wake up. He
repeated:
"Masters! Ah! bad luck! it can't be too soon!"

CHAPTER II

It was Montsou feast-day, the last Sunday in July. Since Saturday evening
the good housekeepers of the settlement had deluged their parlours with
water, throwing bucketfuls over the flags and against the walls; and the
floor was not yet dry, in spite of the white sand which had been strewn over
it, an expensive luxury for the purses of the poor. But the day promised to
be very warm; it was one of those heavy skies threatening storm, which in
summer stifle this flat bare country of the Nord.

Sunday upset the hours for rising, even among the Maheus. While the
father, after five o'clock, grew weary of his bed and dressed himself, the
children lay in bed until nine. On this day Maheu went to smoke a pipe in
the garden, and then came back to eat his bread and butter alone, while
waiting. He thus passed the morning in a random manner; he mended the
tub, which leaked; stuck up beneath the clock a portrait of the prince
imperial which had been given to the little ones. However, the others came
down one by one. Father Bonnemort had taken a chair outside, to sit in the
sun, while the mother and Alzire had at once set about cooking. Catherine
appeared, pushing before her Lénore and Henri, whom she had just dressed.
Eleven o'clock struck, and the odour of the rabbit, which was boiling with
potatoes, was already filling the house when Zacharie and Jeanlin came
down last, still yawning and with their swollen eyes.
The settlement was now in a flutter, excited by the feast-day, and in
expectation of dinner, which was being hastened for the departure in bands
to Montsou. Troops of children were rushing about. Men in their shirt-
sleeves were trailing their old shoes with the lazy gait of days of rest.
Windows and doors, opened wide in the fine weather, gave glimpses of
rows of parlours which were filled with movement and shouts and the
chatter of families. And from one end to the other of the frontages, there
was a smell of rabbit, a rich kitchen smell which on this day struggled with
the inveterate odour of fried onion.
The Maheus dined at midday. They made little noise in the midst of the
chatter from door to door, in the coming and going of women in a constant
uproar of calls and replies, of objects borrowed, of youngsters hunted away
or brought back with a slap. Besides, they had not been on good terms
during the last three weeks with their neighbours, the Levaques, on the
subject of the marriage of Zacharie and Philoméne. The men passed the
time of day, but the women pretended not to know each other. This quarrel
had strengthened the relations with Pierronne, only Pierronne had left
Pierron and Lydie with her mother, and set out early in the morning to
spend the day with a cousin at Marchiennes; and they joked, for they knew
this cousin; she had a moustache, and was head captain at the Voreux.
Maheude declared that it was not proper to leave one's family on a feast-day
Sunday.

Beside the rabbit with potatoes, a rabbit which had been fattening in the
shed for a month, the Maheus had meat soup and beef. The fortnight's
wages had just fallen due the day before. They could not recollect such a
spread. Even at the last St. Barbara's Day, the fete of the miners when they
do nothing for three days, the rabbit had not been so fat nor so tender. So
the ten pairs of jaws, from little Estelle, whose teeth were beginning to
appear, to old Bonnemort, who was losing his, worked so heartily that the
bones themselves disappeared. The meat was good, but they could not
digest it well; they saw it too seldom. Everything disappeared; there only
remained a piece of boiled beef for the evening. They could add bread and
butter if they were hungry.
Jeanlin went out first. Bébert was waiting for him behind the school, and
they prowled about for a long time before they were able to entice away
Lydie, whom Brulé, who had decided not to go out, was trying to keep with
her. When she perceived that the child had fled, she shouted and brandished
her lean arms, while Pierron, annoyed at the disturbance, strolled quietly
away with the air of a husband who can amuse himself with a good
conscience, knowing that his wife also has her little amusements.
Old Bonnemort set out at last, and Maheu decided to have a little fresh air
after asking Maheude if she would come and join him down below. No, she
couldn't at all, it was nothing but drudgery with the little ones; but perhaps
she would, all the same; she would think about it: they could easily find
each other. When he got outside he hesitated, then he went into the
neighbours' to see if Levaque was ready. There he found Zacharie, who was
waiting for Philoméne, and the Levaque woman started again on that
everlasting subject of marriage, saying that she was being made fun of and
that she would have an explanation with Maheude once and for all. Was life
worth living when one had to keep one's daughter's fatherless children
while she went off with her lover? Philoméne quietly finished putting on
her bonnet, and Zacharie took her off, saying that he was quite willing if his
mother was willing. As Levaque had already gone, Maheu referred his
angry neighbour to his wife and hastened to depart. Bouteloup, who was
finishing a fragment of cheese with both elbows on the table, obstinately
refused the friendly offer of a glass. He would stay in the house like a good
husband.

Gradually the settlement was emptied; all the men went off one behind the
other, while the girls, watching at the doors, set out in the opposite direction
on the arms of their lovers. As her father turned the corner of the church,
Catherine perceived Chaval, and, hastening to join him, they took together
the Montsou road. And the mother remained alone, in the midst of her
scattered children, without strength to leave her chair, where she was
pouring out a second glass of boiling coffee, which she drank in little sips.
In the settlement there were only the women left, inviting each other to
finish the dregs of the coffee-pots, around tables that were still warm and
greasy with the dinner.
Maheu had guessed that Levaque was at the Avantage, and he slowly went
down to Rasseneur's. In fact, behind the bar, in the little garden shut in by a
hedge, Levaque was having a game of skittles with some mates. Standing
by, and not playing, Father Bonnemort and old Mouque were following the
ball, so absorbed that they even forgot to nudge each other with their
elbows. A burning sun struck down on them perpendicularly; there was only
one streak of shade by the side of the inn; and Étienne was there drinking
his glass before a table, annoyed because Souvarine had just left him to go
up to his room. Nearly every Sunday the engine-man shut himself up to
write or to read.
"Will you have a game?" asked Levaque of Maheu.
But he refused: it was too hot, he was already dying of thirst.
"Rasseneur," called Étienne, "bring a glass, will you?"
And turning towards Maheu:
"I'll stand it, you know."
They now all treated each other familiarly. Rasseneur did not hurry himself,
he had to be called three times; and Madame Rasseneur at last brought
some lukewarm beer. The young man had lowered his voice to complain
about the house: they were worthy people, certainly, people with good
ideas, but the beer was worthless and the soup abominable! He would have
changed his lodgings ten times over, only the thought of the walk from
Montsou held him back. One day or another he would go and live with
some family at the settlement.

"Sure enough!" said Maheu in his slow voice, "sure enough, you would be
better in a family."
But shouts now broke out. Levaque had overthrown all the skittles at one
stroke. Mouque and Bonnemort, with their faces towards the ground, in the
midst of the tumult preserved a silence of profound approbation. And the
joy at this stroke found vent in jokes, especially when the players perceived
Mouquette's radiant face behind the hedge. She had been prowling about
there for an hour, and at last ventured to come near on hearing the laughter.
"What! are you alone?" shouted Levaque. "Where are your sweethearts?"
"My sweethearts! I've stabled them," she replied, with a fine impudent
gaiety. "I'm looking for one."
They all offered themselves, throwing coarse chaff at her. She refused with
a gesture and laughed louder, playing the fine lady. Besides, her father was
watching the game without even taking his eyes from the fallen skittles.
"Ah!" Levaque went on, throwing a look towards Étienne: "one can tell
where you're casting sheep's eyes, my girl! You'll have to take him by
force."
Then Étienne brightened up. It was in fact around him that the putter was
revolving. And he refused, amused indeed, but without having the least
desire for her. She remained planted behind the hedge for some minutes
longer, looking at him with large fixed eyes; then she slowly went away,
and her face suddenly became serious as if she were overcome by the
powerful sun.
In a low voice Étienne was again giving long explanations to Maheu
regarding the necessity for the Montsou miners to establish a Provident
Fund. "Since the Company professes to leave us free," he repeated, "what is
there to fear? We only have their pensions and they distribute them
according to their own idea, since they don't hold back any of our pay. Well,
it will be prudent to form, outside their good pleasure, an association of
mutual help on which we can count at least in cases of immediate need."
And he gave details, and discussed the organization, promising to undertake
the labour of it.

"I am willing enough," said Maheu, at last convinced. "But there are the
others; get them to make up their minds."
Levaque had won, and they left the skittles to empty their glasses. But
Maheu refused to drink a second glass; he would see later on, the day was
not yet done. He was thinking about Pierron. Where could he be? No doubt
at the Lenfant Estaminet. And, having persuaded Étienne and Levaque, the
three set out for Montsou, at the same moment that a new band took
possession of the skittles at the Avantage.
On the road they had to pause at the Casimir Bar, and then at the Estaminet
du Progrés. Comrades called them through the open doors, and there was no
way of refusing. Each time it was a glass, two if they were polite enough to
return the invitation. They remained there ten minutes, exchanging a few
words, and then began again, a little farther on, knowing the beer, with
which they could fill themselves without any other discomfort than having
to piss it out again in the same measure, as clear as rock water. At the
Estaminet Lenfant they came right upon Pierron, who was finishing his
second glass, and who, in order not to refuse to touch glasses, swallowed a
third. They naturally drank theirs also. Now there were four of them, and
they set out to see if Zacharie was not at the Estaminet Tison. It was empty,
and they called for a glass, in order to wait for him a moment. Then they
thought of the Estaminet Saint-Éloi and accepted there a round from
Captain Richomme. Then they rambled from bar to bar, without any
pretext, simply saying that they were having a stroll.
"We must go to the Volcan!" suddenly said Levaque, who was getting
excited.
The others began to laugh, and hesitated. Then they accompanied their
comrade in the midst of the growing crowd. In the long narrow room of the
Volcan, on a platform raised at the end, five singers, the scum of the Lille
prostitutes, were walking about, low-necked and with monstrous gestures,
and the customers gave ten sous when they desired to have one behind the
stage. There was especially a number of putters and landers, even trammers
of fourteen, all the youth of the pit, drinking more gin than beer. A few old
miners also ventured there, and the worst husbands of the settlements, those
whose households were falling into ruin.

As soon as the band was seated round a little table, Étienne took possession
of Levaque to explain to him his idea of the Provident Fund. Like all new
converts who have found a mission, he had become an obstinate
propagandist.
"Every member," he repeated, "could easily pay in twenty sous a month. As
these twenty sous accumulated they would form a nice little sum in four or
five years, and when one has money one is ready, eh, for anything that turns
up? Eh, what do you say to it?"
"I've nothing to say against it," replied Levaque, with an abstracted air. "We
will talk about it."
He was excited by an enormous blonde, and determined to remain behind
when Maheu and Pierron, after drinking their glasses, set out without
waiting for a second song.
Outside, Étienne who had gone with them found Mouquette, who seemed to
be following them. She was always there, looking at him with her large
fixed eyes, laughing her good-natured laugh, as if to say: "Are you
willing?" The young man joked and shrugged his shoulders. Then, with a
gesture of anger, she was lost in the crowd.
"Where, then, is Chaval?" asked Pierron.
"True!" said Maheu. "He must surely be at Piquette's. Let us go to
Piquette's."
But as they all three arrived at the Estaminet Piquette, sounds of a quarrel
arrested them at the door; Zacharie with his fist was threatening a thick-set
phlegmatic Walloon nail-maker, while Chaval, with his hands in his
pockets, was looking on.
"Hullo! there's Chaval," said Maheu quietly; "he is with Catherine."
For five long hours the putter and her lover had been walking about the fair.
All along the Montsou road, that wide road with low bedaubed houses
winding downhill, a crowd of people wandered up and down in the sun, like
a trail of ants, lost in the flat, bare plain. The eternal black mud had dried, a
black dust was rising and floating about like a storm-cloud.
On both sides the public-houses were crowded; there were rows of tables to
the street, where stood a double rank of hucksters at stalls in the open air,

selling neck-handkerchiefs and looking-glasses for the girls, knives and
caps for the lads; to say nothing of sweetmeats, sugar-plums, and biscuits.
In front of the church archery was going on. Opposite the Yards they were
playing at bowls. At the corner of the Joiselle road, beside the
Administration buildings, in a spot enclosed by fences, crowds were
watching a cock-fight, two large red cocks, armed with steel spurs, their
breasts torn and bleeding. Farther on, at Maigrat's, aprons and trousers were
being won at billiards. And there were long silences; the crowd drank and
stuffed itself without a sound; a mute indigestion of beer and fried potatoes
was expanding in the great heat, still further increased by the frying-pans
bubbling in the open air.
Chaval bought a looking-glass for nineteen sous and a handkerchief for
three francs, to give to Catherine. At every turn they met Mouque and
Bonnemort, who had come to the fair and, in meditative mood, were
plodding heavily through it side by side. Another meeting made them
angry; they caught sight of Jeanlin inciting Bébert and Lydie to steal bottles
of gin from an extemporized bar installed at the edge of an open piece of
ground. Catherine succeeded in boxing her brother's ears; the little girl had
already run away with a bottle. These imps of Satan would certainly end in
a prison. Then, as they arrived before another bar, the Tête-Coupée, it
occurred to Chaval to take his sweetheart in to a competition of chaffinches
which had been announced on the door for the past week. Fifteen nail-
makers from the Marchiennes nail works had responded to the appeal, each
with a dozen cages; and the gloomy little cages in which the blinded finches
sat motionless were already hung upon a paling in the inn yard. It was a
question as to which, in the course of an hour, should repeat the phrase of
its song the greatest number of times. Each nail-maker with a slate stood
near his cages to mark, watching his neighbours and watched by them. And
the chaffinches had begun, the chichouïeux with the deeper note, the
batisecouics with their shriller note, all at first timid, and only risking a rare
phrase, then, excited by each other's songs, increasing the pace; then at last
carried away by such a rage of rivalry that they would even fall dead. The
nail-makers violently whipped them on with their voices, shouting out to
them in Walloon to sing more, still more, yet a little more, while the
spectators, about a hundred people, stood by in mute fascination in the
midst of this infernal music of a hundred and eighty chaffinches all

repeating the same cadence out of time. It was a batisecouic which gained
the first prize, a metal coffee-pot.
Catherine and Chaval were there when Zacharie and Philoméne entered.
They shook hands, and all stayed together. But suddenly Zacharie became
angry, for he discovered that a nail-maker, who had come in with his mates
out of curiosity, was pinching his sister's thigh. She blushed and tried to
make him be silent, trembling at the idea that all these nail-makers would
throw themselves on Chaval and kill him if he objected to her being
pinched. She had felt the pinch, but said nothing out of prudence. Her lover,
however, merely made a grimace, and as they all four now went out the
affair seemed to be finished. But hardly had they entered Piquette's to drink
a glass, when the nail-maker reappeared, making fun of them and coming
close up to them with an air of provocation. Zacharie, insulted in his good
family feelings, threw himself on the insolent intruder.
"That's my sister, you swine! Just wait a bit, and I'm damned if I don't make
you respect her."
The two men were separated, while Chaval, who was quite calm, only
repeated:
"Let be! it's my concern. I tell you I don't care a damn for him."
Maheu now arrived with his party, and quieted Catherine and Philoméne
who were in tears. The nail-maker had disappeared, and there was laughter
in the crowd. To bring the episode to an end, Chaval, who was at home at
the Estaminet Piquette, called for drinks. Étienne had touched glasses with
Catherine, and all drank together—the father, the daughter and her lover,
the son and his mistress—saying politely: "To your good health!" Pierron
afterwards persisted in paying for more drinks. And they were all in good
humour, when Zacharie grew wild again at the sight of his comrade
Mouquet, and called him, as he said, to go and finish his affair with the nail-
maker.
"I shall have to go and do for him! Here, Chaval, keep Philoméne with
Catherine. I'm coming back."
Maheu offered drinks in his turn. After all, if the lad wished to avenge his
sister it was not a bad example. But as soon as she had seen Mouquet,

Philoméne felt at rest, and nodded her head. Sure enough the two chaps
would be off to the Volcan!
On the evenings of feast-days the fair was terminated in the ball-room of
the Bon-Joyeux. It was a widow, Madame Désir, who kept this ball-room, a
fat matron of fifty, as round as a tub, but so fresh that she still had six
lovers, one for every day of the week, she said, and the six together for
Sunday. She called all the miners her children; and grew tender at the
thought of the flood of beer which she had poured out for them during the
last thirty years; and she boasted also that a putter never became pregnant
without having first stretched her legs at her establishment. There were two
rooms in the Bon-Joyeux: the bar which contained the counter and tables;
then, communicating with it on the same floor by a large arch, was the ball-
room, a large hall only planked in the middle, being paved with bricks
round the sides. It was decorated with two garlands of paper flowers which
crossed one another, and were united in the middle by a crown of the same
flowers; while along the walls were rows of gilt shields bearing the names
of saints—St. Éloi, patron of the iron-workers; St. Crispin, patron of the
shoemakers; St. Barbara, patron of the miners; the whole calendar of
corporations. The ceiling was so low that the three musicians on their
platform, which was about the size of a pulpit, knocked their heads against
it. When it became dark four petroleum lamps were fastened to the four
corners of the room.
On this Sunday there was dancing from five o'clock with the full daylight
through the windows, but it was not until towards seven that the rooms
began to fill. Outside, a gale was rising, blowing great black showers of
dust which blinded people and sleeted into the frying-pans. Maheu, Étienne,
and Pierron, having come in to sit down, had found Chaval at the Bon-
Joyeux dancing with Catherine, while Philoméne by herself was looking on.
Neither Levaque nor Zacharie had reappeared. As there were no benches
around the ball-room, Catherine came after each dance to rest at her father's
table. They called Philoméne, but she preferred to stand up. The twilight
was coming on; the three musicians played furiously; one could only see in
the hall the movement of hips and breasts in the midst of a confusion of
arms. The appearance of the four lamps was greeted noisily, and suddenly
everything was lit up—the red faces, the dishevelled hair sticking to the
skin, the flying skirts spreading abroad the strong odour of perspiring

couples. Maheu pointed out Mouquette to Étienne: she was as round and
greasy as a bladder of lard, revolving violently in the arms of a tall, lean
lander. She had been obliged to console herself and take a man.
At last, at eight o'clock, Maheude appeared with Estelle at her breast,
followed by Alzire, Henri, and Lénore. She had come there straight to her
husband without fear of missing him. They could sup later on; as yet
nobody was hungry, with their stomachs soaked in coffee and thickened
with beer. Other women came in, and they whispered together when they
saw, behind Maheude, the Levaque woman enter with Bouteloup, who led
in by the hand Achille and Désirée, Philoméne's little ones. The two
neighbours seemed to be getting on well together, one turning round to chat
with the other. On the way there had been a great explanation, and Maheude
had resigned herself to Zacharie's marriage, in despair at the loss of her
eldest son's wages, but overcome by the thought that she could not hold it
back any longer without injustice. She was trying, therefore, to put a good
face on it, though with an anxious heart, as a housekeeper who was asking
herself how she could make both ends meet now that the best part of her
purse was going.
"Place yourself there, neighbour," she said, pointing to a table near that
where Maheu was drinking with Étienne and Pierron.
"Is not my husband with you?" asked the Levaque woman.
The others told her that he would soon come. They were all seated together
in a heap, Bouteloup and the youngsters so tightly squeezed among the
drinkers that the two tables only formed one. There was a call for drinks.
Seeing her mother and her children Philoméne had decided to come near.
She accepted a chair, and seemed pleased to hear that she was at last to be
married; then, as they were looking for Zacharie, she replied in her soft
voice:
"I am waiting for him; he is over there."
Maheu had exchanged a look with his wife. She had then consented? He
became serious and smoked in silence. He also felt anxiety for the morrow
in face of the ingratitude of these children, who got married one by one
leaving their parents in wretchedness.

