Kabanata Kabanata 29 · 第29章

Sobered by Catherine's blows, Étienne had remained at the head of his

mates. But while he was hoarsely urging them on to Montsou, he heard

another voice within him, the voice of reason, asking, in astonishment,

the meaning of all this. He had not intended any of these things; how

had it happened that, having set out for Jean-Bart with the object of

acting calmly and preventing disaster, he had finished this day of

increasing violence by besieging the manager's villa?

He it certainly was, however, who had just cried, "Halt!" Only at first

his sole idea had been to protect the Company's Yards, which there had

been talk of sacking. And now that stones were already grazing the

facade of the villa, he sought in vain for some lawful prey on which to

throw the band, so as to avoid greater misfortunes. As he thus stood

alone, powerless, in the middle of the road, he was called by a man

standing on the threshold of the Estaminet Tison, where the landlady

had just put up the shutters in haste, leaving only the door free.

"Yes, it's me. Will you listen?"

It was Rasseneur. Some thirty men and women, nearly all belonging to

the settlement of the Deux-Cent-Quarante, who had remained at home in

the morning and had come in the evening for news, had invaded this

estaminet on the approach of the strikers. Zacharie occupied a table

with his wife, Philoméne. Farther on, Pierron and Pierronne, with their

backs turned, were hiding their faces. No one was drinking, they had

simply taken shelter.

Étienne recognized Rasseneur and was turning away, when the latter

added:

"You don't want to see me, eh? I warned you, things are getting

awkward. Now you may ask for bread, they'll give you lead."

Then Étienne came back and replied:

"What troubles me is, the cowards who fold their arms and watch us

risking our skins."

"Your notion, then, is to pillage over there?" asked Rasseneur.

"My notion is to remain to the last with our friends, quit by dying

together."

In despair, Étienne went back into the crowd, ready to die. On the

road, three children were throwing stones, and he gave them a good

kick, shouting out to his comrades that it was no good breaking windows.

Bébert and Lydie, who had rejoined Jeanlin, were learning from him how

to work the sling. They each sent a flint, playing at who could do the

most damage. Lydie had awkwardly cracked the head of a woman in the

crowd, and the two boys were loudly laughing. Bonnemort and Mouque,

seated on a bench, were gazing at them behind. Bonnemort's swollen legs

bore him so badly, that he had great difficulty in dragging himself

so far; no one knew what curiosity impelled him, for his face had the

earthy look of those days when he never spoke a word.

Nobody, however, any longer obeyed Étienne. The stones, in spite of his

orders, went on hailing, and he was astonished and terrified by these

brutes he had unmuzzled, who were so slow to move and then so terrible,

so ferociously tenacious in their rage. All the old Flemish blood was

there, heavy and placid, taking months to get heated, and then giving

itself up to abominable savagery, listening to nothing until the beast

was glutted by atrocities. In his southern land crowds flamed up more

quickly, but they did not effect so much. He had to struggle with

Levaque to obtain possession of his axe, and he knew not how to keep

back the Maheus, who were throwing flints with both hands. The women,

especially, terrified him--the Levaque, Mouquette, and the others--who

were agitated by murderous fury, with teeth and nails out, barking like

bitches, and driven on by Mother Brulé, whose lean figure dominated

them.

But there was a sudden stop; a moment's surprise brought a little of

that calmness which Étienne's supplications could not obtain. It was

simply the Grégoires, who had decided to bid farewell to the lawyer,

and to cross the road to the manager's house; and they seemed so

peaceful, they so clearly had the air of believing that the whole

thing was a joke on the part of their worthy miners, whose resignation

had nourished them for a century, that the latter, in fact, left off

throwing stones, for fear of hitting this old gentleman and old lady

who had fallen from the sky. They allowed them to enter the garden,

mount the steps, and ring at the barricaded door, which was by no means

opened in a hurry. Just then, Rose, the housemaid, was returning,

laughing at the furious workmen, all of whom she knew, for she belonged

to Montsou. And it was she who, by striking her fists against the

door, at last forced Hippolyte to set it ajar. It was time, for as the

Grégoires disappeared, the hail of stones began again. Recovering from

its astonishment, the crowd was shouting louder than ever:

"Death to the bourgeois! Hurrah for the people!"

Rose went on laughing, in the hall of the villa, as though amused by

the adventure, and repeated to the terrified man-servant:

"They're not bad-hearted; I know them."

M. Grégoire methodically hung up his hat. Then, when he had assisted

Madame Grégoire to draw off her thick cloth mantle, he said, in his

turn:

"Certainly, they have no malice at bottom. When they have shouted well

they will go home to supper with more appetite."

At this moment M. Hennebeau came down from the second floor. He had

seen the scene, and came to receive his guests in his usual cold and

polite manner. The pallor of his face alone revealed the grief which

had shaken him. The man was tamed; there only remained in him the

correct administrator resolved to do his duty.

"You know," he said, "the ladies have not yet come back."

For the first time some anxiety disturbed the Grégoires. Cécile not

come back! How could she come back now if the miners were to prolong

their joking?

"I thought of having the place cleared," added M. Hennebeau. "But the

misfortune is that I'm alone here, and, besides, I do not know where to

send my servant to bring me four men and a corporal to clear away this

mob."

Rose, who had remained there, ventured to murmur anew:

"Oh, sir! they are not bad-hearted!"

The manager shook his head, while the tumult increased outside, and

they could hear the dull crash of the stones against the house.

"I don't wish to be hard on them, I can even excuse them; one must be

as foolish as they are to believe that we are anxious to injure them.

But it is my duty to prevent disturbance. To think that there are

police all along the roads, as I am told, and that I have not been able

to see a single man since the morning!"

He interrupted himself, and drew back before Madame Grégoire, saying:

"Let me beg you, madame, do not stay here, come into the drawing-room."

But the cook, coming up from below in exasperation, kept them in the

hall a few minutes longer. She declared that she could no longer accept

any responsibility for the dinner, for she was expecting from the

Marchiennes pastrycook some _vol-au-vent_ crusts which she had

ordered for four o'clock. The pastrycook had evidently turned aside

on the road for fear of these bandits. Perhaps they had even pillaged

his hampers. She saw the _vol-au-vent_ blockaded behind a bush,

besieged, going to swell the bellies of the three thousand wretches

who were asking for bread. In any case, monsieur was warned; she would

rather pitch her dinner into the fire if it was to be spoilt because of

the revolt.

"Patience, patience," said M. Hennebeau. "All is not lost, the

pastrycook may come."

And as he turned toward Madame Grégoire, opening the drawing-room door

himself, he was much surprised to observe, seated on the hall bench, a

man whom he had not distinguished before in the deepening shade.

"What! you, Maigrat! what is it, then?"

Maigrat arose; his fat, pale face was changed by terror. He no longer

possessed his usual calm stolidity; he humbly explained that he had

slipped into the manager's house to ask for aid and protection should

the brigands attack his shop.

"You see that I am threatened myself, and that I have no one," replied

M. Hennebeau. "You would have done better to stay at home and guard

your property."

"Oh! I have put up iron bars and left my wife there."

The manager showed impatience, and did not conceal his contempt. A fine

guard, that poor creature worn out by blows!

"Well, I can do nothing; you must try to defend yourself. I advise you

to go back at once, for there they are again demanding bread. Listen!"

In fact, the tumult began again, and Maigrat thought he heard his own

name in the midst of the cries. To go back was no longer possible, they

would have torn him to pieces. Besides, the idea of his ruin overcame

him. He pressed his face to the glass panel of the door, perspiring and

trembling in anticipation of disaster, while the Grégoires decided to

go into the drawing-room.