The dancing still went on, and the end of a quadrille drowned the ball-room
in red dust; the walls cracked, a cornet produced shrill whistling sounds like
a locomotive in distress; and when the dancers stopped they were smoking
like horses.
"Do you remember?" said the Levaque woman, bending towards Maheude's
ear; "you talked of strangling Catherine if she did anything foolish!"
Chaval brought Catherine back to the family table, and both of them
standing behind the father finished their glasses.
"Bah!" murmured Maheude, with an air of resignation, "one says things like
that—. But what quiets me is that she will not have a child; I feel sure of
that. You see if she is confined, and obliged to marry, what shall we do for a
living then?"
Now the cornet was whistling a polka, and as the deafening noise began
again, Maheu, in a low voice, communicated an idea to his wife. Why
should they not take a lodger? Étienne, for example, who was looking out
for quarters? They would have room since Zacharie was going to leave
them, and the money that they would lose in that direction would be in part
regained in the other. Maheude's face brightened; certainly it was a good
idea, it must be arranged. She seemed to be saved from starvation once
more, and her good humour returned so quickly that she ordered a new
round of drinks.
Étienne, meanwhile, was seeking to indoctrinate Pierron, to whom he was
explaining his plan of a Provident Fund. He had made him promise to
subscribe, when he was imprudent enough to reveal his real aim.
"And if we go out on strike you can see how useful that fund will be. We
can snap our fingers at the Company, we shall have there a fund to fight
against them. Eh? don't you think so?"
Pierron lowered his eyes and grew pale; he stammered:
"I'll think over it. Good conduct, that's the best Provident Fund."
Then Maheu took possession of Étienne, and squarely, like a good man,
proposed to take him as a lodger. The young man accepted at once, anxious
to live in the settlement with the idea of being nearer to his mates. The

matter was settled in three words, Maheude declaring that they would wait
for the marriage of the children.
Just then, Zacharie at last came back, with Mouquet and Levaque. The three
brought in the odours of the Volcan, a breath of gin, a musky acidity of ill-
kept girls. They were very tipsy and seemed well pleased with themselves,
digging their elbows into each other and grinning. When he knew that he
was at last to be married Zacharie began to laugh so loudly that he choked.
Philoméne peacefully declared that she would rather see him laugh than cry.
As there were no more chairs, Bouteloup had moved so as to give up half of
his to Levaque. And the latter, suddenly much affected by realizing that the
whole family party was there, once more had beer served out.
"By the Lord! we don't amuse ourselves so often!" he roared.
They remained there till ten o'clock. Women continued to arrive, either to
join or to take away their men; bands of children followed in rows, and the
mothers no longer troubled themselves, pulling out their long pale breasts,
like sacks of oats, and smearing their chubby babies with milk; while the
little ones who were already able to walk, gorged with beer and on all fours
beneath the table, relieved themselves without shame. It was a rising sea of
beer, from Madame Désir's disembowelled barrels, the beer enlarged every
belly, flowing from noses, eyes, and everywhere. So puffed out was the
crowd that every one had a shoulder or knee poking into his neighbour; all
were cheerful and merry in thus feeling each other's elbows. A continuous
laugh kept their mouths open from ear to ear. The heat was like an oven;
they were roasting and felt themselves at ease with glistening skin, gilded in
a thick smoke from the pipes; the only discomfort was when one had to
move away; from time to time a girl rose, went to the other end, near the
pump, lifted her clothes, and then came back. Beneath the garlands of
painted paper the dancers could no longer see each other, they perspired so
much; this encouraged the trammers to tumble the putters over, catching
them at random by the hips. But where a girl tumbled with a man over her,
the cornet covered their fall with its furious music; the swirl of feet wrapped
them round as if the ball had collapsed upon them.
Someone who was passing warned Pierron that his daughter Lydie was
sleeping at the door, across the pavement. She had drunk her share of the
stolen bottle and was tipsy. He had to carry her away in his arms while

Jeanlin and Bébert, who were more sober, followed him behind, thinking it
a great joke. This was the signal for departure, and several families came
out of the Bon-Joyeux, the Maheus and the Levaques deciding to return to
the settlement. At the same moment Father Bonnemort and old Mouque
also left Montsou, walking in the same somnambulistic manner, preserving
the obstinate silence of their recollections. And they all went back together,
passing for the last time through the fair, where the frying-pans were
coagulating, and by the estaminets, from which the last glasses were
flowing in a stream towards the middle of the road. The storm was still
threatening, and sounds of laughter arose as they left the lighted houses to
lose themselves in the dark country around. Panting breaths arose from the
ripe wheat; many children must have been made on that night. They arrived
in confusion at the settlement. Neither the Levaques nor the Maheus supped
with appetite, and the latter kept on dropping off to sleep while finishing
their morning's boiled beef.
Étienne had led away Chaval for one more drink at Rasseneur's.
"I am with you!" said Chaval, when his mate had explained the matter of
the Provident Fund. "Put it there! you're a fine fellow!"
The beginning of drunkenness was flaming in Étienne's eyes. He exclaimed:
"Yes, let's join hands. As for me, you know I would give up everything for
the sake of justice, both drink and girls. There's only one thing that warms
my heart, and that is the thought that we are going to sweep away these
bourgeois."

CHAPTER III

Towards the middle of August, Étienne settled with the Maheus, Zacharie
having married and obtained from the Company a vacant house in the
settlement for Philoméne and the two children. During the first days, the
young man experienced some constraint in the presence of Catherine. There
was a constant intimacy, as he everywhere replaced the elder brother,
sharing Jeanlin's bed over against the big sister's. Going to bed and getting

up he had to dress and undress near her, and see her take off and put on her
garments. When the last skirt fell from her, she appeared of pallid
whiteness, that transparent snow of anaemic blondes; and he experienced a
constant emotion in finding her, with hands and face already spoilt, as white
as if dipped in milk from her heels to her neck, where the line of tan stood
out sharply like a necklace of amber. He pretended to turn away; but little
by little he knew her: the feet at first which his lowered eyes met; then a
glimpse of a knee when she slid beneath the coverlet; then her bosom with
little rigid breasts as she leant over the bowl in the morning. She would
hasten without looking at him, and in ten seconds was undressed and
stretched beside Alzire, with so supple and snake-like a movement that he
had scarcely taken off his shoes when she disappeared, turning her back and
only showing her heavy knot of hair.
She never had any reason to be angry with him. If a sort of obsession made
him watch her in spite of himself at the moment when she lay down, he
avoided all practical jokes or dangerous pastimes. The parents were there,
and besides he still had for her a feeling, half of friendship and half of spite,
which prevented him from treating her as a girl to be desired, in the midst
of the abandonment of their now common life in dressing, at meals, during
work, where nothing of them remained secret, not even their most intimate
needs. All the modesty of the family had taken refuge in the daily bath, for
which the young girl now went upstairs alone, while the men bathed below
one after the other.
At the end of the first month, Étienne and Catherine seemed no longer to
see each other when in the evening, before extinguishing the candle, they
moved about the room, undressed. She had ceased to hasten, and resumed
her old custom of doing up her hair at the edge of her bed, while her arms,
raised in the air, lifted her chemise to her thighs, and he, without his
trousers, sometimes helped her, looking for the hairpins that she had lost.
Custom killed the shame of being naked; they found it natural to be like
this, for they were doing no harm, and it was not their fault if there was
only one room for so many people. Sometimes, however, a trouble came
over them suddenly, at moments when they had no guilty thought. After
some nights when he had not seen her pale body, he suddenly saw her white
all over, with a whiteness which shook him with a shiver, which obliged
him to turn away for fear of yielding to the desire to take her. On other

evenings, without any apparent reason, she would be overcome by a panic
of modesty and hasten to slip between the sheets as if she felt the hands of
this lad seizing her. Then, when the candle was out, they both knew that
they were not sleeping but were thinking of each other in spite of their
weariness. This made them restless and sulky all the following day; they
liked best the tranquil evenings when they could behave together like
comrades.
Étienne only complained of Jeanlin, who slept curled up. Alzire slept
lightly, and Lénore and Henri were found in the morning, in each other's
arms, exactly as they had gone to sleep. In the dark house there was no
other sound than the snoring of Maheu and Maheude, rolling out at regular
intervals like a forge bellows. On the whole, Étienne was better off than at
Rasseneur's; the bed was tolerable and the sheets were changed every
month. He had better soup, too, and only suffered from the rarity of meat.
But they were all in the same condition, and for forty-five francs he could
not demand rabbit to every meal. These forty-five francs helped the family
and enabled them to make both ends meet, though always leaving some
small debts and arrears; so the Maheus were grateful to their lodger; his
linen was washed and mended, his buttons sewn on, and his affairs kept in
order; in fact he felt all around him a woman's neatness and care.
It was at this time that Étienne began to understand the ideas that were
buzzing in his brain. Up till then he had only felt an instinctive revolt in the
midst of the inarticulate fermentation among his mates. All sorts of
confused questions came before him: Why are some miserable? why are
others rich? why are the former beneath the heel of the latter without hope
of ever taking their place? And his first stage was to understand his
ignorance. A secret shame, a hidden annoyance, gnawed him from that
time; he knew nothing, he dared not talk about these things which were
working in him like a passion—the equality of all men, and the equity
which demanded a fair division of the earth's wealth. He thus took to the
methodless study of those who in ignorance feel the fascination of
knowledge. He now kept up a regular correspondence with Pluchart, who
was better educated than himself and more advanced in the Socialist
movement. He had books sent to him, and his ill-digested reading still
further excited his brain, especially a medical book entitled Hygiéne du
Mineur, in which a Belgian doctor had summed up the evils of which the

people in coal mines were dying; without counting treatises on political
economy, incomprehensible in their technical dryness, Anarchist pamphlets
which upset his ideas, and old numbers of newspapers which he preserved
as irrefutable arguments for possible discussions. Souvarine also lent him
books, and the work on Co-operative Societies had made him dream for a
month of a universal exchange association abolishing money and basing the
whole social life on work. The shame of his ignorance left him, and a
certain pride came to him now that he felt himself thinking.
During these first months Étienne retained the ecstasy of a novice; his heart
was bursting with generous indignation against the oppressors, and looking
forward to the approaching triumph of the oppressed. He had not yet
manufactured a system, his reading had been too vague. Rasseneur's
practical demands were mixed up in his mind with Souvarine's violent and
destructive methods, and when he came out of the Avantage, where he was
to be found nearly every day railing with them against the Company, he
walked as if in a dream, assisting at a radical regeneration of nations to be
effected without one broken window or a single drop of blood. The methods
of execution remained obscure; he preferred to think that things would go
very well, for he lost his head as soon as he tried to formulate a programme
of reconstruction. He even showed himself full of illogical moderation; he
often said that we must banish politics from the social question, a phrase
which he had read and which seemed a useful one to repeat among the
phlegmatic colliers with whom he lived.
Every evening now, at the Maheus', they delayed half an hour before going
up to bed. Étienne always introduced the same subject. As his nature
became more refined he found himself wounded by the promiscuity of the
settlement. Were they beasts to be thus penned together in the midst of the
fields, so tightly packed that one could not change one's shirt without
exhibiting one's backside to the neighbours? And how bad it was for health;
and boys and girls were forced to grow corrupt together.
"Lord!" replied Maheu, "if there were more money there would be more
comfort. All the same it's true enough that it's good for no one to live piled
up like that. It always ends with making the men drunk and the girls big-
bellied."

And the family began to talk, each having his say, while the petroleum lamp
vitiated the air of the room, already stinking of fried onion. No, life was
certainly not a joke. One had to work like a brute at labour which was once
a punishment for convicts; one left one's skin there oftener than was one's
turn, all that without even getting meat on the table in the evening. No
doubt one had one's feed; one ate, indeed, but so little, just enough to suffer
without dying, overcome with debts and pursued as if one had stolen the
bread. When Sunday came one slept from weariness. The only pleasures
were to get drunk and to get a child with one's wife; then the beer swelled
the belly, and the child, later on, left you to go to the dogs. No, it was
certainly not a joke.
Then Maheude joined in.
"The bother is, you see, when you have to say to yourself that it won't
change. When you're young you think that happiness will come some time,
you hope for things; and then the wretchedness begins always over again,
and you get shut up in it. Now, I don't wish harm to any one, but there are
times when this injustice makes me mad."
There was silence; they were all breathing with the vague discomfort of this
closed-in horizon. Father Bonnemort only, if he was there, opened his eyes
with surprise, for in his time people used not to worry about things; they
were born in the coal and they hammered at the seam, without asking for
more; while now there was an air stirring which made the colliers
ambitious.
"It don't do to spit at anything," he murmured. "A good glass is a good
glass. As to the masters, they're often rascals; but there always will be
masters, won't there? What's the use of racking your brains over those
things?"
Étienne at once became animated. What! The worker was to be forbidden to
think! Why! that was just it; things would change now because the worker
had begun to think. In the old man's time the miner lived in the mine like a
brute, like a machine for extracting coal, always under the earth, with ears
and eyes stopped to outward events. So the rich, who governed, found it
easy to sell him and buy him, and to devour his flesh; he did not even know
what was going on. But now the miner was waking up down there,
germinating in the earth just as a grain germinates; and some fine day he

would spring up in the midst of the fields: yes, men would spring up, an
army of men who would re-establish justice. Is it not true that all citizens
are equal since the Revolution, because they vote together? Why should the
worker remain the slave of the master who pays him? The big companies
with their machines were crushing everything, and one no longer had
against them the ancient guarantees when people of the same trade, united
in a body, were able to defend themselves. It was for that, by God, and for
no other reason, that all would burst up one day, thanks to education. One
had only to look into the settlement itself: the grandfathers could not sign
their names, the fathers could do so, and as for the sons, they read and
wrote like schoolmasters. Ah! it was springing up, it was springing up, little
by little, a rough harvest of men who would ripen in the sun! From the
moment when they were no longer each of them stuck to his place for his
whole existence, and when they had the ambition to take a neighbour's
place, why should they not hit out with their fists and try for the mastery?
Maheu was shaken but remained full of doubts.
"As soon as you move they give you back your certificate," he said. "The
old man is right; it will always be the miner who gets all the trouble,
without a chance of a leg of mutton now and then as a reward."
Maheude, who had been silent for a while, awoke as from a dream.
"But if what the priests tell is true, if the poor people in this world become
the rich ones in the next!"
A burst of laughter interrupted her; even the children shrugged their
shoulders, being incredulous in the open air, keeping a secret fear of ghosts
in the pit, but glad of the empty sky.
"Ah! bosh! the priests!" exclaimed Maheu. "If they believed that, they'd eat
less and work more, so as to reserve a better place for themselves up there.
No, when one's dead, one's dead."
Maheude sighed deeply.
"Oh, Lord, Lord!"
Then her hands fell on to her knees with a gesture of immense dejection:
"Then if that's true, we are done for, we are."

They all looked at one another. Father Bonnemort spat into his
handkerchief, while Maheu sat with his extinguished pipe, which he had
forgotten, in his mouth. Alzire listened between Lénore and Henri, who
were sleeping on the edge of the table. But Catherine, with her chin in her
hand, never took her large clear eyes off Étienne while he was protesting,
declaring his faith, and opening out the enchanting future of his social
dream. Around them the settlement was asleep; one only heard the stray
cries of a child or the complaints of a belated drunkard. In the parlour the
clock ticked slowly, and a damp freshness arose from the sanded floor in
spite of the stuffy air.
"Fine ideas!" said the young man; "why do you need a good God and his
paradise to make you happy? Haven't you got it in your own power to make
yourselves happy on earth?"
With his enthusiastic voice he spoke on and on. The closed horizon was
bursting out; a gap of light was opening in the sombre lives of these poor
people. The eternal wretchedness, beginning over and over again, the
brutalizing labour, the fate of a beast who gives his wool and has his throat
cut, all the misfortune disappeared, as though swept away by a great flood
of sunlight; and beneath the dazzling gleam of fairyland justice descended
from heaven. Since the good God was dead, justice would assure the
happiness of men, and equality and brotherhood would reign. A new society
would spring up in a day just as in dreams, an immense town with the
splendour of a mirage, in which each citizen lived by his work, and took his
share in the common joys. The old rotten world had fallen to dust; a young
humanity purged from its crimes formed but a single nation of workers,
having for their motto: "To each according to his deserts, and to each desert
according to its performance." And this dream grew continually larger and
more beautiful and more seductive as it mounted higher in the impossible.
At first Maheude refused to listen, possessed by a deep dread. No, no, it
was too beautiful; it would not do to embark upon these ideas, for they
made life seem abominable afterwards, and one would have destroyed
everything in the effort to be happy. When she saw Maheu's eyes shine, and
that he was troubled and won over, she became restless, and exclaimed,
interrupting Étienne:

"Don't listen, my man! You can see he's only telling us fairy-tales. Do you
think the bourgeois would ever consent to work as we do?"
But little by little the charm worked on her also. Her imagination was
aroused and she smiled at last, entering his marvellous world of hope. It
was so sweet to forget for a while the sad reality! When one lives like the
beasts with face bent towards the earth, one needs a corner of falsehood
where one can amuse oneself by regaling on the things one will never
possess. And what made her enthusiastic and brought her into agreement
with the young man was the idea of justice.
"Now, there you're right!" she exclaimed. "When a thing's just I don't mind
being cut to pieces for it. And it's true enough! it would be just for us to
have a turn."
Then Maheu ventured to become excited.
"Blast it all! I am not rich, but I would give five francs to keep alive to see
that. What a hustling, eh? Will it be soon? And how can we set about it?"
Étienne began talking again. The old social system was cracking; it could
not last more than a few months, he affirmed roundly. As to the methods of
execution, he spoke more vaguely, mixing up his reading, and fearing
before ignorant hearers to enter on explanations where he might lose
himself. All the systems had their share in it, softened by the certainty of
easy triumph, a universal kiss which would bring to an end all class
misunderstandings; without taking count, however, of the thick-heads
among the masters and bourgeois whom it would perhaps be necessary to
bring to reason by force. And the Maheus looked as if they understood,
approving and accepting miraculous solutions with the blind faith of new
believers, like those Christians of the early days of the Church, who awaited
the coming of a perfect society on the dunghill of the ancient world. Little
Alzire picked up a few words, and imagined happiness under the form of a
very warm house, where children could play and eat as long as they liked.
Catherine, without moving, her chin always resting in her hand, kept her
eyes fixed on Étienne, and when he stopped a slight shudder passed over
her, and she was quite pale as if she felt the cold.
But Maheude looked at the clock.
"Past nine! Can it be possible? We shall never get up to-morrow."

And the Maheus left the table with hearts ill at ease and in despair. It
seemed to them that they had just been rich and that they had now suddenly
fallen back into the mud. Father Bonnemort, who was setting out for the pit,
growled that those sort of stories wouldn't make the soup better; while the
others went upstairs in single file, noticing the dampness of the walls and
the pestiferous stuffiness of the air. Upstairs, amid the heavy slumber of the
settlement when Catherine had got into bed last and blown out the candle,
Étienne heard her tossing feverishly before getting to sleep.
Often at these conversations the neighbours came in: Levaque, who grew
excited at the idea of a general sharing; Pierron, who prudently went to bed
as soon as they attacked the Company. At long intervals Zacharie came in
for a moment; but politics bored him, he preferred to go off and drink a
glass at the Avantage. As to Chaval, he would go to extremes and wanted to
draw blood. Nearly every evening he passed an hour with the Maheus; in
this assiduity there was a certain unconfessed jealousy, the fear that he
would be robbed of Catherine. This girl, of whom he was already growing
tired, had become precious to him now that a man slept near her and could
take her at night.
Étienne's influence increased; he gradually revolutionized the settlement.
His propaganda was unseen, and all the more sure since he was growing in
the estimation of all. Maheude, notwithstanding the caution of a prudent
housekeeper, treated him with consideration, as a young man who paid
regularly and neither drank nor gambled, with his nose always in a book;
she spread abroad his reputation among the neighbours as an educated lad, a
reputation which they abused by asking him to write their letters. He was a
sort of business man, charged with correspondence and consulted by
households in affairs of difficulty. Since September he had thus at last been
able to establish his famous Provident Fund, which was still very
precarious, only including the inhabitants of the settlement; but he hoped to
be able to obtain the adhesion of the miners at all the pits, especially if the
Company, which had remained passive, continued not to interfere. He had
been made secretary of the association and he even received a small salary
for the clerking. This made him almost rich. If a married miner can with
difficulty make both ends meet, a sober lad who has no burdens can even
manage to save.

From this time a slow transformation took place in Étienne. Certain
instincts of refinement and comfort which had slept during his poverty were
now revealed. He began to buy cloth garments; he also bought a pair of
elegant boots; he became a big man. The whole settlement grouped round
him. The satisfaction of his self-love was delicious; he became intoxicated
with this first enjoyment of popularity; to be at the head of others, to
command, he who was so young, and but the day before had been a mere
labourer, this filled him with pride, and enlarged his dream of an
approaching revolution in which he was to play a part. His face changed: he
became serious and put on airs, while his growing ambition inflamed his
theories and pushed him to ideas of violence.
But autumn was advancing, and the October cold had blighted the little
gardens of the settlement. Behind the thin lilacs the trammers no longer
tumbled the putters over on the shed, and only the winter vegetables
remained, the cabbages pearled with white frost, the leeks and the salads.
Once more the rains were beating down on the red tiles and flowing down
into the tubs beneath the gutters with the sound of a torrent. In every house
the stove piled up with coal was never cold, and poisoned the close
parlours. It was the season of wretchedness beginning once more.
In October, on one of the first frosty nights, Étienne, feverish after his
conversation below, could not sleep. He had seen Catherine glide beneath
the coverlet and then blow out the candle. She also appeared to be quite
overcome, and tormented by one of those fits of modesty which still made
her hasten sometimes, and so awkwardly that she only uncovered herself
more. In the darkness she lay as though dead; but he knew that she also was
awake, and he felt that she was thinking of him just as he was thinking of
her: this mute exchange of their beings had never before filled them with
such trouble. The minutes went by and neither he nor she moved, only their
breathing was embarrassed in spite of their efforts to retain it. Twice over he
was on the point of rising and taking her. It was idiotic to have such a strong
desire for each other and never to satisfy it. Why should they thus sulk
against what they desired? The children were asleep, she was quite willing;
he was certain that she was waiting for him, stifling, and that she would
close her arms round him in silence with clenched teeth. Nearly an hour
passed. He did not go to take her, and she did not turn round for fear of
calling him. The more they lived side by side, the more a barrier was raised

of shames, repugnancies, delicacies of friendship, which they could not
explain even to themselves.

CHAPTER IV

"Listen," said Maheude to her man, "when you go to Montsou for the pay,
just bring me back a pound of coffee and a kilo of sugar."
He was sewing one of his shoes, in order to spare the cobbling.
"Good!" he murmured, without leaving his task.
"I should like you to go to the butcher's too. A bit of veal, eh? It's so long
since we saw it."
This time he raised his head.
"Do you think, then, that I've got thousands coming in? The fortnight's pay
is too little as it is, with their confounded idea of always stopping work."
They were both silent. It was after breakfast, one Saturday, at the end of
October. The Company, under the pretext of the derangement caused by
payment, had on this day once more suspended output in all their pits.
Seized by panic at the growing industrial crisis, and not wishing to augment
their already considerable stock, they profited by the smallest pretexts to
force their ten thousand workers to rest.
"You know that Étienne is waiting for you at Rasseneur's," began Maheude
again. "Take him with you; he'll be more clever than you are in clearing up
matters if they haven't counted all your hours."
Maheu nodded approval.
"And just talk to those gentlemen about your father's affair. The doctor's on
good terms with the directors. It's true, isn't it, old un, that the doctor's
mistaken, and that you can still work?"
For ten days Father Bonnemort, with benumbed paws, as he said, had
remained nailed to his chair. She had to repeat her question, and he
growled:

"Sure enough, I can work. One isn't done for because one's legs are bad. All
that is just stories they make up, so as not to give the hundred-and-eighty-
franc pension."
Maheude thought of the old man's forty sous, which he would, perhaps,
never bring in any more, and she uttered a cry of anguish:
"My God! we shall soon be all dead if this goes on."
"When one is dead," said Maheu, "one doesn't get hungry."
He put some nails into his shoes, and decided to set out. The Deux-Cent-
Quarante settlement would not be paid till towards four o'clock. The men
did not hurry, therefore, but waited about, going off one by one, beset by the
women, who implored them to come back at once. Many gave them
commissions, to prevent them forgetting themselves in public-houses.
At Rasseneur's Étienne had received news. Disquieting rumours were flying
about; it was said that the Company were more and more discontented over
the timbering. They were overwhelming the workmen with fines, and a
conflict appeared inevitable. That was, however, only the avowed dispute;
beneath it there were grave and secret causes of complication.
Just as Étienne arrived, a comrade, who was drinking a glass on his return
from Montsou, was telling that an announcement had been stuck up at the
cashier's; but he did not quite know what was on the announcement. A
second entered, then a third, and each brought a different story. It seemed
certain, however, that the Company had taken a resolution.
"What do you say about it, eh?" asked Étienne, sitting down near Souvarine
at a table where nothing was to be seen but a packet of tobacco.
The engine-man did not hurry, but finished rolling his cigarette.
"I say that it was easy to foresee. They want to push you to extremes."
He alone had a sufficiently keen intelligence to analyse the situation. He
explained it in his quiet way. The Company, suffering from the crisis, had
been forced to reduce their expenses if they were not to succumb, and it was
naturally the workers who would have to tighten their bellies; under some
pretext or another the Company would nibble at their wages. For two
months the coal had been remaining at the surface of their pits, and nearly
all the workshops were resting. As the Company did not dare to rest in this

way, terrified at the ruinous inaction, they were meditating a middle course,
perhaps a strike, from which the miners would come out crushed and worse
paid. Then the new Provident Fund was disturbing them, as it was a threat
for the future, while a strike would relieve them of it, by exhausting it when
it was still small.
Rasseneur had seated himself beside Étienne, and both of them were
listening in consternation. They could talk aloud, because there was no one
there but Madame Rasseneur, seated at the counter.
"What an idea!" murmured the innkeeper; "what's the good of it? The
Company has no interest in a strike, nor the men either. It would be best to
come to an understanding."
This was very sensible. He was always on the side of reasonable demands.
Since the rapid popularity of his old lodger, he had even exaggerated this
system of possible progress, saying they would obtain nothing if they
wished to have everything at once. In his fat, good-humoured nature,
nourished on beer, a secret jealousy was forming, increased by the desertion
of his bar, into which the workmen from the Voreux now came more rarely
to drink and to listen; and he thus sometimes even began to defend the
Company, forgetting the rancour of an old miner who had been turned off.
"Then you are against the strike?" cried Madame Rasseneur, without
leaving the counter.
And as he energetically replied, "Yes!" she made him hold his tongue.
"Bah! you have no courage; let these gentlemen speak."
Étienne was meditating, with his eyes fixed on the glass which she had
served to him. At last he raised his head.
"I dare say it's all true what our mate tells us, and we must get resigned to
this strike if they force it on us. Pluchart has just written me some very
sensible things on this matter. He's against the strike too, for the men would
suffer as much as the masters, and it wouldn't come to anything decisive.
Only it seems to him a capital chance to get our men to make up their minds
to go into his big machine. Here's his letter."
In fact, Pluchart, in despair at the suspicion which the International aroused
among the miners at Montsou, was hoping to see them enter in a mass if

they were forced to fight against the Company. In spite of his efforts,
Étienne had not been able to place a single member's card, and he had given
his best efforts to his Provident Fund, which was much better received. But
this fund was still so small that it would be quickly exhausted, as Souvarine
said, and the strikers would then inevitably throw themselves into the
Working Men's Association so that their brothers in every country could
come to their aid.
"How much have you in the fund?" asked Rasseneur. "Hardly three
thousand francs," replied Étienne, "and you know that the directors sent for
me yesterday. Oh! they were very polite; they repeated that they wouldn't
prevent their men from forming a reserve fund. But I quite understood that
they wanted to control it. We are bound to have a struggle over that."
The innkeeper was walking up and down, whistling contemptuously. "Three
thousand francs! what can you do with that! It wouldn't yield six days'
bread; and if we counted on foreigners, such as the people in England, one
might go to bed at once and turn up one's toes. No, it was too foolish, this
strike!"
Then for the first time bitter words passed between these two men who
usually agreed together at last, in their common hatred of capital.
"We shall see! and you, what do you say about it?" repeated Étienne,
turning towards Souvarine.
The latter replied with his usual phrase of habitual contempt.
"A strike? Foolery!"
Then, in the midst of the angry silence, he added gently:
"On the whole, I shouldn't say no if it amuses you; it ruins the one side and
kills the other, and that is always so much cleared away. Only in that way it
will take quite a thousand years to renew the world. Just begin by blowing
up this prison in which you are all being done to death!"
With his delicate hand he pointed out the Voreux, the buildings of which
could be seen through the open door. But an unforeseen drama interrupted
him: Poland, the big tame rabbit, which had ventured outside, came
bounding back, fleeing from the stones of a band of trammers; and in her
terror, with fallen ears and raised tail, she took refuge against his legs,

scratching and imploring him to take her up. When he had placed her on his
knees, he sheltered her with both hands, and fell into that kind of dreamy
somnolence into which the caress of this soft warm fur always plunged him.
Almost at the same time Maheu came in. He would drink nothing, in spite
of the polite insistence of Madame Rasseneur, who sold her beer as though
she made a present of it. Étienne had risen, and both of them set out for
Montsou.
On pay-day at the Company's Yards, Montsou seemed to be in the midst of
a fete as on fine Sunday feast-days. Bands of miners arrived from all the
settlements. The cashier's office being very small, they preferred to wait at
the door, stationed in groups on the pavement, barring the way in a crowd
that was constantly renewed. Hucksters profited by the occasion and
installed themselves with their movable stalls that sold even pottery and
cooked meats. But it was especially the estaminets and the bars which did a
good trade, for the miners before being paid went to the counters to get
patience, and returned to them to wet their pay as soon as they had it in their
pockets. But they were very sensible, except when they finished it at the
Volcan. As Maheu and Étienne advanced among the groups they felt that on
that day a deep exasperation was rising up. It was not the ordinary
indifference with which the money was taken and spent at the publics. Fists
were clenched and violent words were passing from mouth to mouth.
"Is it true, then," asked Maheu of Chaval, whom he met before the
Estaminet Piquette, "that they've played the dirty trick?"
But Chaval contented himself by replying with a furious growl, throwing a
sidelong look on Étienne. Since the working had been renewed he had hired
himself on with others, more and more bitten by envy against this comrade,
the new-comer who posed as a boss and whose boots, as he said, were
licked by the whole settlement. This was complicated by a lover's jealousy.
He never took Catherine to Réquillart now or behind the pit-bank without
accusing her in abominable language of sleeping with her mother's lodger;
then, seized by savage desire, he would stifle her with caresses.
Maheu asked him another question:
"Is it the Voreux's turn now?"

And when he turned his back after nodding affirmatively, both men decided
to enter the Yards.
The counting-house was a small rectangular room, divided in two by a
grating. On the forms along the wall five or six miners were waiting; while
the cashier assisted by a clerk was paying another who stood before the
wicket with his cap in his hand. Above the form on the left, a yellow
placard was stuck up, quite fresh against the smoky grey of the plaster, and
it was in front of this that the men had been constantly passing all the
morning. They entered two or three at a time, stood in front of it, and then
went away without a word, shrugging their shoulders as if their backs were
crushed.
Two colliers were just then standing in front of the announcement, a young
one with a square brutish head and a very thin old one, his face dull with
age. Neither of them could read; the young one spelt, moving his lips, the
old one contented himself with gazing stupidly. Many came in thus to look,
without understanding.
"Read us that there!" said Maheu, who was not very strong either in
reading, to his companion.
Then Étienne began to read him the announcement. It was a notice from the
Company to the miners of all the pits, informing them that in consequence
of the lack of care bestowed on the timbering, and being weary of inflicting
useless fines, the Company had resolved to apply a new method of payment
for the extraction of coal. Henceforward they would pay for the timbering
separately, by the cubic metre of wood taken down and used, based on the
quantity necessary for good work. The price of the tub of coal extracted
would naturally be lowered, in the proportion of fifty centimes to forty,
according to the nature and distance of the cuttings, and a somewhat
obscure calculation endeavoured to show that this diminution of ten
centimes would be exactly compensated by the price of the timbering. The
Company added also that, wishing to leave every one time to convince
himself of the advantages presented by this new scheme, they did not
propose to apply it till Monday, the 1st of December.
"Don't read so loud over there," shouted the cashier. "We can't hear what we
are saying."

Étienne finished reading without paying attention to this observation. His
voice trembled, and when he had reached the end they all continued to gaze
steadily at the placard. The old miner and the young one looked as though
they expected something more; then they went away with depressed
shoulders.
"Good God!" muttered Maheu.
He and his companions sat down absorbed, with lowered heads, and while
files of men continued to pass before the yellow paper they made
calculations. Were they being made fun of? They could never make up with
the timbering for the ten centimes taken off the tram. At most they could
only get to eight centimes, so the Company would be robbing them of two
centimes, without counting the time taken by careful work. This, then, was
what this disguised lowering of wages really came to. The Company was
economizing out of the miners' pockets.
"Good Lord! Good Lord!" repeated Maheu, raising his head. "We should be
bloody fools if we took that."
But the wicket being free he went up to be paid. The heads only of the
workings presented themselves at the desk and then divided the money
between their men to save time.
"Maheu and associates," said the clerk, "Filonniére seam, cutting No. 7."
He searched through the lists which were prepared from the inspection of
the tickets on which the captains stated every day for each stall the number
of trams extracted. Then he repeated:
"Maheu and associates, Filonniére seam, cutting No. 7. One hundred and
thirty-five francs."
The cashier paid.
"Beg pardon, sir," stammered the pikeman in surprise. "Are you sure you
have not made a mistake?"
He looked at this small sum of money without picking it up, frozen by a
shudder which went to his heart. It was true he was expecting bad payment,
but it could not come to so little or he must have calculated wrong. When he
had given their shares to Zacharie, Étienne, and the other mate who

replaced Chaval, there would remain at most fifty francs for himself, his
father, Catherine, and Jeanlin.
"No, no, I've made no mistake," replied the clerk. "There are two Sundays
and four rest days to be taken off; that makes nine days of work." Maheu
followed this calculation in a low voice: nine days gave him about thirty
francs, eighteen to Catherine, nine to Jeanlin. As to Father Bonnemort, he
only had three days. No matter, by adding the ninety francs of Zacharie and
the two mates, that would surely make more.
"And don't forget the fines," added the clerk. "Twenty francs for fines for
defective timbering."
The pikeman made a gesture of despair. Twenty francs of fines, four days of
rest! That made out the account. To think that he had once brought back a
fortnight's pay of full a hundred and fifty francs when Father Bonnemort
was working and Zacharie had not yet set up house for himself!
"Well, are you going to take it?" cried the cashier impatiently. "You can see
there's someone else waiting. If you don't want it, say so."
As Maheu decided to pick up the money with his large trembling hand the
clerk stopped him.
"Wait: I have your name here. Toussaint Maheu, is it not? The general
secretary wishes to speak to you. Go in, he is alone."
The dazed workman found himself in an office furnished with old
mahogany, upholstered with faded green rep. And he listened for five
minutes to the general secretary, a tall sallow gentleman, who spoke to him
over the papers of his bureau without rising. But the buzzing in his ears
prevented him from hearing. He understood vaguely that the question of his
father's retirement would be taken into consideration with the pension of a
hundred and fifty francs, fifty years of age and forty years' service. Then it
seemed to him that the secretary's voice became harder. There was a
reprimand; he was accused of occupying himself with politics; an allusion
was made to his lodger and the Provident Fund; finally he was advised not
to compromise himself with these follies, he, who was one of the best
workmen in the mine. He wished to protest, but could only pronounce
words at random, twisting his cap between his feverish fingers, and he
retired, stuttering:

"Certainly, sir—I can assure you, sir——"
Outside, when he had found Étienne who waiting for him, he broke out:
"Well, I am a bloody fool, I ought to have replied! Not enough money to get
bread, and insults as well! Yes, he has been talking against you; he told me
the settlement was being poisoned. And what's to be done? Good God! bend
one's back and say thank you. He's right, that's the wisest plan."
Maheu fell silent, overcome at once by rage and fear. Étienne was gloomily
thinking. Once more they traversed the groups who blocked the road. The
exasperation was growing, the exasperation of a calm race, the muttered
warning of a storm, without violent gestures, terrible to see above this solid
mass. A few men understanding accounts had made calculations, and the
two centimes gained by the Company over the wood were rumoured about,
and excited the hardest heads. But it was especially the rage over this
disastrous pay, the rebellion of hunger against the rest days and the fines.
Already there was not enough to eat, and what would happen if wages were
still further lowered? In the estaminets the anger grew loud, and fury so
dried their throats that the little money taken went over the counters.
From Montsou to the settlement Étienne and Maheu never exchanged a
word. When the latter entered, Maheude, who was alone with the children,
noticed immediately that his hands were empty.
"Well, you're a nice one!" she said. "Where's my coffee and my sugar and
the meat? A bit of veal wouldn't have ruined you."
He made no reply, stifled by the emotion he had been keeping back. Then
the coarse face of this man hardened to work in the mines became swollen
with despair, and large tears broke from his eyes and fell in a warm rain. He
had thrown himself into a chair, weeping like a child, and throwing fifty
francs on the table:
"Here," he stammered. "That's what I've brought you back. That's our work
for all of us."
Maheude looked at Étienne, and saw that he was silent and overwhelmed.
Then she also wept. How were nine people to live for a fortnight on fifty
francs? Her eldest son had left them, the old man could no longer move his
legs: it would soon mean death. Alzire threw herself round her mother's

neck, overcome on hearing her weep. Estelle was howling, Lénore and
Henri were sobbing.
And from the entire settlement there soon arose the same cry of
wretchedness. The men had come back, and each household was lamenting
the disaster of this bad pay. The doors opened, women appeared, crying
aloud outside, as if their complaints could not be held beneath the ceilings
of these small houses. A fine rain was falling, but they did not feel it, they
called one another from the pavements, they showed one another in the
hollow of their hands the money they had received.
"Look! they've given him this. Do they want to make fools of people?"
"As for me, see, I haven't got enough to pay for the fortnight's bread with."
"And just count mine! I should have to sell my shifts!"
Maheude had come out like the others. A group had formed around the
Levaque woman, who was shouting loudest of all, for her drunkard of a
husband had not even turned up, and she knew that, large or small, the pay
would melt away at the Volcan. Philoméne watched Maheu so that Zacharie
should not get hold of the money. Pierronne was the only one who seemed
fairly calm, for that sneak of a Pierron always arranged things, no one knew
how, so as to have more hours on the captain's ticket than his mates. But
Mother Brulé thought this cowardly of her son-in-law; she was among the
enraged, lean and erect in the midst of the group, with her fists stretched
towards Montsou.
"To think," she cried, without naming the Hennebeaus, "that this morning I
saw their servant go by in a carriage! Yes, the cook in a carriage with two
horses, going to Marchiennes to get fish, sure enough!"
A clamour arose, and the abuse began again. That servant in a white apron
taken to the market of the neighbouring town in her master's carriage
aroused indignation. While the workers were dying of hunger they must
have their fish, at all costs! Perhaps they would not always be able to eat
their fish: the turn of the poor people would come. And the ideas sown by
Étienne sprang up and expanded in this cry of revolt. It was impatience
before the promised age of gold, a haste to get a share of the happiness
beyond this horizon of misery, closed in like the grave. The injustice was
becoming too great; at last they would demand their rights, since the bread

was being taken out of their mouths. The women especially would have
liked at once to take by assault this ideal city of progress, in which there
was to be no more wretchedness. It was almost night, and the rain increased
while they were still filling the settlement with their tears in the midst of the
screaming helter-skelter of the children.
That evening at the Avantage the strike was decided on. Rasseneur no
longer struggled against it, and Souvarine accepted it as a first step. Étienne
summed up the situation in a word: if the Company really wanted a strike
then the Company should have a strike.