M. Hennebeau quietly endeavoured to do the honours of his house. But

in vain he begged his guests to sit down; the close, barricaded room,

lighted by two lamps in the daytime, was filled with terror at each

new clamour from without. Amid the stuffy hangings the fury of the mob

rolled more disturbingly, with vague and terrible menace. They talked,

however, constantly brought back to this inconceivable revolt. He was

astonished at having foreseen nothing; and his information was so

defective that he specially talked against Rasseneur, whose detestable

influence, he said, he was able to recognize. Besides, the gendarmes

would come; it was impossible that he should be thus abandoned. As

to the Grégoires, they only thought about their daughter, the poor

darling who was so quickly frightened! Perhaps, in face of the peril,

the carriage had returned to Marchiennes. They waited on for another

quarter of an hour, worn out by the noise in the street, and by the

sound of the stones from time to time striking the closed shutters

which rang out like gongs. The situation was no longer bearable. M.

Hennebeau spoke of going out to chase away the brawlers by himself, and

to meet the carriage, when Hippolyte appeared, exclaiming:

"Sir! sir, here is madame! They are killing madame!"

The carriage had not been able to pass through the threatening groups

in the Réquillart lane. Négrel had carried out his idea, walking the

hundred metres which separated them from the house, and knocking at

the little door which led to the garden, near the common. The gardener

would hear them, for there was always someone there to open. And, at

first, things had gone perfectly; Madame Hennebeau and the young ladies

were already knocking when some women, who had been warned, rushed into

the lane. Then everything was spoilt. The door was not opened, and

Négrel in vain sought to burst it open with his shoulder. The rush of

women increased, and fearing they would be carried away, he adopted the

desperate method of pushing his aunt and the girls before him, in order

to reach the front steps, by passing through the besiegers. But this

manoeuvre led to a hustling. They were not left free, a shouting band

followed them, while the crowd floated up to right and to left, without

understanding, simply astonished at these dressed-up ladies lost in the

midst of the battle. At this moment the confusion was so great that

it led to one of those curious mistakes which can never be explained.

Lucie and Jeanne reached the steps, and slipped in through the door,

which the housemaid opened; Madame Hennebeau had succeeded in following

them, and behind them Négrel at last came in, and then bolted the door,

feeling sure that he had seen Cécile go in first. She was no longer

there, having disappeared on the way, so carried away by fear, that she

had turned her back to the house, and had moved of her own accord into

the thick of danger.

At once the cry arose:

"Hurrah for the people! Death to the bourgeois! To death with them!"

A few of those in the distance, beneath the veil which hid her face,

mistook her for Madame Hennebeau; others said she was a friend of the

manager's wife, the young wife of a neighbouring manufacturer who

was execrated by his men. And besides it mattered little, it was her

silk dress, her fur mantle, even the white feather in her hat, which

exasperated them. She smelled of perfume, she wore a watch, she had the

delicate skin of a lazy woman who had never touched coal.

"Stop!" shouted Mother Brulé, "we'll put it on your arse, that lace!"

"The lazy sluts steal it from us," said the Levaque. "They stick fur

on to their skins while we are dying of cold. Just strip her naked, to

show her how to live!"

At once Mouquette rushed forward.

"Yes, yes! whip her!"

And the women, in this savage rivalry, struggled and stretched out

their rags, as though each were trying to get a morsel of this rich

girl. No doubt her backside was not better made than any one else's.

More than one of them were rotten beneath their gewgaws. This injustice

had lasted quite long enough; they should be forced to dress themselves

like workwomen, these harlots who dared to spend fifty sous on the

washing of a single petticoat.

In the midst of these furies Cécile was shaking with paralysed legs,

stammering over and over again the same phrase:

"Ladies! please! please! Ladies, please don't hurt me!"

But she suddenly uttered a shrill cry; cold hands had seized her by

the neck. The rush had brought her near old Bonnemort, who had taken

hold of her. He seemed drunk from hunger, stupefied by his long misery,

suddenly arousing himself from the resignation of half a century, under

the influence of no one knew what malicious impulse. After having in

the course of his life saved a dozen mates from death, risking his

bones in fire-damps and landslips, he was yielding to things which he

would not have been able to express, compelled to do thus, fascinated

by this young girl's white neck. And as on this day he had lost his

tongue, he clenched his fingers, with his air of an old infirm animal

ruminating over his recollections.

"No! no!" yelled the women. "Uncover her arse! out with her arse!"

In the villa, as soon as they had realized the mishap, Négrel and M.

Hennebeau bravely reopened the door to run to Cécile's help. But the

crowd was now pressing against the garden railings, and it was not easy

to go out. A struggle took place here, while the Grégoires in terror

stood on the steps.

"Let her be then, old man! It's the Piolaine young lady," cried Maheude

to the grandfather, recognizing Cécile, whose veil had been torn off by

one of the women.

On his side, Étienne, overwhelmed at this retaliation on a child, was

trying to force the band to let go their prey. An inspiration came to

him; he brandished the axe, which he had snatched from Levaque's hands.

"To Maigrat's house, by God! there's bread in there! Down to the earth

with Maigrat's damned shed!"

And at random he gave the first blow of the axe against the shop door.

Some comrades had followed him--Levaque, Maheu, and a few others. But

the women were furious, and Cécile had fallen from Bonnemort's fingers

into Mother Brulé's hands. Lydie and Bébert, led by Jeanlin, had

slipped on all fours between her petticoats to see the lady's bottom.

Already the women were pulling her about; her clothes were beginning

to split, when a man on horseback appeared, pushing on his animal, and

using his riding-whip on those who would not stand back quick enough.

"Ah! rascals! You are going to flog our daughters, are you?"

It was Deneulin who had come to the rendezvous for dinner. He quickly

jumped on to the road, took Cécile by the waist, and, with the other

hand manipulating his horse with remarkable skill and strength, he used

it as a living wedge to split the crowd, which drew back before the

onset. At the railing the battle continued. He passed through, however,

with some bruises. This unforeseen assistance delivered Négrel and M.

Hennebeau, who were in great danger amid the oaths and blows. And while

the young man at last led in the fainting Cécile, Deneulin protected

the manager with his tall body, and at the top of the steps received a

stone which nearly put his shoulder out.

"That's it," he cried; "break my bones now you've broken my engines!"

He promptly pushed the door to, and a volley of flints fell against it.

"What madmen!" he exclaimed. "Two seconds more, and they would have

broken my skull like an empty gourd. There is nothing to say to them;

what could you do? They know nothing, you can only knock them down."

In the drawing-room, the Grégoires were weeping as they watched Cécile

recover. She was not hurt, there was not even a scratch to be seen,

only her veil was lost. But their fright increased when they saw before

them their cook, Mélanie, who described how the mob had demolished

Piolaine. Mad with fear she had run to warn her masters. She had come

in when the door was ajar at the moment of the fray, without any one

noticing her; and in her endless narrative the single stone with which

Jeanlin had broken one window-pane became a regular cannonade which had

crushed through the walls. Then M. Grégoire's ideas were altogether

upset: they were murdering his daughter, they were razing his house to

the ground; it was, then, true that these miners could bear him ill

will, because he lived like a worthy man on their labour?

The housemaid, who had brought in a towel and some eau-de-Cologne,

repeated:

"All the same it's queer, they're not bad-hearted."

Madame Hennebeau, seated and very pale, had not recovered from the

shock to her feelings; and she was only able to find a smile when

Négrel was complimented. Cécile's parents especially thanked the young

man, and the marriage might now be regarded as settled. M. Hennebeau

looked on in silence, turning from his wife to this lover whom in the

morning he had been swearing to kill, then to this young girl by whom

he would, no doubt, soon be freed from him. There was no haste, only

the fear remained with him of seeing his wife fall lower, perhaps to

some lackey.

"And you, my little darlings," asked Deneulin of his daughters; "have

they broken any of your bones?"

Lucie and Jeanne had been much afraid, but they were pleased to have

seen it all. They were now laughing.

"By George!" the father went on, "we've had a fine day! If you want a

dowry, you would do well to earn it yourselves, and you may also expect

to have to support me."

He was joking, but his voice trembled. His eyes swelled with tears as

his two daughters threw themselves into his arms.

M. Hennebeau had heard this confession of ruin. A quick thought lit up

his face. Vandame would now belong to Montsou; this was the hoped-for

compensation, the stroke of fortune which would bring him back to

favour with the gentlemen on the directorate. At every crisis of his

existence, he took refuge in the strict execution of the orders he had

received; in the military discipline in which he lived he found his

small share of happiness.