CHAPTER V

A week passed, and work went on suspiciously and mournfully in
expectation of the conflict.
Among the Maheus the fortnight threatened to be more meagre than ever.
Maheude grew bitter, in spite of her moderation and good sense. Her
daughter Catherine, too, had taken it into her head to stay out one night. On
the following morning she came back so weary and ill after this adventure
that she was not able to go to the pit; and she told with tears how it was not
her fault, for Chaval had kept her, threatening to beat her if she ran away.
He was becoming mad with jealousy, and wished to prevent her from
returning to Étienne's bed, where he well knew, he said, that the family
made her sleep. Maheude was furious, and, after forbidding her daughter
ever to see such a brute again, talked of going to Montsou to box his ears.
But, all the same, it was a day lost, and the girl, now that she had this lover,
preferred not to change him.
Two days after there was another incident. On Monday and Tuesday
Jeanlin, who was supposed to be quietly engaged on his task at the Voreux,
had escaped, to run away into the marshes and the forest of Vandame with
Bébert and Lydie. He had seduced them; no one knew to what plunder or to
what games of precocious children they had all three given themselves up.
He received a vigorous punishment, a whipping which his mother applied
to him on the pavement outside before the terrified children of the

settlement. Who could have thought such a thing of children belonging to
her, who had cost so much since their birth, and who ought now to be
bringing something in? And in this cry there was the remembrance of her
own hard youth, of the hereditary misery which made of each little one in
the brood a bread-winner later on.
That morning, when the men and the girl set out for the pit, Maheude sat up
in her bed to say to Jeanlin:
"You know that if you begin that game again, you little beast, I'll take the
skin off your bottom!"
In Maheu's new stall the work was hard. This part of the Filonniére seam
was so thin that the pikemen, squeezed between the wall and the roof,
grazed their elbows at their work. It was, too, becoming very damp; from
hour to hour they feared a rush of water, one of those sudden torrents which
burst through rocks and carry away men. The day before, as Étienne was
violently driving in his pick and drawing it out, he had received a jet of
water in his face; but this was only an alarm; the cutting simply became
damper and more unwholesome. Besides, he now thought nothing of
possible accidents; he forgot himself there with his mates, careless of peril.
They lived in fire-damp without even feeling its weight on their eyelids, the
spider's-web veil which it left on the eyelashes. Sometimes when the flame
of the lamps grew paler and bluer than usual it attracted attention, and a
miner would put his head against the seam to listen to the low noise of the
gas, a noise of air-bubbles escaping from each crack. But the constant threat
was of landslips; for, besides the insufficiency of the timbering, always
patched up too quickly, the soil, soaked with water, would not hold.
Three times during the day Maheu had been obliged to add to the planking.
It was half-past two, and the men would soon have to ascend. Lying on his
side, Étienne was finishing the cutting of a block, when a distant growl of
thunder shook the whole mine.
"What's that, then?" he cried, putting down his axe to listen.
He had at first thought that the gallery was falling in behind his back.
But Maheu had already glided along the slope of the cutting, saying:
"It's a fall! Quick, quick!"

All tumbled down and hastened, carried away by an impulse of anxious
fraternity. Their lamps danced at their wrists in the deathly silence which
had fallen; they rushed in single file along the passages with bent backs, as
though they were galloping on all fours; and without slowing this gallop
they asked each other questions and threw brief replies. Where was it, then?
In the cuttings, perhaps. No, it came from below; no, from the haulage.
When they arrived at the chimney passage, they threw themselves into it,
tumbling one over the other without troubling about bruises.
Jeanlin, with skin still red from the whipping of the day before, had not run
away from the pit on this day. He was trotting with naked feet behind his
tram, closing the ventilation doors one by one; when he was not afraid of
meeting a captain he jumped on to the last tram, which he was not allowed
to do for fear he should go to sleep. But his great amusement was,
whenever the tram was shunted to let another one pass, to go and join
Bébert, who was holding the reins in front. He would come up slyly without
his lamp and vigorously pinch his companion, inventing mischievous
monkey tricks, with his yellow hair, his large ears, his lean muzzle, lit up by
little green eyes shining in the darkness. With morbid precocity, he seemed
to have the obscure intelligence and the quick skill of a human abortion
which had returned to its animal ways.
In the afternoon, Mouque brought Bataille, whose turn it was, to the
trammers; and as the horse was snuffing in the shunting, Jeanlin, who had
glided up to Bébert, asked him:
"What's the matter with the old hack to stop short like that? He'll break my
legs."
Bébert could not reply; he had to hold in Bataille, who was growing lively
at the approach of the other tram. The horse had smelled from afar his
comrade, Trompette, for whom he had felt great tenderness ever since the
day when he had seen him disembarked in the pit. One might say that it was
the affectionate pity of an old philosopher anxious to console a young friend
by imparting to him his own resignation and patience; for Trompette did not
become reconciled, drawing his trams without any taste for the work,
standing with lowered head blinded by the darkness, and for ever regretting
the sun. So every time that Bataille met him he put out his head snorting,
and moistened him with an encouraging caress.

"By God!" swore Bébert, "there they are, licking each other's skins again!"
Then, when Trompette had passed, he replied, on the subject of Bataille:
"Oh, he's a cunning old beast! When he stops like that it's because he
guesses there's something in the way, a stone or a hole, and he takes care of
himself; he doesn't want to break his bones. To-day I don't know what was
the matter with him down there after the door. He pushed it, and stood
stock-still. Did you see anything?"
"No," said Jeanlin. "There's water, I've got it up to my knees."
The tram set out again. And, on the following journey, when he had opened
the ventilation door with a blow from his head, Bataille again refused to
advance, neighing and trembling. At last he made up his mind, and set off
with a bound.
Jeanlin, who closed the door, had remained behind. He bent down and
looked at the mud through which he was paddling, then, raising his lamp,
he saw that the wood had given way beneath the continual bleeding of a
spring. Just then a pikeman, one Berloque, who was called Chicot, had
arrived from his cutting, in a hurry to go to his wife who had just been
confined. He also stopped and examined the planking. And suddenly, as the
boy was starting to rejoin his train, a tremendous cracking sound was heard,
and a landslip engulfed the man and the child.
There was deep silence. A thick dust raised by the wind of the fall passed
through the passages. Blinded and choked, the miners came from every
part, even from the farthest stalls, with their dancing lamps which feebly
lighted up this gallop of black men at the bottom of these molehills. When
the first men tumbled against the landslip, they shouted out and called their
mates. A second band, come from the cutting below, found themselves on
the other side of the mass of earth which stopped up the gallery. It was at
once seen that the roof had fallen in for a dozen metres at most. The damage
was not serious. But all hearts were contracted when a death-rattle was
heard from the ruins.
Bébert, leaving his tram, ran up, repeating:
"Jeanlin is underneath! Jeanlin is underneath!"

Maheu, at this very moment, had come out of the passage with Zacharie and
Étienne. He was seized with the fury of despair, and could only utter oaths:
"My God! my God! my God!"
Catherine, Lydie, and Mouquette, who had also rushed up, began to sob and
shriek with terror in the midst of the fearful disorder, which was increased
by the darkness. The men tried to make them be silent, but they shrieked
louder as each groan was heard.
The captain, Richomme, had come up running, in despair that neither
Négrel, the engineer, nor Dansaert was at the pit. With his ear pressed
against the rocks he listened; and, at last, said those sounds could not come
from a child. A man must certainly be there. Maheu had already called
Jeanlin twenty times over. Not a breath was heard. The little one must have
been smashed up.
And still the groans continued monotonously. They spoke to the agonized
man, asking him his name. The groaning alone replied.
"Look sharp!" repeated Richomme, who had already organized a rescue,
"we can talk afterwards."
From each end the miners attacked the landslip with pick and shovel.
Chaval worked without a word beside Maheu and Étienne, while Zacharie
superintended the removal of the earth. The hour for ascent had come, and
no one had touched food; but they could not go up for their soup while their
mates were in peril. They realized, however, that the settlement would be
disturbed if no one came back, and it was proposed to send off the women.
But neither Catherine nor Mouquette, nor even Lydie, would move, nailed
to the spot with a desire to know what had happened, and to help. Levaque
then accepted the commission of announcing the landslip up above—a
simple accident, which was being repaired. It was nearly four o'clock; in
less than an hour the men had done a day's work; half the earth would have
already been removed if more rocks had not slid from the roof. Maheu
persisted with such energy that he refused, with a furious gesture, when
another man approached to relieve him for a moment.
"Gently!" said Richomme at last, "we are getting near. We must not finish
them off."

In fact the groaning was becoming more and more distinct. It was a
continuous rattling which guided the workers; and now it seemed to be
beneath their very picks. Suddenly it stopped.
In silence they all looked at one another, and shuddered as they felt the
coldness of death pass in the darkness. They dug on, soaked in sweat, their
muscles tense to breaking. They came upon a foot, and then began to
remove the earth with their hands, freeing the limbs one by one. The head
was not hurt. They turned their lamps on it, and Chicot's name went round.
He was quite warm, with his spinal column broken by a rock.
"Wrap him up in a covering, and put him in a tram," ordered the captain.
"Now for the lad; look sharp."
Maheu gave a last blow, and an opening was made, communicating with the
men who were clearing away the soil from the other side. They shouted out
that they had just found Jeanlin, unconscious, with both legs broken, still
breathing. It was the father who took up the little one in his arms, with
clenched jaws constantly uttering "My God!" to express his grief, while
Catherine and the other women again began to shriek.
A procession was quickly formed. Bébert had brought back Bataille, who
was harnessed to the trams. In the first lay Chicot's corpse, supported by
Étienne; in the second, Maheu was seated with Jeanlin, still unconscious, on
his knees, covered by a strip of wool torn from the ventilation door. They
started at a walking pace. On each tram was a lamp like a red star. Then
behind followed the row of miners, some fifty shadows in single file. Now
that they were overcome by fatigue, they trailed their feet, slipping in the
mud, with the mournful melancholy of a flock stricken by an epidemic. It
took them nearly half an hour to reach the pit-eye. This procession beneath
the earth, in the midst of deep darkness, seemed never to end through
galleries which bifurcated and turned and unrolled.
At the pit-eye Richomme, who had gone on before, had ordered an empty
cage to be reserved. Pierron immediately loaded the two trams. In the first
Maheu remained with his wounded little one on his knees, while in the
other Étienne kept Chicot's corpse between his arms to hold it up. When the
men had piled themselves up in the other decks the cage rose. It took two
minutes. The rain from the tubbing fell very cold, and the men looked up
towards the air impatient to see daylight.

Fortunately a trammer sent to Dr. Vanderhaghen's had found him and
brought him back. Jeanlin and the dead man were placed in the captains'
room, where, from year's end to year's end, a large fire burnt. A row of
buckets with warm water was ready for washing feet; and, two mattresses
having been spread on the floor, the man and the child were placed on them.
Maheu and Étienne alone entered. Outside, putters, miners, and boys were
running about, forming groups and talking in a low voice.
As soon as the doctor had glanced at Chicot:
"Done for! You can wash him."
Two overseers undressed and then washed with a sponge this corpse
blackened with coal and still dirty with the sweat of work.
"Nothing wrong with the head," said the doctor again, kneeling on Jeanlin's
mattress. "Nor the chest either. Ah! it's the legs which have given."
He himself undressed the child, unfastening the cap, taking off the jacket,
drawing off the breeches and shirt with the skill of a nurse. And the poor
little body appeared, as lean as an insect, stained with black dust and yellow
earth, marbled by bloody patches. Nothing could be made out, and they had
to wash him also. He seemed to grow leaner beneath the sponge, the flesh
so pallid and transparent that one could see the bones. It was a pity to look
on this last degeneration of a wretched race, this mere nothing that was
suffering and half crushed by the falling of the rocks. When he was clean
they perceived the bruises on the thighs, two red patches on the white skin.
Jeanlin, awaking from his faint, moaned. Standing up at the foot of the
mattress with hands hanging down, Maheu was looking at him and large
tears rolled from his eyes.
"Eh, are you the father?" said the doctor, raising his eyes; "no need to cry
then, you can see he is not dead. Help me instead."
He found two simple fractures. But the right leg gave him some anxiety, it
would probably have to be cut off.
At this moment the engineer, Négrel, and Dansaert, who had been informed,
came up with Richomme. The first listened to the captain's narrative with an
exasperated air. He broke out: Always this cursed timbering! Had he not
repeated a hundred times that they would leave their men down there! and

those brutes who talked about going out on strike if they were forced to
timber more solidly. The worst was that now the Company would have to
pay for the broken pots. M. Hennebeau would be pleased!
"Who is it?" he asked of Dansaert, who was standing in silence before the
corpse which was being wrapped up in a sheet.
"Chicot! one of our good workers," replied the chief captain. "He has three
children. Poor chap!"
Dr. Vanderhaghen ordered Jeanlin's immediate removal to his parents'. Six
o'clock struck, twilight was already coming on, and they would do well to
remove the corpse also; the engineer gave orders to harness the van and to
bring a stretcher. The wounded child was placed on the stretcher while the
mattress and the dead body were put into the van.
Some putters were still standing at the door talking with some miners who
were waiting about to look on. When the door reopened there was silence in
the group. A new procession was then formed, the van in front, then the
stretcher, and then the train of people. They left the mine square and went
slowly up the road to the settlement. The first November cold had denuded
the immense plain; the night was now slowly burying it like a shroud fallen
from the livid sky.
Étienne then in a low voice advised Maheu to send Catherine on to warn
Maheude so as to soften the blow. The overwhelmed father, who was
following the stretcher, agreed with a nod; and the young girl set out
running, for they were now near. But the van, that gloomy well-known box,
was already signalled. Women ran out wildly on to the paths; three or four
rushed about in anguish, without their bonnets. Soon there were thirty of
them, then fifty, all choking with the same terror. Then someone was dead?
Who was it? The story told by Levaque after first reassuring them, now
exaggerated their nightmare: it was not one man, it was ten who had
perished, and who were now being brought back in the van one by one.
Catherine found her mother agitated by a presentiment; and after hearing
the first stammered words Maheude cried:
"The father's dead!"
The young girl protested in vain, speaking of Jeanlin. Without hearing her,
Maheude had rushed forward. And on seeing the van, which was passing

before the church, she grew faint and pale. The women at their doors, mute
with terror, were stretching out their necks, while others followed,
trembling as they wondered before whose house the procession would stop.
The vehicle passed; and behind it Maheude saw Maheu, who was
accompanying the stretcher. Then, when they had placed the stretcher at her
door and when she saw Jeanlin alive with his legs broken, there was so
sudden a reaction in her that she choked with anger, stammering, without
tears:
"Is this it? They cripple our little ones now! Both legs! My God! What do
they want me to do with him?"
"Be still, then," said Dr. Vanderhaghen, who had followed to attend to
Jeanlin. "Would you rather he had remained below?"
But Maheude grew more furious, while Alzire, Lénore, and Henri were
crying around her. As she helped to carry up the wounded boy and to give
the doctor what he needed, she cursed fate, and asked where she was to find
money to feed invalids. The old man was not then enough, now this rascal
too had lost his legs! And she never ceased; while other cries, more heart-
breaking lamentations, were heard from a neighbouring house: Chicot's
wife and children were weeping over the body. It was now quite night, the
exhausted miners were at last eating their soup, and the settlement had
fallen into a melancholy silence, only disturbed by these loud outcries.
Three weeks passed. It was found possible to avoid amputation; Jeanlin
kept both his legs, but he remained lame. On investigation the Company
had resigned itself to giving a donation of fifty francs. It had also promised
to find employment for the little cripple at the surface as soon as he was
well. All the same their misery was aggravated, for the father had received
such a shock that he was seriously ill with fever.
Since Thursday Maheu had been back at the pit and it was now Sunday. In
the evening Étienne talked of the approaching date of the 1st of December,
preoccupied in wondering if the Company would execute its threat. They
sat up till ten o'clock waiting for Catherine, who must have been delaying
with Chaval. But she did not return. Maheude furiously bolted the door
without a word. Étienne was long in going to sleep, restless at the thought
of that empty bed in which Alzire occupied so little room.

Next morning she was still absent; and it was only in the afternoon, on
returning from the pit, that the Maheus learnt that Chaval was keeping
Catherine. He created such abominable scenes with her that she had decided
to stay with him. To avoid reproaches he had suddenly left the Voreux and
had been taken on at Jean-Bart, M. Deneulin's mine, and she had followed
him as a putter. The new household still lived at Montsou, at Piquette's.
Maheu at first talked of going to fight the man and of bringing his daughter
back with a kick in the backside. Then he made a gesture of resignation:
what was the good? It always turned out like that; one could not prevent a
girl from sticking to a man when she wanted to. It was much better to wait
quietly for the marriage. But Maheude did not take things so easily.
"Did I beat her when she took this Chaval?" she cried to Étienne, who
listened in silence, very pale. "See now, tell me! you, who are a sensible
man. We have left her free, haven't we? because, my God! they all come to
it. Now, I was in the family way when the father married me. But I didn't
run away from my parents, and I should never have done so dirty a trick as
to carry the money I earned to a man who had no want of it before the
proper age. Ah! it's disgusting, you know. People will leave off getting
children!"
And as Étienne still replied only by nodding his head, she insisted:
"A girl who went out every evening where she wanted to! What has she got
in her skin, then, not to be able to wait till I married her after she had helped
to get us out of difficulties? Eh? it's natural, one has a daughter to work. But
there! we have been too good, we ought not to let her go and amuse herself
with a man. Give them an inch and they take an ell."
Alzire nodded approvingly. Lénore and Henri, overcome by this storm,
cried quietly, while the mother now enumerated their misfortunes: first
Zacharie who had had to get married; then old Bonnemort who was there on
his chair with his twisted feet; then Jeanlin who could not leave the room
for ten days with his badly-united bones; and now, as a last blow, this jade
Catherine, who had gone away with a man! The whole family was breaking
up. There was only the father left at the pit. How were they to live, seven
persons without counting Estelle, on his three francs? They might as well
jump into the canal in a band.

"It won't do any good to worry yourself," said Maheu in a low voice,
"perhaps we have not got to the end."
Étienne, who was looking fixedly at the flags on the floor, raised his head,
and murmured with eyes lost in a vision of the future:
"Ah! it is time! it is time!"

PART FOUR

CHAPTER 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 1st 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 pay-day. 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'œuvre 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 north-east wind. But
not a breath of it entered; a green-house warmth developed the delicate
odour of the pineapple, sliced in a crystal bowl.
"Suppose we were to draw the curtains," proposed Négrel, who was amused
at the idea of frightening the Grégoires.
The housemaid, who was helping the footman, treated this as an order and
went and closed one of the curtains. This led to interminable jokes: not a
glass or a plate could be put down without precaution; every dish was
hailed as a waif escaped from the pillage in a conquered town; and behind
this forced gaiety there was a certain fear which betrayed itself in
involuntary glances towards the road, as though a band of starvelings were
watching the table from outside.
After the scrambled eggs with truffles, trout came on. The conversation
then turned to the industrial crisis, which had become aggravated during the
last eighteen months.
"It was inevitable," said Deneulin, "the excessive prosperity of recent years
was bound to bring us to it. Think of the enormous capital which has been
sunk, the railways, harbours, and canals, all the money buried in the
maddest speculations. Among us alone sugar works have been set up as if
the department could furnish three beetroot harvests. Good heavens! and to-
day money is scarce, and we have to wait to catch up the interest of the
expended millions; so there is a mortal congestion and a final stagnation of
business."
M. Hennebeau disputed this theory, but he agreed that the fortunate years
had spoilt the men.
"When I think," he exclaimed, "that these chaps in our pits used to gain six
francs a day, double what they gain now! And they lived well, too, and
acquired luxurious tastes. To-day, naturally, it seems hard to them to go
back to their old frugality."
"Monsieur Grégoire," interrupted Madame Hennebeau, "let me persuade
you, a little more trout. They are delicious, are they not?"

The manager went on:
"But, as a matter of fact, is it our fault? We, too, are cruelly struck. Since
the factories have closed, one by one, we have had a deuce of a difficulty in
getting rid of our stock; and in face of the growing reduction in demand we
have been forced to lower our net prices. It is just this that the men won't
understand."
There was silence. The footman presented roast partridge, while the
housemaid began to pour out Chambertin for the guests.
"There has been a famine in India," said Deneulin in a low voice, as though
he were speaking to himself. "America, by ceasing to order iron, has struck
a heavy blow at our furnaces. Everything holds together; a distant shock is
enough to disturb the world. And the empire, which was so proud of this hot
fever of industry!"
He attacked his partridge wing. Then, raising his voice:
"The worst is that to lower the net prices we ought logically to produce
more; otherwise the reduction bears on wages, and the worker is right in
saying that he has to pay the damage."
This confession, the outcome of his frankness, raised a discussion. The
ladies were not at all interested. Besides, all were occupied with their plates,
in the first zest of appetite. When the footman came back, he seemed about
to speak, then he hesitated.
"What is it?" asked M. Hennebeau. "If there are letters, give them to me. I
am expecting replies."
"No, sir. It is Monsieur Dansaert, who is in the hall. But he doesn't wish to
disturb you."
The manager excused himself, and had the head captain brought in. The
latter stood upright, a few paces from the table, while all turned to look at
him, huge, out of breath with the news he was bringing. The settlements
were quiet; only it had now been decided to send a deputation. It would,
perhaps, be there in a few minutes.
"Very well; thank you," said M. Hennebeau. "I want a report morning and
evening, you understand."

And as soon as Dansaert had gone, they began to joke again, and hastened
to attack the Russian salad, declaring that not a moment was to be lost if
they wished to finish it. The mirth was unbounded when Négrel, having
asked the housemaid for bread, she replied, "Yes, sir," in a voice as low and
terrified as if she had behind her a troop ready for murder and rape.
"You may speak," said Madame Hennebeau complacently. "They are not
here yet."
The manager, who now received a packet of letters and dispatches, wished
to read one of his letters aloud. It was from Pierron, who, in respectful
phrases, gave notice that he was obliged to go out on strike with his
comrades, in order to avoid ill-treatment; and he added that he had not even
been able to avoid taking part in the deputation, although he blamed that
step.
"So much for liberty of work!" exclaimed M. Hennebeau.
Then they returned to the strike, and asked him his opinion.
"Oh!" he replied, "we have had them before. It will be a week, or, at most, a
fortnight, of idleness, as it was last time. They will go and wallow in the
public-houses, and then, when they are hungry, they will go back to the
pits."
Deneulin shook his head:
"I'm not so satisfied; this time they appear to be better organized. Have they
not a Provident Fund?"
"Yes, scarcely three thousand francs. What do you think they can do with
that? I suspect a man called Étienne Lantier of being their leader. He is a
good workman; it would vex me to have to give him his certificate back, as
we did of old to the famous Rasseneur, who still poisons the Voreux with
his ideas and his beer. No matter, in a week half the men will have gone
down, and in a fortnight the ten thousand will be below."
He was convinced. His only anxiety was concerning his own possible
disgrace should the directors put the responsibility of the strike on him. For
some time he had felt that he was diminishing in favour. So leaving the
spoonful of Russian salad which he had taken, he read over again the
dispatches received from Paris, endeavouring to penetrate every word. His

guests excused him; the meal was becoming a military lunch, eaten on the
field of battle before the first shots were fired.
The ladies then joined in the conversation. Madame Grégoire expressed pity
for the poor people who would suffer from hunger; and Cécile was already
making plans for distributing gifts of bread and meat. But Madame
Hennebeau was astonished at hearing of the wretchedness of the Montsou
colliers. Were they not very fortunate? People who were lodged and
warmed and cared for at the expense of the Company! In her indifference
for the herd, she only knew the lessons she had learnt, and with which she
had surprised the Parisians who came on a visit. She believed them at last,
and was indignant at the ingratitude of the people.
Négrel, meanwhile, continued to frighten M. Grégoire. Cécile did not
displease him, and he was quite willing to marry her to be agreeable to his
aunt, but he showed no amorous fever; like a youth of experience, who, he
said, was not easily carried away now. He professed to be a Republican,
which did not prevent him from treating his men with extreme severity, or
from making fun of them in the company of the ladies.
"Nor have I my uncle's optimism, either," he continued. "I fear there will be
serious disturbances. So I should advise you, Monsieur Grégoire, to lock up
Piolaine. They may pillage you."
Just then, still retaining the smile which illuminated his good-natured face,
M. Grégoire was going beyond his wife in paternal sentiments with regard
to the miners.
"Pillage me!" he cried, stupefied. "And why pillage me?"
"Are you not a shareholder in Montsou! You do nothing; you live on the
work of others. In fact you are an infamous capitalist, and that is enough.
You may be sure that if the revolution triumphs, it will force you to restore
your fortune as stolen money."
At once he lost his child-like tranquillity, his serene unconsciousness. He
stammered:
"Stolen money, my fortune! Did not my great-grandfather gain, and hardly,
too, the sum originally invested? Have we not run all the risks of the
enterprise, and do I today make a bad use of my income?"

Madame Hennebeau, alarmed at seeing the mother and daughter also white
with fear, hastened to intervene, saying:
"Paul is joking, my dear sir."
But M. Grégoire was carried out of himself. As the servant was passing
round the crayfish he took three of them without knowing what he was
doing and began to break their claws with his teeth.
"Ah! I don't say but what there are shareholders who abuse their position.
For instance, I have been told that ministers have received shares in
Montsou for services rendered to the Company. It is like a nobleman whom
I will not name, a duke, the biggest of our shareholders, whose life is a
scandal of prodigality, millions thrown into the street on women, feasting,
and useless luxury. But we who live quietly, like good citizens as we are,
who do not speculate, who are content to live wholesomely on what we
have, giving a part to the poor: Come, now! your men must be mere
brigands if they came and stole a pin from us!"
Négrel himself had to calm him, though amused at his anger. The crayfish
were still going round; the little crackling sound of their carapaces could be
heard, while the conversation turned to politics, M. Grégoire, in spite of
everything and though still trembling, called himself a Liberal and regretted
Louis Philippe. As for Deneulin, he was for a strong Government; he
declared that the Emperor was gliding down the slope of dangerous
concessions.
"Remember '89," he said. "It was the nobility who made the Revolution
possible, by their complicity and taste for philosophic novelties. Very well!
the middle class to-day are playing the same silly game with their furious
Liberalism, their rage for destruction, their flattery of the people. Yes, yes,
you are sharpening the teeth of the monster that will devour us. It will
devour us, rest assured!"
The ladies bade him be silent, and tried to change the conversation by
asking him news of his daughters. Lucie was at Marchiennes, where she
was singing with a friend; Jeanne was painting an old beggar's head. But he
said these things in a distracted way; he constantly looked at the manager,
who was absorbed in the reading of his dispatches and forgetful of his
guests. Behind those thin leaves he felt Paris and the directors' orders,

which would decide the strike. At last he could not help yielding to his
preoccupation.
"Well, what are you going to do?" he asked suddenly.
M. Hennebeau started; then turned off the question with a vague phrase.
"We shall see."
"No doubt you are solidly placed, you can wait," Deneulin began to think
aloud. "But as for me, I shall be done for if the strike reaches Vandame. I
shall have reinstalled Jean-Bart in vain; with a single pit, I can only get
along by constant production. Ah! I am not in a very pleasant situation, I
can assure you!"
This involuntary confession seemed to strike M. Hennebeau. He listened
and a plan formed within him: in case the strike turned out badly, why not
utilize it by letting things run down until his neighbour was ruined, and then
buy up his concession at a low price? That would be the surest way of
regaining the good graces of the directors, who for years had dreamed of
possessing Vandame.
"If Jean-Bart bothers you as much as that," said he, laughing, "why don't
you give it up to us?"
But Deneulin was already regretting his complaints. He exclaimed:
"Never, never!"
They were amused at his vigour and had already forgotten the strike by the
time the dessert appeared. An apple-charlotte meringue was overwhelmed
with praise. Afterwards the ladies discussed a recipe with respect to the
pineapple which was declared equally exquisite. The grapes and pears
completed their happy abandonment at the end of this copious lunch. All
talked excitedly at the same time, while the servant poured out Rhine wine
in place of champagne which was looked upon as commonplace.
And the marriage of Paul and Cécile certainly made a forward step in the
sympathy produced by the dessert. His aunt had thrown such urgent looks
in his direction, that the young man showed himself very amiable, and in
his wheedling way reconquered the Grégoires, who had been cast down by
his stories of pillage. For a moment M. Hennebeau, seeing the close
understanding between his wife and his nephew, felt that abominable

suspicion again revive, as if in this exchange of looks he had surprised a
physical contact. But again the idea of the marriage, made here before his
face, reassured him.
Hippolyte was serving the coffee when the housemaid entered in a fright.
"Sir, sir, they are here!"
It was the delegates. Doors banged; a breath of terror was passing through
the neighbouring rooms.
Around the table the guests were looking at one another with uneasy
indecision. There was silence. Then they tried to resume their jokes: they
pretended to put the rest of the sugar in their pockets, and talked of hiding
the plate. But the manager remained grave; and the laughter fell and their
voices sank to a whisper, while the heavy feet of the delegates who were
being shown in tramped over the carpet of the next room.
Madame Hennebeau said to her husband, lowering her voice:
"I hope you will drink your coffee."
"Certainly," he replied. "Let them wait."
He was nervous, listening to every sound, though apparently occupied with
his cup.
Paul and Cécile got up, and he made her venture an eye to the keyhole.
They were stifling their laughter and talking in a low voice.
"Do you see them?"
"Yes, I see a big man and two small ones behind."
"Haven't they ugly faces?"
"Not at all; they are very nice."
Suddenly M. Hennebeau left his chair, saying the coffee was too hot and he
would drink it afterwards. As he went out he put a finger to his lips to
recommend prudence. They all sat down again and remained at table in
silence, no longer daring to move, listening from afar with intent ears jarred
by these coarse male voices.

CHAPTER II

The previous day, at a meeting held at Rasseneur's, Étienne and some
comrades had chosen the delegates who were to proceed on the following
day to the manager's house. When, in the evening, Maheude learnt that her
man was one of them, she was in despair, and asked him if he wanted them
to be thrown on the street. Maheu himself had agreed with reluctance. Both
of them, when the moment of action came, in spite of the injustice of their
wretchedness fell back on the resignation of their race, trembling before the
morrow, preferring still to bend their backs to the yoke. In the management
of affairs he usually gave way to his wife, whose advice was sound. This
time, however, he grew angry at last, all the more so since he secretly
shared her fears.
"Just leave me alone, will you?" he said, going to bed and turning his back.
"A fine thing to leave the mates now! I'm doing my duty."
She went to bed in her turn. Neither of them spoke. Then, after a long
silence, she replied:
"You're right; go. Only, poor old man, we are done for."
Midday struck while they were at lunch, for the rendezvous was at one
o'clock at the Avantage, from which they were to go together to M.
Hennebeau's. They were eating potatoes. As there was only a small morsel
of butter left, no one touched it. They would have bread and butter in the
evening.
"You know that we reckon on you to speak," said Étienne suddenly to
Maheu.
The latter was so overcome that he was silent from emotion.
"No, no! that's too much," cried Maheude. "I'm quite willing he should go
there, but I don't allow him to go at the head. Why him, more than any one
else?"
Then Étienne, with his fiery eloquence, began to explain. Maheu was the
best worker in the pit, the most liked, and the most respected; whose good
sense was always spoken of. In his mouth the miners' claims would carry
decisive weight. At first Étienne had arranged to speak, but he had been at

Montsou for too short a time. One who belonged to the country would be
better listened to. In fact, the comrades were confiding their interests to the
most worthy; he could not refuse, it would be cowardly.
Maheude made a gesture of despair.
"Go, go, my man; go and be killed for the others. I'm willing, after all!"
"But I could never do it," stammered Maheu. "I should say something
stupid."
Étienne, glad to have persuaded him, struck him on the shoulder.
"Say what you feel, and you won't go wrong."
Father Bonnemort, whose legs were now less swollen, was listening with
his mouth full, shaking his head. There was silence. When potatoes were
being eaten, the children were subdued and behaved well. Then, having
swallowed his mouthful, the old man muttered slowly:
"You can say what you like, and it will be all the same as if you said
nothing. Ah! I've seen these affairs, I've seen them! Forty years ago they
drove us out of the manager's house, and with sabres too! Now they may
receive you, perhaps, but they won't answer you any more than that wall.
Lord! they have money, why should they care?"
There was silence again; Maheu and Étienne rose, and left the family in
gloom before the empty plates. On going out they called for Pierron and
Levaque, and then all four went to Rasseneur's, where the delegates from
the neighbouring settlements were arriving in little groups. When the
twenty members of the deputation had assembled there, they settled on the
terms to be opposed to the Company's, and then set out for Montsou. The
keen north-east wind was sweeping the street. As they arrived, it struck two.
At first the servant told them to wait, and shut the door on them; then, when
he came back, he introduced them into the drawing-room, and opened the
curtains. A soft daylight entered, sifted through the lace. And the miners,
when left alone, in their embarrassment did not dare to sit; all of them very
clean, dressed in cloth, shaven that morning, with their yellow hair and
moustaches. They twisted their caps between their fingers, and looked
sideways at the furniture, which was in every variety of style, as a result of
the taste for the old-fashioned: Henry II easy-chairs, Louis XV chairs, an

Italian cabinet of the seventeenth century, a Spanish contador of the
fifteenth century, with an altar-front serving as a chimney-piece, and ancient
chasuble trimming reapplied to the curtains. This old gold and these old
silks, with their tawny tones, all this luxurious church furniture, had
overwhelmed them with respectful discomfort. The eastern carpets with
their long wool seemed to bind their feet. But what especially suffocated
them was the heat, heat like that of a hot-air stove, which surprised them as
they felt it with cheeks frozen from the wind of the road. Five minutes
passed by and their awkwardness increased in the comfort of this rich room,
so pleasantly warm. At last M. Hennebeau entered, buttoned up in a military
manner and wearing on his frock-coat the correct little bow of his
decoration. He spoke first.
"Ah! here you are! You are in rebellion, it seems."
He interrupted himself to add with polite stiffness:
"Sit down, I desire nothing better than to talk things over."
The miners turned round looking for seats. A few of them ventured to place
themselves on chairs, while the others, disturbed by the embroidered silks,
preferred to remain standing.
There was a period of silence. M. Hennebeau, who had drawn his easy-
chair up to the fireplace, was rapidly looking them over and endeavouring
to recall their faces. He had recognized Pierron, who was hidden in the last
row, and his eyes rested on Étienne who was seated in front of him.
"Well," he asked, "what have you to say to me?"
He had expected to hear the young man speak and he was so surprised to
see Maheu come forward that he could not avoid adding:
"What! you, a good workman who have always been so sensible, one of the
old Montsou people whose family has worked in the mine since the first
stroke of the axe! Ah! it's a pity, I'm sorry that you are at the head of the
discontented."
Maheu listened with his eyes down. Then he began, at first in a low and
hesitating voice.
"It is just because I am a quiet man, sir, whom no one has anything against,
that my mates have chosen me. That ought to show you that it isn't just a

rebellion of blusterers, badly-disposed men who want to create disorder. We
only want justice, we are tired of starving, and it seems to us that the time
has come when things ought to be arranged so that we can at least have
bread every day."
His voice grew stronger. He lifted his eyes and went on, while looking at
the manager.
"You know quite well that we cannot agree to your new system. They
accuse us of bad timbering. It's true we don't give the necessary time to the
work. But if we gave it, our day's work would be still smaller, and as it
doesn't give us enough food at present, that would mean the end of
everything, the sweep of the clout that would wipe off all your men. Pay us
more and we will timber better, we will give the necessary hours to the
timbering instead of putting all our strength into the picking, which is the
only work that pays. There's no other arrangement possible; if the work is to
be done it must be paid for. And what have you invented instead? A thing
which we can't get into our heads, don't you see? You lower the price of the
tram and then you pretend to make up for it by paying for all timbering
separately. If that was true we should be robbed all the same, for the
timbering would still take us more time. But what makes us mad is that it
isn't even true; the Company compensates for nothing at all, it simply puts
two centimes a tram into its pocket, that's all."
"Yes, yes, that's it," murmured the other deputies, noticing M. Hennebeau
make a violent movement as if to interrupt.
But Maheu cut the manager short. Now that he had set out his words came
by themselves. At times he listened to himself with surprise as though a
stranger were speaking within him. It was the things amassed within his
breast, things he did not even know were there, and which came out in an
expansion of his heart. He described the wretchedness that was common to
all of them, the hard toil, the brutal life, the wife and little ones crying from
hunger in the house. He quoted the recent disastrous payments, the absurd
fortnightly wages, eaten up by fines and rest days and brought back to their
families in tears. Was it resolved to destroy them?
"Then, sir," he concluded, "we have come to tell you that if we've got to
starve we would rather starve doing nothing. It will be a little less trouble.
We have left the pits and we don't go down again unless the Company

agrees to our terms. The Company wants to lower the price of the tram and
to pay for the timbering separately. We ask for things to be left as they were,
and we also ask for five centimes more the tram. Now it is for you to see if
you are on the side of justice and work."
Voices rose among the miners.
"That's it—he has said what we all feel—we only ask what's reason."
Others, without speaking, showed their approval by nodding their heads.
The luxurious room had disappeared, with its gold and its embroideries, its
mysterious piling up of ancient things; and they no longer even felt the
carpet which they crushed beneath their heavy boots.
"Let me reply, then," at last exclaimed M. Hennebeau, who was growing
angry. "First of all, it is not true that the Company gains two centimes the
tram. Let us look at the figures."
A confused discussion followed. The manager, trying to divide them,
appealed to Pierron, who hid himself, stammering. Levaque, on the
contrary, was at the head of the more aggressive, muddling up things and
affirming facts of which he was ignorant. The loud murmurs of their voices
were stifled beneath the hangings in the hot-house atmosphere.
"If you all talk at the same time," said M. Hennebeau, "we shall never come
to an understanding."
He had regained his calmness, the rough politeness, without bitterness, of
an agent who has received his instructions, and means that they shall be
respected. From the first word he never took his eye off Étienne, and
manœuvred to draw the young man out of his obstinate silence. Leaving the
discussion about the two centimes, he suddenly enlarged the question.
"No, acknowledge the truth: you are yielding to abominable incitations. It is
a plague which is now blowing over the workers everywhere, and
corrupting the best. Oh! I have no need for any one to confess. I can see
well that you have been changed, you who used to be so quiet. Is it not so?
You have been promised more butter than bread, and you have been told
that now your turn has come to be masters. In fact, you have been enrolled
in that famous International, that army of brigands who dream of destroying
society."