But they grew calm; the drawing-room fell back into a weary

peacefulness, with the quiet light of its two lamps, and the warm

stuffiness of the hangings. What, then, was going on outside? The

brawlers were silent, and stones no longer struck the house; one only

heard deep, full blows, those blows of the hatchet which one hears in

distant woods. They wished to find out, and went back into the hall to

venture a glance through the glass panel of the door. Even the ladies

went upstairs to post themselves behind the blinds on the first floor.

"Do you see that scoundrel, Rasseneur, over there on the threshold of

the public-house?" said M. Hennebeau to Deneulin. "I had guessed as

much; he must be in it."

It was not Rasseneur, however, it was Étienne, who was dealing blows

from his axe at Maigrat's shop. And he went on calling to the men; did

not the goods in there belong to the colliers? Had they not the right

to take back their property from this thief who had exploited them so

long, who was starving them at a hint from the Company? Gradually they

all left the manager's house, and ran up to pillage the neighbouring

shop. The cry, "Bread! bread! bread!" broke out anew. They would find

bread behind that door. The rage of hunger carried them away, as if

they suddenly felt that they could wait no longer without expiring on

the road. Such furious thrusts were made at the door that at every

stroke of the axe Étienne feared to wound someone.

Meanwhile Maigrat, who had left the hall of the manager's house, had

at first taken refuge in the kitchen; but, hearing nothing there, he

imagined some abominable attempt against his shop, and came up again

to hide behind the pump outside, when he distinctly heard the cracking

of the door and shouts of pillage in which his own name was mixed. It

was not a nightmare, then. If he could not see, he could now hear, and

he followed the attack with ringing ears; every blow struck him in the

heart. A hinge must have given way; five minutes more and the shop

would be taken. The thing was stamped on his brain in real and terrible

images--the brigands rushing forward, then the drawers broken open, the

sacks emptied, everything eaten, everything drunk, the house itself

carried away, nothing left, not even a stick with which he might go and

beg through the villages. No, he would never allow them to complete

his ruin; he would rather leave his life there. Since he had been here

he noticed at a window of his house his wife's thin silhouette, pale

and confused, behind the panes; no doubt she was watching the blows

with her usual silent air of a poor beaten creature. Beneath there was

a shed, so placed that from the villa garden one could climb it from

the palings; then it was easy to get on to the tiles up to the window.

And the idea of thus returning home now pursued him in his remorse at

having left. Perhaps he would have time to barricade the shop with

furniture; he even invented other and more heroic defences--boiling

oil, lighted petroleum, poured out from above. But this love of his

property struggled against his fear, and he groaned in the battle with

cowardice. Suddenly, on hearing a deeper blow of the axe, he made up

his mind. Avarice conquered; he and his wife would cover the sacks with

their bodies rather than abandon a single loaf.

Almost immediately hooting broke out:

"Look! look!--The tom-cat's up there! After the cat! after the cat!"

The mob had just seen Maigrat on the roof of the shed. In his fever of

anxiety he had climbed the palings with agility in spite of his weight,

and without troubling over the breaking wood; and now he was flattening

himself along the tiles, and endeavouring to reach the window. But the

slope was very steep; he was incommoded by his stoutness, and his nails

were torn. He would have dragged himself up, however, if he had not

begun to tremble with the fear of stones; for the crowd, which he could

not see, continued to cry beneath him:

"After the cat! after the cat!--Do for him!"

And suddenly both his hands let go at once, and he rolled down like a

ball, leapt at the gutter, and fell across the middle wall in such a

way that, by ill-chance, he rebounded on the side of the road, where

his skull was broken open on the corner of a stone pillar. His brain

had spurted out. He was dead. His wife up above, pale and confused

behind the window-panes, still looked out.

They were stupefied at first. Étienne stopped short, and the axe

slipped from his hands. Maheu, Levaque, and the others forgot the shop,

with their eyes fixed on the wall along which a thin red streak was

slowly flowing down. And the cries ceased, and silence spread over the

growing darkness.