Then Étienne interrupted him.
"You are mistaken, sir. Not a single Montsou collier has yet enrolled. But if
they are driven to it, all the pits will enroll themselves. That depends on the
Company."
From that moment the struggle went on between M. Hennebeau and
Étienne as though the other miners were no longer there.
"The Company is a Providence for the men, and you are wrong to threaten
it. This year it has spent three hundred thousand francs in building
settlements which only return two per cent, and I say nothing of the
pensions which it pays, nor of the coals and medicines which it gives. You
who seem to be intelligent, and who have become in a few months one of
our most skilful workmen, would it not be better if you were to spread these
truths, rather than ruin yourself by associating with people of bad
reputation? Yes, I mean Rasseneur, whom we had to turn off in order to
save our pits from socialistic corruption. You are constantly seen with him,
and it is certainly he who has induced you to form this Provident Fund,
which we would willingly tolerate if it were merely a means of saving, but
which we feel to be a weapon turned against us, a reserve fund to pay the
expenses of the war. And in this connection I ought to add that the
Company means to control that fund."
Étienne allowed him to continue, fixing his eyes on him, while a slight
nervous quiver moved his lips. He smiled at the last remark, and simply
replied:
"Then that is a new demand, for until now, sir, you have neglected to claim
that control. Unfortunately, we wish the Company to occupy itself less with
us, and instead of playing the part of Providence to be merely just with us,
giving us our due, the profits which it appropriates. Is it honest, whenever a
crisis comes, to leave the workers to die with hunger in order to save the
shareholders' dividends? Whatever you may say, sir, the new system is a
disguised reduction of wages, and that is what we are rebelling against, for
if the Company wants to economize it acts very badly by only economizing
on the men."
"Ah! there we are!" cried M. Hennebeau. "I was expecting that—the
accusation of starving the people and living by their sweat. How can you

talk such folly, you who ought to know the enormous risks which capital
runs in industry—in the mines, for example? A well-equipped pit today
costs from fifteen hundred thousand francs to two millions; and it is
difficult enough to get a moderate interest on the vast sum that is thus
swallowed. Nearly half the mining companies in France are bankrupt.
Besides, it is stupid to accuse those who succeed of cruelty. When their
workers suffer, they suffer themselves. Can you believe that the Company
has not as much to lose as you have in the present crisis? It does not govern
wages; it obeys competition under pain of ruin. Blame the facts, not the
Company. But you don't wish to hear, you don't wish to understand."
"Yes," said the young man, "we understand very well that our lot will never
be bettered as long as things go on as they are going; and that is the reason
why some day or another the workers will end by arranging that things shall
go differently."
This sentence, so moderate in form, was pronounced in a low voice, but
with such conviction, tremulous in its menace, that a deep silence followed.
A certain constraint, a breath of fear passed through the polite drawing-
room. The other delegates, though scarcely understanding, felt that their
comrade had been demanding their share of this comfort; and they began to
cast sidelong looks over the warm hangings, the comfortable seats, all this
luxury of which the least knick-knack would have bought them soup for a
month.
At last M. Hennebeau, who had remained thoughtful, rose as a sign for
them to depart. All imitated him. Étienne had lightly pushed Maheu's elbow,
and the latter, his tongue once more thick and awkward, again spoke.
"Then, sir, that is all that you reply? We must tell the others that you reject
our terms."
"I, my good fellow!" exclaimed the manager, "I reject nothing. I am paid
just as you are. I have no more power in the matter than the smallest of your
trammers. I receive my orders, and my only duty is to see that they are
executed. I have told you what I thought I ought to tell you, but it is not for
me to decide. You have brought me your demands. I will make them known
to the directors, then I will tell you their reply."

He spoke with the correct air of a high official avoiding any passionate
interest in the matter, with the courteous dryness of a simple instrument of
authority. And the miners now looked at him with distrust, asking
themselves what interest he might have in lying, and what he would get by
thus putting himself between them and the real masters. A schemer,
perhaps, this man who was paid like a worker, and who lived so well!
Étienne ventured to intervene again.
"You see, sir, how unfortunate it is that we cannot plead our cause in
person. We could explain many things, and bring forward many reasons of
which you could know nothing, if we only knew where we ought to go."
M. Hennebeau was not at all angry. He even smiled.
"Ah! it gets complicated as soon as you have no confidence in me; you will
have to go over there."
The delegates had followed the vague gesture of his hand toward one of the
windows. Where was it, over there? Paris, no doubt. But they did not know
exactly; it seemed to fall back into a terrible distance, in an inaccessible
religious country, where an unknown god sat on his throne, crouching down
at the far end of his tabernacle. They would never see him; they only felt
him as a force far off, which weighed on the ten thousand colliers of
Montsou. And when the director spoke he had that hidden force behind him
delivering oracles.
They were overwhelmed with discouragement; Étienne himself signified by
a shrug of the shoulders that it would be best to go; while M. Hennebeau
touched Maheu's arm in a friendly way and asked after Jeanlin.
"That is a severe lesson now, and it is you who defend bad timbering. You
must reflect, my friends; you must realize that a strike would be a disaster
for everybody. Before a week you would die of hunger. What would you
do? I count on your good sense, anyhow; and I am convinced that you will
go down on Monday, at the latest."
They all left, going out of the drawing-room with the tramping of a flock
and rounded backs, without replying a word to this hope of submission. The
manager, who accompanied them, was obliged to continue the conversation.
The Company, on the one side, had its new tariff; the workers, on the other,
their demand for an increase of five centimes the tram. In order that they

might have no illusions, he felt he ought to warn them that their terms
would certainly be rejected by the directors.
"Reflect before committing any follies," he repeated, disturbed at their
silence.
In the porch Pierron bowed very low, while Levaque pretended to adjust his
cap. Maheu was trying to find something to say before leaving, when
Étienne again touched his elbow. And they all left in the midst of this
threatening silence. The door closed with a loud bang.
When M. Hennebeau re-entered the dining-room he found his guests
motionless and silent before the liqueurs. In two words he told his story to
Deneulin, whose face grew still more gloomy. Then, as he drank his cold
coffee, they tried to speak of other things. But the Grégoires themselves
returned to the subject of the strike, expressing their astonishment that no
laws existed to prevent workmen from leaving their work. Paul reassured
Cécile, stating that they were expecting the police.
At last Madame Hennebeau called the servant:
"Hippolyte, before we go into the drawing-room just open the windows and
let in a little air."

CHAPTER 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 foot-bridges three or four empty

trams bore witness to the mute sadness of things. Underneath, between the
slender posts of the platforms, the stock of coal was diminishing, leaving
the earth bare and black; while the supplies of wood were mouldering
beneath the rain. At the quay on the canal a barge was moored, half-laden,
lying drowsily in the murky water; and on the deserted pit-bank, in which
the decomposed sulphates smoked in spite of the rain, a melancholy cart
showed its shafts erect. But the buildings especially were growing torpid,
the screening-shed with closed shutters, the steeple in which the rumbling
of the receiving-room no more arose, and the machine-room grown cold,
and the giant chimney too large for the occasional smoke. The winding-
engine was only heated in the morning. The grooms sent down fodder for
the horses, and the captains worked alone at the bottom, having become
labourers again, watching over the damages that took place in the passages
as soon as they ceased to be repaired; then, after nine o'clock the rest of the
service was carried on by the ladders. And above these dead buildings,
buried in their garment of black dust, there was only heard the escapement
of the pumping-engine, breathing with its thick, long breath all that was left
of the life of the pit, which the water would destroy if that breathing should
cease.
On the plain opposite, the settlement of the Deux-Cent-Quarante seemed
also to be dead. The prefect of Lille had come in haste and the police had
tramped all the roads; but in face of the calmness of the strikers, prefect and
police had decided to go home again. Never had the settlement given so
splendid an example in the vast plain. The men, to avoid going to the
public-house, slept all day long; the women while dividing the coffee
became reasonable, less anxious to gossip and quarrel; and even the troops
of children seemed to understand it all, and were so good that they ran
about with naked feet, smacking each other silently. The word of command
had been repeated and circulated from mouth to mouth; they wished to be
sensible.
There was, however, a continuous coming and going of people in the
Maheus' house. Étienne, as secretary, had divided the three thousand francs
of the Provident Fund among the needy families; afterwards from various
sides several hundred francs had arrived, yielded by subscriptions and
collections. But now all their resources were exhausted; the miners had no
more money to keep up the strike, and hunger was there, threatening them.

Maigrat, after having promised credit for a fortnight, had suddenly altered
his mind at the end of a week and cut off provisions. He usually took his
orders from the Company; perhaps the latter wished to bring the matter to
an end by starving the settlements. He acted besides like a capricious tyrant,
giving or refusing bread according to the look of the girl who was sent by
her parents for provisions; and he especially closed his door spitefully to
Maheude, wishing to punish her because he had not been able to get
Catherine. To complete their misery it was freezing very hard, and the
women watched their piles of coal diminish, thinking anxiously that they
could no longer renew them at the pits now that the men were not going
down. It was not enough to die of hunger, they must also die of cold.
Among the Maheus everything was already running short. The Levaques
could still eat on the strength of a twenty-franc piece lent by Bouteloup. As
to the Pierrons, they always had money; but in order to appear as needy as
the others, for fear of loans, they got their supplies on credit from Maigrat,
who would have thrown his shop at Pierronne if she had held out her
petticoat to him. Since Saturday many families had gone to bed without
supper, and in face of the terrible days that were beginning not a complaint
was heard, all obeyed the word of command with quiet courage. There was
an absolute confidence in spite of everything, a religious faith, the blind gift
of a population of believers. Since an era of justice had been promised to
them they were willing to suffer for the conquest of universal happiness.
Hunger exalted their heads; never had the low horizon opened a larger
beyond to these people in the hallucination of their misery. They saw again
over there, when their eyes were dimmed by weakness, the ideal city of
their dream, but now growing near and seeming to be real, with its
population of brothers, its golden age of labour and meals in common.
Nothing overcame their conviction that they were at last entering it. The
fund was exhausted; the Company would not yield; every day must
aggravate the situation; and they preserved their hope and showed a smiling
contempt for facts. If the earth opened beneath them a miracle would save
them. This faith replaced bread and warmed their stomachs. When the
Maheus and the others had too quickly digested their soup, made with clear
water, they thus rose into a state of semi-vertigo, that ecstasy of a better life
which has flung martyrs to the wild beasts.

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

During the last few days Étienne had been perplexed. Pluchart wrote letter
after letter, offering to come to Montsou to quicken the zeal of the strikers.
It was a question of organizing a private meeting over which the mechanic
would preside; and beneath this plan lay the idea of exploiting the strike, to
gain over to the International these miners who so far had shown
themselves suspicious. Étienne feared a disturbance, but he would,
however, have allowed Pluchart to come if Rasseneur had not violently
blamed this proceeding. In spite of his power, the young man had to reckon
with the innkeeper, whose services were of older date, and who had faithful
followers among his clients. So he still hesitated, not knowing what to
reply.
On this very Monday, towards four o'clock, a new letter came from Lille as
Étienne was alone with Maheude in the lower room. Maheu, weary of
idleness, had gone fishing; if he had the luck to catch a fine fish under the
sluice of the canal, they could sell it to buy bread. Old Bonnemort and little
Jeanlin had just gone off to try their legs, which were now restored; while
the children had departed with Alzire, who spent hours on the pit-bank
collecting cinders. Seated near the miserable fire, which they no longer
dared to keep up, Maheude, with her dress unbuttoned and one breast
hanging out of her dress and falling to her belly, was suckling Estelle.
When the young man had folded the letter, she questioned him:
"Is the news good? Are they going to send us any money?"
He shook his head, and she went on:
"I don't know what we shall do this week. However, we'll hold on all the
same. When one has right on one's side, don't you think it gives you heart,
and one ends always by being the strongest?"
At the present time she was, to a reasonable extent, in favour of the strike. It
would have been better to force the Company to be just without leaving off
work. But since they had left it they ought not to go back to it without
obtaining justice. On this point she was relentless. Better to die than to
show oneself in the wrong when one was right!
"Ah!" exclaimed Étienne, "if a fine old cholera was to break out, that would
free us of all these Company exploiters."

"No, no," she replied, "we must not wish any one dead. That wouldn't help
us at all; plenty more would spring up. Now I only ask that they should get
sensible ideas, and I expect they will, for there are worthy people
everywhere. You know I'm not at all for your politics."
In fact she always blamed his violent language, and thought him aggressive.
It was good that they should want their work paid for at what it was worth,
but why occupy oneself with such things as the bourgeois and Government?
Why mix oneself up with other people's affairs, when one would get
nothing out of it but hard knocks? And she kept her esteem for him because
he did not get drunk, and regularly paid his forty-five francs for board and
lodging. When a man behaves well one can forgive him the rest.
Étienne then talked about the Republic, which would give bread to
everybody. But Maheude shook her head, for she remembered 1848, an
awful year, which had left them as bare as worms, her and her man, in their
early housekeeping years. She forgot herself in describing its horrors, in a
mournful voice, her eyes lost in space, her breast open; while her infant,
Estelle, without letting it go, had fallen asleep on her knees. And Étienne,
also absorbed in thought, had his eyes fixed on this enormous breast, of
which the soft whiteness contrasted with the muddy yellowish complexion
of her face.
"Not a farthing," she murmured, "nothing to put between one's teeth, and all
the pits stopped. Just the same destruction of poor people as to-day."
But at that moment the door opened, and they remained mute with surprise
before Catherine, who then came in. Since her flight with Chaval she had
not reappeared at the settlement. Her emotion was so great that, trembling
and silent, she forgot to shut the door. She expected to find her mother
alone, and the sight of the young man put out of her head the phrases she
had prepared on the way.
"What on earth have you come here for?" cried Maheude, without even
moving from her chair. "I don't want to have anything more to do with you;
get along."
Then Catherine tried to find words:
"Mother, it's some coffee and sugar; yes, for the children. I've been thinking
of them and done overtime."

She drew out of her pockets a pound of coffee and a pound of sugar, and
took courage to place them on the table. The strike at the Voreux troubled
her while she was working at Jean-Bart, and she had only been able to think
of this way of helping her parents a little, under the pretext of caring for the
little ones. But her good nature did not disarm her mother, who replied:
"Instead of bringing us sweets, you would have done better to stay and earn
bread for us."
She overwhelmed her with abuse, relieving herself by throwing in her
daughter's face all that she had been saying against her for the past month.
To go off with a man, to hang on to him at sixteen, when the family was in
want! Only the most degraded of unnatural children could do it. One could
forgive a folly, but a mother never forgot a trick like that. There might have
been some excuse if they had been strict with her. Not at all; she was as free
as air, and they only asked her to come in to sleep.
"Tell me, what have you got in your skin, at your age?"
Catherine, standing beside the table, listened with lowered head. A quiver
shook her thin under-developed girlish body, and she tried to reply in
broken words:
"Oh! if it was only me, and the amusement that I get! It's him. What he
wants I'm obliged to want too, aren't I? because, you see, he's the strongest.
How can one tell how things are going to turn out? Anyhow it's done and
can't be undone; it may as well be him as another now. He'll have to marry
me."
She defended herself without a struggle, with the passive resignation of a
girl who has submitted to the male at an early age. Was it not the common
lot? She had never dreamed of anything else; violence behind the pit-bank,
a child at sixteen, and then a wretched household if her lover married her.
And she did not blush with shame; she only quivered like this at being
treated like a slut before this lad, whose presence oppressed her to despair.
Étienne had risen, however, and was pretending to stir up the nearly extinct
fire in order not to interrupt the explanation. But their looks met; he found
her pale and exhausted; pretty, indeed, with her clear eyes in the face which
had grown tanned, and he experienced a singular feeling; his spite had
vanished; he simply desired that she should be happy with this man whom

she had preferred to him. He felt the need to occupy himself with her still, a
longing to go to Montsou and force the other man to his duty. But she only
saw pity in his constant tenderness; he must feel contempt for her to gaze at
her like that. Then her heart contracted so that she choked, without being
able to stammer any more words of excuse.
"That's it, you'd best hold your tongue," began the implacable Maheude. "If
you come back to stay, come in; else get along with you at once, and think
yourself lucky that I'm not free just now, or I should have put my foot into
you somewhere before now."
As if this threat had suddenly been realized, Catherine received a vigorous
kick right behind, so violent that she was stupefied with surprise and pain. It
was Chaval who had leapt in through the open door to give her this lunge of
a vicious beast. For a moment he had watched her from outside.
"Ah! slut," he yelled, "I've followed you. I knew well enough you were
coming back here to get him to fill you. And it's you that pay him, eh? You
pour coffee down him with my money!"
Maheude and Étienne were stupefied, and did not stir. With a furious
movement Chaval chased Catherine towards the door.
"Out you go, by God!"
And as she took refuge in a corner he turned on her mother.
"A nice business, keeping watch while your whore of a daughter is kicking
her legs upstairs!"
At last he caught Catherine's wrist, shaking her and dragging her out. At the
door he again turned towards Maheude, who was nailed to her chair. She
had forgotten to fasten up her breast. Estelle had gone to sleep, and her face
had slipped down into the woollen petticoat; the enormous breast was
hanging free and naked like the udder of a great cow.
"When the daughter is not at it, it's the mother who gets herself plugged,"
cried Chaval. "Go on, show him your meat! He isn't disgusted—your dirty
lodger!"
At this Étienne was about to strike his mate. The fear of arousing the
settlement by a fight had kept him back from snatching Catherine from
Chaval's hands. But rage was now carrying him away, and the two men

were face to face with inflamed eyes. It was an old hatred, a jealousy long
unacknowledged, which was breaking out. One of them now must do for
the other.
"Take care!" stammered Étienne, with clenched teeth. "I'll do for you."
"Try!" replied Chaval.
They looked at one another for some seconds longer, so close that their hot
breaths burnt each other's faces. And it was Catherine who suppliantly took
her lover's hand again to lead him away. She dragged him out of the
settlement, fleeing without turning her head.
"What a brute!" muttered Étienne, banging the door, and so shaken by anger
that he was obliged to sit down.
Maheude, in front of him, had not stirred. She made a vague gesture, and
there was silence, a silence which was painful and heavy with unspoken
things. In spite of an effort his gaze again returned to her breast, that
expanse of white flesh, the brilliance of which now made him
uncomfortable. No doubt she was forty, and had lost her shape, like a good
female who had produced too much; but many would still desire her, strong
and solid, with the large long face of a woman who had once been beautiful.
Slowly and quietly she was putting back her breast with both hands. A rosy
corner was still obstinate, and she pushed it back with her finger, and then
buttoned herself up, and was now quite black and shapeless in her old
gown.
"He's a filthy beast," she said at last. "Only a filthy beast could have such
nasty ideas. I don't care a hang what he says; it isn't worth notice."
Then in a frank voice she added, fixing her eyes on the young man:
"I have my faults, sure enough, but not that one. Only two men have
touched me—a putter, long ago, when I was fifteen, and then Maheu. If he
had left me like the other, Lord! I don't quite know what would have
happened; and I don't pride myself either on my good conduct with him
since our marriage, because, when one hasn't gone wrong, it's often because
one hasn't the chance. Only I say things as they are, and I know neighbours
who couldn't say as much, don't you think?"
"That's true enough," replied Étienne.

And he rose and went out, while she decided to light the fire again, after
having placed the sleeping Estelle on two chairs. If the father caught and
sold a fish they could manage to have some soup.
Outside, night was already coming on, a frosty night; and with lowered
head Étienne walked along, sunk in dark melancholy. It was no longer
anger against the man, or pity for the poor ill-treated girl. The brutal scene
was effaced and lost, and he was thrown back on to the sufferings of all, the
abominations of wretchedness. He thought of the settlement without bread,
these women and little ones who would not eat that evening, all this
struggling race with empty bellies. And the doubt which sometimes touched
him awoke again in the frightful melancholy of the twilight, and tortured
him with a discomfort which he had never felt so strongly before. With
what a terrible responsibility he had burdened himself! Must he still push
them on in obstinate resistance, now that there was neither money nor
credit? And what would be the end of it all if no help arrived, and starvation
came to beat down their courage? He had a sudden vision of disaster; of
dying children and sobbing mothers, while the men, lean and pale, went
down once more into the pits. He went on walking, his feet stumbling
against the stones, and the thought that the Company would be found
strongest, and that he would have brought misfortune on his comrades,
filled him with insupportable anguish.
When he raised his head he saw that he was in front of the Voreux. The
gloomy mass of buildings looked sombre beneath the growing darkness.
The deserted square, obstructed by great motionless shadows, seemed like
the corner of an abandoned fortress. As soon as the winding-engine stopped,
the soul left the place. At this hour of the night nothing was alive, not a
lantern, not a voice; and the sound of the pump itself was only a distant
moan, coming one could not say whence, in this annihilation of the whole
pit.
As Étienne gazed the blood flowed back to his heart. If the workers were
suffering hunger, the Company was encroaching on its millions. Why
should it prove the stronger in this war of labour against gold? In any case,
the victory would cost it dear. They would have their corpses to count. He
felt the fury of battle again, the fierce desire to have done with misery, even
at the price of death. It would be as well for the settlement to die at one
stroke as to go on dying in detail of famine and injustice. His ill-digested

reading came back to him, examples of nations who had burnt their towns
to arrest the enemy, vague histories of mothers who had saved their children
from slavery by crushing their heads against the pavement, of men who had
died of want rather than eat the bread of tyrants. His head became exalted, a
red gaiety arose out of his crisis of black sadness, chasing away doubt, and
making him ashamed of this passing cowardice of an hour. And in this
revival of his faith, gusts of pride reappeared and carried him still higher;
the joy of being leader, of seeing himself obeyed, even to sacrifice, the
enlarged dream of his power, the evening of triumph. Already he imagined
a scene of simple grandeur, his refusal of power, authority placed in the
hands of the people, when it would be master.
But he awoke and started at the voice of Maheu, who was narrating his
luck, a superb trout which he had fished up and sold for three francs.
They would have their soup. Then he left his mate to return alone to the
settlement, saying that he would follow him; and he entered and sat down in
the Avantage, awaiting the departure of a client to tell Rasseneur decisively
that he should write to Pluchart to come at once. His resolution was taken;
he would organize a private meeting, for victory seemed to him certain if
the Montsou colliers adhered in a mass to the International.

CHAPTER IV

It was at the Bon-Joyeux, Widow Désir's, that the private meeting was
organized for Thursday at two o'clock. The widow, incensed at the miseries
inflicted on her children the colliers, was in a constant state of anger,
especially as her inn was emptying. Never had there been a less thirsty
strike; the drunkards had shut themselves up at home for fear of disobeying
the sober word of command. Thus Montsou, which swarmed with people on
feast-days, now exhibited its wide street in mute and melancholy
desolation. No beer flowed from counters or bellies, the gutters were dry.
On the pavement at the Casimir Bar and the Estaminet du Progrés one only
saw the pale faces of the landladies, looking inquiringly into the street; then
in Montsou itself the deserted doors extended from the Estaminet Lenfant to

the Estaminet Tison, passing by the Estaminet Piquette and the Tête-Coupée
Bar; only the Estaminet Saint-Éloi, which was frequented by captains, still
drew occasional glasses; the solitude even extended to the Volcan, where
the ladies were resting for lack of admirers, although they had lowered their
price from ten sous to five in view of the hard times. A deep mourning was
breaking the heart of the entire country.
"By God!" exclaimed Widow Désir, slapping her thighs with both hands,
"it's the fault of the gendarmes! Let them run me in, devil take them, if they
like, but I must plague them."
For her, all authorities and masters were gendarmes; it was a term of
general contempt in which she enveloped all the enemies of the people. She
had greeted Étienne's request with transport; her whole house belonged to
the miners, she would lend her ball-room gratuitously, and would herself
issue the invitations since the law required it. Besides, if the law was not
pleased, so much the better! She would give them a bit of her mind. Since
yesterday the young man had brought her some fifty letters to sign; he had
them copied by neighbours in the settlement who knew how to write, and
these letters were sent around among the pits to delegates and to men of
whom they were sure. The avowed order of the day was a discussion
regarding the continuation of the strike; but in reality they were expecting
Pluchart, and reckoning on a discourse from him which would cause a
general adhesion to the International.
On Thursday morning Étienne was disquieted by the non-appearance of his
old foreman, who had promised by letter to arrive on Wednesday evening.
What, then, was happening? He was annoyed that he would not be able to
come to an understanding with him before the meeting. At nine o'clock he
went to Montsou, with the idea that the mechanic had, perhaps, gone there
direct without stopping at the Voreux.
"No, I've not seen your friend," replied Widow Désir. "But everything is
ready. Come and see."
She led him into the ball-room. The decorations were the same, the garlands
which supported at the ceiling a crown of painted paper flowers, and the gilt
cardboard shields in a line along the wall with the names of saints, male and
female. Only the musicians' platform had been replaced by a table and three

chairs in one corner; and the room was furnished with forms ranged along
the floor.
"It's perfect," Étienne declared.
"And you know," said the widow, "that you're at home here. Yell as much as
you like. The gendarmes will have to pass over my body if they do come!"
In spite of his anxiety, he could not help smiling when he looked at her, so
vast did she appear, with a pair of breasts so huge that one alone would
require a man to embrace it, which now led to the saying that of her six
weekday lovers she had to take two every evening on account of the work.
But Étienne was astonished to see Rasseneur and Souvarine enter; and as
the widow left them all three in the large empty hall he exclaimed:
"What! you here already!"
Souvarine, who had worked all night at the Voreux, the engine-men not
being on strike, had merely come out of curiosity. As to Rasseneur, he had
seemed constrained during the last two days, and his fat round face had lost
its good-natured laugh.
"Pluchart has not arrived, and I am very anxious," added Étienne.
The innkeeper turned away his eyes, and replied between his teeth:
"I'm not surprised; I don't expect him."
"What!"
Then he made up his mind, and looking the other man in the face bravely:
"I, too, have sent him a letter, if you want me to tell you; and in that letter I
have begged him not to come. Yes, I think we ought to manage our own
affairs ourselves, without turning to strangers."
Étienne, losing his self-possession and trembling with anger, turned his eyes
on his mate's and stammered:
"You've done that, you've done that?"
"I have done that, certainly! and you know that I trust Pluchart; he's a
knowing fellow and reliable, one can get on with him. But you see I don't
care a damn for your ideas, I don't! Politics, Government, and all that, I

don't care a damn for it! What I want is for the miner to be better treated. I
have worked down below for twenty years, I've sweated down there with
fatigue and misery, and I've sworn to make it easier for the poor beggars
who are there still; and I know well enough you'll never get anything with
all your ideas, you'll only make the men's fate more miserable still. When
they are forced by hunger to go down again, they will be more crushed than
ever; the Company will pay them with strokes of the stick, like a runaway
dog who is brought back to his kennel. That's what I want to prevent, do
you see!"
He raised his voice, protruding his belly and squarely planted on his big
legs. The man's whole patient, reasonable nature was revealed in clear
phrases, which flowed abundantly without an effort. Was it not absurd to
believe that with one stroke one could change the world, putting the
workers in the place of the masters and dividing gold as one divides an
apple? It would, perhaps, take thousands and thousands of years for that to
be realized. There, hold your tongue, with your miracles! The most sensible
plan was, if one did not wish to break one's nose, to go straight forward, to
demand possible reforms, in short, to improve the lot of the workers on
every occasion. He did his best, so far as he occupied himself with it, to
bring the Company to better terms; if not, damn it all! they would only
starve by being obstinate.
Étienne had let him speak, his own speech cut short by indignation. Then he
cried:
"Haven't you got any blood in your veins, by God?"
At one moment he would have struck him, and to resist the temptation he
rushed about the hall with long strides, venting his fury on the benches
through which he made a passage.
"Shut the door, at all events," Souvarine remarked. "There is no need to be
heard."
Having himself gone to shut it, he quietly sat down in one of the office
chairs. He had rolled a cigarette, and was looking at the other two men with
his mild subtle eye, his lips drawn by a slight smile.
"You won't get any farther by being angry," said Rasseneur judiciously. "I
believed at first that you had good sense. It was sensible to recommend

calmness to the mates, to force them to keep indoors, and to use your power
to maintain order. And now you want to get them into a mess!"
At each turn in his walks among the benches, Étienne returned towards the
innkeeper, seizing him by the shoulders, shaking him, and shouting out his
replies in his face.
"But, blast it all! I mean to be calm. Yes, I have imposed order on them!
Yes, I do advise them still not to stir! only it doesn't do to be made a joke of
after all! You are lucky to remain cool. Now there are hours when I feel that
I am losing my head."
This was a confession on his part. He railed at his illusions of a novice, his
religious dream of a city in which justice would soon reign among the men
who had become brothers. A fine method truly! to cross one's arms and
wait, if one wished to see men eating each other to the end of the world like
wolves. No! one must interfere, or injustice would be eternal, and the rich
would for ever suck the blood of the poor. Therefore he could not forgive
himself the stupidity of having said formerly that politics ought to be
banished from the social question. He knew nothing then; now he had read
and studied, his ideas were ripe, and he boasted that he had a system. He
explained it badly, however, in confused phrases which contained a little of
all the theories he had successively passed through and abandoned. At the
summit Karl Marx's idea remained standing: capital was the result of
spoliation, it was the duty and the privilege of labour to reconquer that
stolen wealth. In practice he had at first, with Proudhon, been captured by
the chimera of a mutual credit, a vast bank of exchange which suppressed
middlemen; then Lassalle's cooperative societies, endowed by the state,
gradually transforming the earth into a single industrial town, had aroused
his enthusiasm until he grew disgusted in face of the difficulty of
controlling them; and he had arrived recently at collectivism, demanding
that all the instruments of production should be restored to the community.
But this remained vague; he knew not how to realize this new dream, still
hindered by scruples of reason and good sense, not daring to risk the
secretary's absolute affirmations. He simply said that it was a question of
getting possession of the government first of all. Afterwards they would see.
"But what has taken you? Why are you going over to the bourgeois?" he
continued violently, again planting himself before the innkeeper. "You said

yourself it would have to burst up!"
Rasseneur blushed slightly.
"Yes, I said so. And if it does burst up, you will see that I am no more of a
coward than any one else. Only I refuse to be among those who increase the
mess in order to fish out a position for themselves."
Étienne blushed in his turn. The two men no longer shouted, having become
bitter and spiteful, conquered by the coldness of their rivalry. It was at
bottom that which always strains systems, making one man revolutionary in
the extreme, pushing the other to an affectation of prudence, carrying them,
in spite of themselves, beyond their true ideas into those fatal parts which
men do not choose for themselves. And Souvarine, who was listening,
exhibited on his pale, girlish face a silent contempt—the crushing contempt
of the man who was willing to yield his life in obscurity without even
gaining the splendour of martyrdom.
"Then it's to me that you're saying that?" asked Étienne; "you're jealous!"
"Jealous of what?" replied Rasseneur. "I don't pose as a big man; I'm not
trying to create a section at Montsou for the sake of being made secretary."
The other man wanted to interrupt him, but he added:
"Why don't you be frank? You don't care a damn for the International;
you're only burning to be at our head, the gentleman who corresponds with
the famous Federal Council of the Nord!"
There was silence. Étienne replied, quivering:
"Good! I don't think I have anything to reproach myself with. I always
asked your advice, for I knew that you had fought here long before me. But
since you can't endure any one by your side, I'll act alone in future. And
first I warn you that the meeting will take place even if Pluchart does not
come, and the mates will join in spite of you."
"Oh! join!" muttered the innkeeper; "that's not enough. You'll have to get
them to pay their subscriptions."
"Not at all. The International grants time to workers on strike. It will at once
come to our help, and we shall pay later on."
Rasseneur was carried beyond himself.

"Well, we shall see. I belong to this meeting of yours, and I shall speak. I
shall not let you turn our friends' heads, I shall let them know where their
real interests lie. We shall see whom they mean to follow—me, whom they
have known for thirty years, or you, who have turned everything upside
down among us in less than a year. No, no! damn it all! We shall see which
of us is going to crush the other."
And he went out, banging the door. The garlands of flowers swayed from
the ceiling, and the gilt shields jumped against the walls. Then the great
room fell back into its heavy calm.
Souvarine was smoking in his quiet way, seated before the table. After
having paced for a moment in silence, Étienne began to relieve his feelings
at length. Was it his fault if they had left that fat lazy fellow to come to
him? And he defended himself from having ought popularity. He knew not
even how it had happened, this friendliness of the settlement, the
confidence of the miners, the power which he now had over them. He was
indignant at being accused of wishing to bring everything to confusion out
of ambition; he struck his chest, protesting his brotherly feelings.
Suddenly he stopped before Souvarine and exclaimed:
"Do you know, if I thought I should cost a drop of blood to a friend, I would
go off at once to America!"
The engine-man shrugged his shoulders, and a smile again came on his lips.
"Oh! blood!" he murmured. "What does that matter? The earth has need of
it."
Étienne, growing calm, took a chair, and put his elbows on the other side of
the table. This fair face, with the dreamy eyes, which sometimes grew
savage with a red light, disturbed him, and exercised a singular power over
his will. In spite of his comrade's silence, conquered even by that silence, he
felt himself gradually absorbed.
"Well," he asked, "what would you do in my place? Am I not right to act as
I do? Isn't it best for us to join this association?"
Souvarine, after having slowly ejected a jet of smoke, replied by his
favourite word:

"Oh, foolery! but meanwhile it's always so. Besides, their International will
soon begin to move. He has taken it up."
"Who, then?"
"He!"
He had pronounced this word in a whisper, with religious fervour, casting a
glance towards the east. He was speaking of the master, Bakunin the
destroyer.
"He alone can give the thunderclap," he went on, "while your learned men,
with their evolution, are mere cowards. Before three years are past, the
International, under his orders, will crush the old world."
Étienne pricked up his ears in attention. He was burning to gain knowledge,
to understand this worship of destruction, regarding which the engine-man
only uttered occasional obscure words, as though he kept certain mysteries
to himself.
"Well, but explain to me. What is your aim?"
"To destroy everything. No more nations, no more governments, no more
property, no more God nor worship."
"I quite understand. Only what will that lead you to?"
"To the primitive formless commune, to a new world, to the renewal of
everything."
"And the means of execution? How do you reckon to set about it?"
"By fire, by poison, by the dagger. The brigand is the true hero, the popular
avenger, the revolutionary in action, with no phrases drawn out of books.
We need a series of tremendous outrages to frighten the powerful and to
arouse the people."
As he talked, Souvarine grew terrible. An ecstasy raised him on his chair, a
mystic flame darted from his pale eyes, and his delicate hands gripped the
edge of the table almost to breaking. The other man looked at him in fear,
and thought of the stories of which he had received vague intimation, of
mines charged beneath the tsar's palace, of chiefs of police struck down by
knives like wild boars, of his mistress, the only woman he had loved,

hanged at Moscow one rainy morning, while in the crowd he kissed her
with his eyes for the last time.
"No! no!" murmured Étienne, as with a gesture he pushed away these
abominable visions, "we haven't got to that yet over here. Murder and fire,
never! It is monstrous, unjust, all the mates would rise and strangle the
guilty one!"
And besides, he could not understand; the instincts of his race refused to
accept this sombre dream of the extermination of the world, mown level
like a rye-field. Then what would they do afterwards? How would the
nations spring up again? He demanded a reply.
"Tell me your programme. We like to know where we are going to."
Then Souvarine concluded peacefully, with his gaze fixed on space:
"All reasoning about the future is criminal, because it prevents pure
destruction, and interferes with the progress of revolution."
This made Étienne laugh, in spite of the cold shiver which passed over his
flesh. Besides, he willingly acknowledged that there was something in these
ideas, which attracted him by their fearful simplicity. Only it would be
playing into Rasseneur's hands if he were to repeat such things to his
comrades. It was necessary to be practical.
Widow Désir proposed that they should have lunch. They agreed, and went
into the inn parlour, which was separated from the ball-room on weekdays
by a movable partition. When they had finished their omelette and cheese,
the engine-man proposed to depart, and as the other tried to detain him:
"What for? To listen to you talking useless foolery? I've seen enough of it.
Good day."
He went off in his gentle, obstinate way, with a cigarette between his lips.
Étienne's anxiety increased. It was one o'clock, and Pluchart was decidedly
breaking his promise. Towards half-past one the delegates began to appear,
and he had to receive them, for he wished to see who entered, for fear that
the Company might send its usual spies. He examined every letter of
invitation, and took note of those who entered; many came in without a
letter, as they were admitted provided he knew them. As two o'clock struck
Rasseneur entered, finishing his pipe at the counter, and chatting without

haste. This provoking calmness still further disturbed Étienne, all the more
as many had come merely for fun—Zacharie, Mouquet, and others. These
cared little about the strike, and found it a great joke to do nothing. Seated
at tables, and spending their last two sous on drink, they grinned and
bantered their mates, the serious ones, who had come to make fools of
themselves.
Another quarter of an hour passed; there was impatience in the hall. Then
Étienne, in despair, made a gesture of resolution. And he decided to enter,
when Widow Désir, who was putting her head outside, exclaimed:
"But here he is, your gentleman!"
It was, in fact, Pluchart. He came in a cab drawn by a broken-winded horse.
He jumped at once on to the pavement, a thin, insipidly handsome man,
with a large square head;—in his black cloth frock-coat he had the Sunday
air of a well-to-do workman. For five years he had not done a stroke with
the file, and he took care of his appearance, especially combing his hair in a
correct manner, vain of his successes on the platform; but his limbs were
still stiff, and the nails of his large hands, eaten by the iron, had not grown
again. Very active, he worked out his ambitions, scouring the province
unceasingly in order to place his ideas.
"Ah! don't be angry with me," he said, anticipating questions and
reproaches. "Yesterday, lecture at Preuilly in the morning, meeting in the
evening at Valencay. Today, lunch at Marchiennes with Sauvagnat. Then I
had to take a cab. I'm worn out; you can tell by my voice. But that's
nothing; I shall speak all the same."
He was on the threshold of the Bon-Joyeux, when he bethought himself.
"By jingo! I'm forgetting the tickets. We should have been in a fine fix!"
He went back to the cab, which the cabman drew up again, and he pulled
out a little black wooden box, which he carried off under his arm.
Étienne walked radiantly in his shadow, while Rasseneur, in consternation,
did not dare to offer his hand. But the other was already pressing it, and
saying a rapid word or two about the letter. What a rum idea! Why not hold
this meeting? One should always hold a meeting when possible. Widow
Désir asked if he would take anything, but he refused. No need; he spoke
without drinking. Only he was in a hurry, because in the evening he

reckoned on pushing as far as Joiselle, where he wished to come to an
understanding with Legoujeux. Then they all entered the ball-room
together. Maheu and Levaque, who had arrived late, followed them. The
door was then locked, in order to be in privacy. This made the jokers laugh
even more, Zacharie shouting to Mouquet that perhaps they were going to
get them all with child in there.
About a hundred miners were waiting on the benches in the close air of the
room, with the warm odours of the last ball rising from the floor. Whispers
ran round and all heads turned, while the new-comers sat down in the
empty places. They gazed at the Lille gentleman, and the black frock-coat
caused a certain surprise and discomfort.
But on Étienne's proposition the meeting was at once constituted. He gave
out the names, while the others approved by lifting their hands. Pluchart
was nominated chairman, and Maheu and Étienne himself were voted
stewards. There was a movement of chairs and the officers were installed;
for a moment they watched the chairman disappear beneath the table under
which he slid the box, which he had not let go. When he reappeared he
struck lightly with his fist to call for attention; then he began in a hoarse
voice:
"Citizens!"
A little door opened and he had to stop. It was Widow Désir who, coming
round by the kitchen, brought in six glasses on a tray.
"Don't put yourselves out," she said. "When one talks one gets thirsty."
Maheu relieved her of the tray and Pluchart was able to go on. He said how
very touched he was at his reception by the Montsou workers, he excused
himself for his delay, mentioning his fatigue and his sore throat, then he
gave place to Citizen Rasseneur, who wished to speak.
Rasseneur had already planted himself beside the table near the glasses. The
back of a chair served him as a rostrum. He seemed very moved, and
coughed before starting in a loud voice:
"Mates!"
What gave him his influence over the workers at the pit was the facility of
his speech, the good-natured way in which he could go on talking to them

by the hour without ever growing weary. He never ventured to gesticulate,
but stood stolid and smiling, drowning them and dazing them, until they all
shouted: "Yes, yes, that's true enough, you're right!" However, on this day,
from the first word, he felt that there was a sullen opposition. This made
him advance prudently. He only discussed the continuation of the strike,
and waited for applause before attacking the International. Certainly honour
prevented them from yielding to the Company's demands; but how much
misery! what a terrible future if it was necessary to persist much longer! and
without declaring for submission he damped their courage, he showed them
the settlements dying of hunger, he asked on what resources the partisans of
resistance were counting. Three or four friends tried to applaud him, but this
accentuated the cold silence of the majority, and the gradually rising
disapprobation which greeted his phrases. Then, despairing of winning
them over, he was carried away by anger, he foretold misfortune if they
allowed their heads to be turned at the instigation of strangers. Two-thirds
of the audience had risen indignantly, trying to silence him, since he
insulted them by treating them like children unable to act for themselves.
But he went on speaking in spite of the tumult, taking repeated gulps of
beer, and shouting violently that the man was not born who would prevent
him from doing his duty.
Pluchart had risen. As he had no bell he struck his fist on the table,
repeating in his hoarse voice:
"Citizens, citizens!"
At last he obtained a little quiet and the meeting, when consulted, brought
Rasseneur's speech to an end. The delegates who had represented the pits in
the interview with the manager led the others, all enraged by starvation and
agitated by new ideas. The voting was decided in advance.
"You don't care a damn, you don't! you can eat!" yelled Levaque, thrusting
out his fist at Rasseneur.
Étienne leaned over behind the chairman's back to appease Maheu, who
was very red, and carried out of himself by this hypocritical discourse.
"Citizens!" said Pluchart, "allow me to speak!"
There was deep silence. He spoke. His voice sounded painful and hoarse;
but he was used to it on his journeys, and took his laryngitis about with him

like his programme. Gradually his voice expanded and he produced pathetic
effects with it. With open arms and accompanying his periods with a
swaying of his shoulders, he had an eloquence which recalled the pulpit, a
religious fashion of sinking the ends of his sentences whose monotonous
roll at last carried conviction.
His discourse centred on the greatness and the advantages of the
International; it was that with which he always started in every new locality.
He explained its aim, the emancipation of the workers; he showed its
imposing structure—below the commune, higher the province, still higher
the nation, and at the summit humanity. His arms moved slowly, piling up
the stages, preparing the immense cathedral of the future world. Then there
was the internal administration: he read the statutes, spoke of the
congresses, pointed out the growing importance of the work, the
enlargement of the programme, which, starting from the discussion of
wages, was now working towards a social liquidation, to have done with the
wage system. No more nationalities. The workers of the whole world would
be united by a common need for justice, sweeping away the middle-class
corruption, founding, at last, a free society, in which he who did not work
should not reap! He roared; his breath startled the flowers of painted paper
beneath the low smoky ceiling which sent back the sound of his voice.
A wave passed through the audience. Some of them cried:
"That's it! We're with you."
He went on. The world would be conquered before three years. And he
enumerated the nations already conquered. From all sides adhesions were
raining in. Never had a young religion counted so many disciples. Then,
when they had the upper hand they would dictate terms to the masters, who,
in their turn, would have a fist at their throats.
"Yes, yes! they'll have to go down!"
With a gesture he enforced silence. Now he was entering on the strike
question. In principle he disapproved of strikes; it was a slow method,
which aggravated the sufferings of the worker. But before better things
arrived, and when they were inevitable, one must make up one's mind to
them, for they had the advantage of disorganizing capital. And in this case
he showed the International as providence for strikers, and quoted

examples: in Paris, during the strike of the bronze-workers, the masters had
granted everything at once, terrified at the news that the International was
sending help; in London it had saved the miners at a colliery, by sending
back, at its own expense, a ship-load of Belgians who had been brought
over by the coal-owner. It was sufficient to join and the companies
trembled, for the men entered the great army of workers who were resolved
to die for one another rather than to remain the slaves of a capitalistic
society.
Applause interrupted him. He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief, at
the same time refusing a glass which Maheu passed to him. When he was
about to continue fresh applause cut short his speech.
"It's all right," he said rapidly to Étienne. "They've had enough. Quick! the
cards!"
He had plunged beneath the table, and reappeared with the little black
wooden box.
"Citizens!" he shouted, dominating the disturbance, "here are the cards of
membership. Let your delegates come up, and I will give them to them to
be distributed. Later on we can arrange everything."
Rasseneur rushed forward and again protested. Étienne was also agitated;
having to make a speech. Extreme confusion followed. Levaque jumped up
with his fists out, as if to fight. Maheu was up and speaking, but nobody
could distinguish a single word. In the growing tumult the dust rose from
the floor, a floating dust of former balls, poisoning the air with a strong
odour of putters and trammers.
Suddenly the little door opened, and Widow Désir filled it with her belly
and breast, shouting in a thundering voice:
"For God's sake, silence! The gendarmes!"
It was the commissioner of the district, who had arrived rather late to
prepare a report and to break up the meeting. Four gendarmes accompanied
him. For five minutes the widow had delayed them at the door, replying that
she was at home, and that she had a perfect right to entertain her friends.
But they had hustled her away, and she had rushed in to warn her children.

"Must clear out through here," she said again. "There's a dirty gendarme
guarding the court. It doesn't matter; my little wood-house opens into the
alley. Quick, then!" The commissioner was already knocking with his fist,
and as the door was not opened, he threatened to force it. A spy must have
talked, for he cried that the meeting was illegal, a large number of miners
being there without any letter of invitation.
In the hall the trouble was growing. They could not escape thus; they had
not even voted either for adhesion or for the continuation of the strike. All
persisted in talking at the same time. At last the chairman suggested a vote
by acclamation. Arms were raised, and the delegates declared hastily that
they would join in the name of their absent mates. And it was thus that the
ten thousand colliers of Montsou became members of the International.
Meanwhile, the retreat began. In order to cover it, Widow Désir had
propped herself up against the door, which the butt-ends of the gendarmes'
muskets were forcing at her back. The miners jumped over the benches, and
escaped, one by one, through the kitchen and the wood-yard. Rasseneur
disappeared among the first, and Levaque followed him, forgetful of his
abuse, and planning how he could get an offer of a glass to pull himself
together. Étienne, after having seized the little box, waited with Pluchart
and Maheu, who considered it a point of honour to emerge last. As they
disappeared the lock gave, and the commissioner found himself in the
presence of the widow, whose breast and belly still formed a barricade.
"It doesn't help you much to smash everything in my house," she said. "You
can see there's nobody here."
The commissioner, a slow man who did not care for scenes, simply
threatened to take her off to prison. And he then went away with his four
gendarmes to prepare a report, beneath the jeers of Zacharie and Mouquet,
who were full of admiration for the way in which their mates had
humbugged this armed force, for which they themselves did not care a
hang.
In the alley outside, Étienne, embarrassed by the box, was rushing along,
followed by the others. He suddenly thought of Pierron, and asked why he
had not turned up. Maheu, also running, replied that he was ill—a
convenient illness, the fear of compromising himself. They wished to retain
Pluchart, but, without stopping, he declared that he must set out at once for

Joiselle, where Legoujeux was awaiting orders. Then, as they ran, they
shouted out to him their wishes for a pleasant journey, and rushed through
Montsou with their heels in the air. A few words were exchanged, broken by
the panting of their chests. Étienne and Maheu were laughing confidently,
henceforth certain of victory. When the International had sent help, it would
be the Company that would beg them to resume work. And in this burst of
hope, in this gallop of big boots sounding over the pavement of the streets,
there was something else also, something sombre and fierce, a gust of
violence which would inflame the settlements in the four corners of the
country.

CHAPTER V

Another fortnight had passed by. It was the beginning of January and cold
mists benumbed the immense plain. The misery had grown still greater, and
the settlements were in agony from hour to hour beneath the increasing
famine. Four thousand francs sent by the International from London had
scarcely supplied bread for three days, and then nothing had come. This
great dead hope was beating down their courage. On what were they to
count now since even their brothers had abandoned them? They felt
themselves separated from the world and lost in the midst of this deep
winter.
On Tuesday no resources were left in the Deux-Cent-Quarante settlement.
Étienne and the delegates had multiplied their energies. New subscriptions
were opened in the neighbouring towns, and even in Paris; collections were
made and lectures organized. These efforts came to nothing. Public opinion,
which had at first been moved, grew indifferent now that the strike dragged
on for ever, and so quietly, without any dramatic incidents. Small charities
scarcely sufficed to maintain the poorer families. The others lived by
pawning their clothes and selling up the household piece by piece.
Everything went to the brokers, the wool of the mattresses, the kitchen
utensils, even the furniture. For a moment they thought themselves saved,
for the small retail shopkeepers of Montsou, killed out by Maigrat, had
offered credit to try and get back their custom; and for a week Verdonck, the

grocer, and the two bakers, Carouble and Smelten, kept open shop, but
when their advances were exhausted all three stopped. The bailiffs were
rejoicing; there only resulted a piling up of debts which would for a long
time weigh upon the miners. There was no more credit to be had anywhere
and not an old saucepan to sell; they might lie down in a corner to die like
mangy dogs.
Étienne would have sold his flesh. He had given up his salary and had gone
to Marchiennes to pawn his trousers and cloth coat, happy to set the
Maheus' pot boiling once more. His boots alone remained, and he retained
these to keep a firm foothold, he said. His grief was that the strike had come
on too early, before the Provident Fund had had time to swell. He regarded
this as the only cause of the disaster, for the workers would surely triumph
over the masters on the day when they had saved enough money to resist.
And he recalled Souvarine's words accusing the Company of pushing
forward the strike to destroy the fund at the beginning.
The sight of the settlement and of these poor people without bread or fire
overcame him. He preferred to go out and to weary himself with distant
walks. One evening, as he was coming back and passing near Réquillart, he
perceived an old woman who had fainted by the roadside. No doubt she was
dying of hunger; and having raised her he began to shout to a girl whom he
saw on the other side of the paling.
"Why! is it you?" he said, recognizing Mouquette. "Come and help me then,
we must give her something to drink."
Mouquette, moved to tears, quickly went into the shaky hovel which her
father had set up in the midst of the ruins. She came back at once with gin
and a loaf. The gin revived the old woman, who without speaking bit
greedily into the bread. She was the mother of a miner who lived at a
settlement on the Cougny side, and she had fallen there on returning from
Joiselle, where she had in vain attempted to borrow half a franc from a
sister. When she had eaten she went away dazed.
Étienne stood in the open field of Réquillart, where the crumbling sheds
were disappearing beneath the brambles.
"Well, won't you come in and drink a little glass?" asked Mouquette
merrily.

And as he hesitated:
"Then you're still afraid of me?"
He followed her, won by her laughter. This bread, which she had given so
willingly, moved him. She would not take him into her father's room, but
led him into her own room, where she at once poured out two little glasses
of gin. The room was very neat and he complimented her on it. Besides, the
family seemed to want for nothing; the father continued his duties as a
groom at the Voreux while she, saying that she could not live with folded
arms, had become a laundress, which brought her in thirty sous a day. One
may amuse oneself with men but one isn't lazy for all that.
"I say," she murmured, all at once coming and putting her arms round him
prettily, "why don't you like me?"
He could not help laughing, she had done this in so charming a way.
"But I like you very much," he replied.
"No, no, not like I mean. You know that I am dying of longing. Come, it
would give me so much pleasure."
It was true, she had desired him for six months. He still looked at her as she
clung to him, pressing him with her two tremulous arms, her face raised
with such supplicating love that he was deeply moved. There was nothing
beautiful in her large round face, with its yellow complexion eaten by the
coal; but her eyes shone with flame, a charm rose from her skin, a trembling
of desire which made her rosy and young. In face of this gift which was so
humble and so ardent he no longer dared to refuse.
"Oh! you are willing," she stammered, delighted. "Oh! you are willing!"
And she gave herself up with the fainting awkwardness of a virgin, as if it
was for the first time, and she had never before known a man. Then when
he left her, it was she who was overcome with gratitude; she thanked him
and kissed his hands.
Étienne remained rather ashamed of this good fortune. Nobody boasted of
having had Mouquette. As he went away he swore that it should not occur
again, but he preserved a friendly remembrance of her; she was a capital
girl.

When he got back to the settlement, he found serious news which made him
forget the adventure. The rumour was circulating that the Company would,
perhaps, agree to make a concession if the delegates made a fresh attempt
with the manager. At all events some captains had spread this rumour. The
truth was, that in this struggle the mine was suffering even more than the
miners. On both sides obstinacy was piling up ruin: while labour was dying
of hunger, capital was being destroyed. Every day of rest carried away
hundreds of thousands of francs. Every machine which stops is a dead
machine. Tools and material are impaired, the money that is sunk melts
away like water drunk by the sand. Since the small stock of coal at the
surface of the pits was exhausted, customers talked of going to Belgium, so
that in future they would be threatened from that quarter. But what
especially frightened the Company, although the matter was carefully
concealed, was the increasing damage to the galleries and workings. The
captains could not cope with the repairs, the timber was falling everywhere,
and landslips were constantly taking place. Soon the disasters became so
serious that long months would be needed for repairs before hewing could
be resumed. Already stories were going about the country: at 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 any one by
picking up the bits of lost coal! The little girl, in despair, told how a man
had threatened to hit her; then she promised to go back next day, even if she
was beaten.
"And that imp, Jeanlin," cried the mother; "where is he now, I should like to
know? He ought to have brought the salad; we can browse on that like
beasts, at all events! You will see, he won't come back. Yesterday, too, he
slept out. I don't know what he's up to; the rascal always looks as though his
belly were full."
"Perhaps," said Étienne, "he picks up sous on the road."
She suddenly lifted both fists furiously.

"If I knew that! My children beg! I'd rather kill them and myself too."
Maheu had again sunk down on the edge of the table. Lénore and Henri,
astonished that they had nothing to eat, began to moan; while old
Bonnemort, in silence, philosophically rolled his tongue in his mouth to
deceive his hunger. No one spoke any more; all were becoming benumbed
beneath this aggravation of their evils; the grandfather, coughing and
spitting out the black phlegm, taken again by rheumatism which was
turning to dropsy; the father asthmatic, and with knees swollen with water;
the mother and the little ones scarred by scrofula and hereditary anaemia.
No doubt their work made this inevitable; they only complained when the
lack of food killed them off; and already they were falling like flies in the
settlement. But something must be found for supper. My God! where was it
to be found, what was to be done?
Then, in the twilight, which made the room more and more gloomy with its
dark melancholy, Étienne, who had been hesitating for a moment, at last
decided with aching heart.
"Wait for me," he said. "I'll go and see somewhere."
And he went out. The idea of Mouquette had occurred to him. She would
certainly have a loaf, and would give it willingly. It annoyed him to be thus
forced to return to Réquillart; this girl would kiss his hands with her air of
an amorous servant; but one did not leave one's friends in trouble; he would
still be kind with her if need be.
"I will go and look round, too," said Maheude, in her turn. "It's too stupid."
She reopened the door after the young man and closed it violently, leaving
the others motionless and mute in the faint light of a candle-end which
Alzire had just lighted. Outside she stopped and thought for a moment.
Then she entered the Levaque's house.
"Tell me: I lent you a loaf the other day. Could you give it me back?"
But she stopped herself. What she saw was far from encouraging; the house
spoke of misery even more than her own.
The Levaque woman, with fixed eyes, was gazing into her burnt-out fire,
while Levaque, made drunk on his empty stomach by some nail-makers,
was sleeping on the table. With his back to the wall, Bouteloup was

mechanically rubbing his shoulders with the amazement of a good-natured
fellow who has eaten up his savings, and is astonished at having to tighten
his belt.
"A loaf! ah! my dear," replied the Levaque woman, "I wanted to borrow
another from you!"
Then, as her husband groaned with pain in his sleep, she pushed his face
against the table.
"Hold your row, bloody beast! So much the better if it burns your guts!
Instead of getting people to pay for your drinks, you ought to have asked
twenty sous from a friend."
She went on relieving herself by swearing, in the midst of this dirty
household, already abandoned so long that an unbearable smell was
exhaling from the floor. Everything might smash up, she didn't care a hang!
Her son, that rascal Bébert, had also disappeared since morning, and she
shouted that it would be a good riddance if he never came back. Then she
said that she would go to bed. At least she could get warm. She hustled
Bouteloup.
"Come along, up we go. The fire's out. No need to light the candle to see the
empty plates. Well, are you coming, Louis? I tell you that we must go to
bed. We can cuddle up together there, that's a comfort. And let this damned
drunkard die here of cold by himself!"
When she found herself outside again, Maheude struck resolutely across the
gardens towards Pierron's house. She heard laughter. As she knocked there
was sudden silence. It was a full minute before the door was opened.
"What! is it you?" exclaimed Pierronne with affected surprise. "I thought it
was the doctor."
Without allowing her to speak, she went on, pointing to Pierron, who was
seated before a large coal fire:
"Ah! he makes no progress, he makes no progress at all. His face looks all
right; it's in his belly that it takes him. Then he must have warmth. We burn
all that we've got."
Pierron, in fact, looked very well; his complexion was good and his flesh
fat. It was in vain that he breathed hard in order to play the sick man.

Besides, as Maheude came in she perceived a strong smell of rabbit; they
had certainly put the dish out of the way. There were crumbs strewed over
the table, and in the very midst she saw a forgotten bottle of wine.
"Mother has gone to Montsou to try and get a loaf," said Pierronne again.
"We are cooling our heels waiting for her."
But her voice choked; she had followed her neighbour's glance, and her
eyes also fell on the bottle. Immediately she began again, and narrated the
story. Yes, it was wine; the Piolaine people had brought her that bottle for
her man, who had been ordered by the doctor to take claret. And her
thankfulness poured forth in a stream. What good people they were! The
young lady especially; she was not proud, going into workpeople's houses
and distributing her charities herself.
"I see," said Maheude; "I know them."
Her heart ached at the idea that the good things always go to the least poor.
It was always so, and these Piolaine people had carried water to the river.
Why had she not seen them in the settlement? Perhaps, all the same, she
might have got something out of them.
"I came," she confessed at last, "to know if there was more going with you
than with us. Have you just a little vermicelli by way of loan?"
Pierronne expressed her grief noisily.
"Nothing at all, my dear. Not what you can call a grain of semolina. If
mother hasn't come back, it's because she hasn't succeeded. We must go to
bed supperless."
At this moment crying was heard from the cellar, and she grew angry and
struck her fist against the door. It was that gadabout Lydie, whom she had
shut up, she said, to punish her for not having returned until five o'clock,
after having been roaming about the whole day. One could no longer keep
her in order; she was constantly disappearing.
Maheude, however, remained standing; she could not make up her mind to
leave. This large fire filled her with a painful sensation of comfort; the
thought that they were eating there enlarged the void in her stomach.
Evidently they had sent away the old woman and shut up the child, to blow

themselves out with their rabbit. Ah! whatever people might say, when a
woman behaved ill, that brought luck to her house.
"Good night," she said, suddenly.
Outside night had come on, and the moon behind the clouds was lighting up
the earth with a dubious glow. Instead of traversing the gardens again,
Maheude went round, despairing, afraid to go home again. But along the
dead frontages all the doors smelled of famine and sounded hollow. What
was the good of knocking? There was wretchedness everywhere. For weeks
since they had had nothing to eat. Even the odour of onion had gone, that
strong odour which revealed the settlement from afar across the country;
now there was nothing but the smell of old vaults, the dampness of holes in
which nothing lives. Vague sounds were dying out, stifled tears, lost oaths;
and in the silence which slowly grew heavier one could hear the sleep of
hunger coming on, the collapse of bodies thrown across beds in the
nightmares of empty bellies.
As she passed before the church she saw a shadow slip rapidly by. A gleam
of hope made her hasten, for she had recognized the Montsou priest, Abbé
Joire, who said mass on Sundays at the settlement chapel. No doubt he had
just come out of the sacristy, where he had been called to settle some affair.
With rounded back he moved quickly on, a fat meek man, anxious to live at
peace with everybody. If he had come at night it must have been in order
not to compromise himself among the miners. It was said, too, that he had
just obtained promotion. He had even been seen walking about with his
successor, a lean man, with eyes like live coals.
"Sir, sir!" stammered Maheude.
But he would not stop.
"Good night, good night, my good woman."
She found herself before her own door. Her legs would no longer carry her,
and she went in.
No one had stirred. Maheu still sat dejected on the edge of the table. Old
Bonnemort and the little ones were huddled together on the bench for the
sake of warmth. And they had not said a word, and the candle had burnt so
low that even light would soon fail them. At the sound of the door the
children turned their heads; but seeing that their mother brought nothing