All at once the hooting began again. It was the women, who rushed

forward overcome by the drunkenness of blood.

"Then there is a good God, after all! Ah! the bloody beast, he's done

for!"

They surrounded the still warm body. They insulted it with laughter,

abusing his fractured head, the dirty chops, hurling in the dead man's

face the long venom of their starved lives.

"I owed you sixty francs, now you're paid, thief!" said Maheude,

enraged like the others. "You won't refuse me credit any more. Wait!

wait! I must fatten you once more!"

With her fingers she scratched up some earth, took two handfuls and

stuffed it violently into his mouth.

"There! eat that! There! eat! eat! you used to eat us!"

The abuse increased, while the dead man, stretched on his back, gazed

motionless with his large fixed eyes at the immense sky from which the

night was falling. This earth heaped in his mouth was the bread he had

refused to give. And henceforth he would eat of no other bread. It had

not brought him luck to starve poor people.

But the women had another revenge to wreak on him. They moved round,

smelling him like she-wolves. They were all seeking for some outrage,

some savagery that would relieve them.

Mother Brulé's shrill voice was heard: "Cut him like a tom-cat!"

"Yes, yes, after the cat! after the cat! He's done too much, the dirty

beast!"

Mouquette was already unfastening and drawing off the trousers, while

the Levaque woman raised the legs. And Mother Brulé with her dry old

hands separated the naked thighs and seized this dead virility. She

took hold of everything, tearing with an effort which bent her lean

spine and made her long arms crack. The soft skin resisted; she had to

try again, and at last carried away the fragment, a lump of hairy and

bleeding flesh, which she brandished with a laugh of triumph.

"I've got it! I've got it!"

Shrill voices saluted with curses the abominable trophy.

"Ah! swine! you won't fill our daughters any more!"

"Yes! we've done with paying on your beastly body; we shan't any more

have to offer a backside in return for a loaf."

"Here, I owe you six francs; would you like to settle it? I'm quite

willing, if you can do it still!"

This joke shook them all with terrible gaiety. They showed each other

the bleeding fragment as an evil beast from which each of them had

suffered, and which they had at last crushed, and saw before them

there, inert, in their power. They spat on it, they thrust out their

jaws, saying over and over again, with furious bursts of contempt:

"He can do no more! he can do no more!--It's no longer a man that

they'll put away in the earth. Go and rot then, good-for-nothing!"

Mother Brulé then planted the whole lump on the end of her stick, and

holding it in the air, bore it about like a banner, rushing along the

road, followed, helter-skelter, by the yelling troop of women. Drops

of blood rained down, and that pitiful flesh hung like a waste piece

of meat on a butcher's stall. Up above, at the window, Madame Maigrat

still stood motionless; but beneath the last gleams of the setting

sun, the confused flaws of the window-panes distorted her white face

which looked as though it were laughing. Beaten and deceived at every

hour, with shoulders bent from morning to night over a ledger, perhaps

she was laughing, while the band of women rushed along with that evil

beast, that crushed beast, at the end of the stick.

This frightful mutilation was accomplished in frozen horror. Neither

Étienne nor Maheu nor the others had had time to interfere; they stood

motionless before this gallop of furies. At the door of the Estaminet

Tison a few heads were grouped--Rasseneur pale with disgust, Zacharie

and Philoméne stupefied at what they had seen. The two old men,

Bonnemort and Mouque, were gravely shaking their heads. Only Jeanlin

was making fun, pushing Bébert with his elbow, and forcing Lydie to

look up. But the women were already coming back, turning round and

passing beneath the manager's windows. Behind the blinds the ladies

were stretching out their necks. They had not been able to observe

the scene, which was hidden from them by the wall, and they could not

distinguish well in the growing darkness.

"What is it they have at the end of that stick?" asked Cécile, who had

grown bold enough to look out.

Lucie and Jeanne declared that it must be a rabbit-skin.

"No, no," murmured Madame Hennebeau, "they must have been pillaging a

pork butcher's, it seems to be a remnant of a pig."

At this moment she shuddered and was silent. Madame Grégoire had nudged

her with her knee. They both remained stupefied. The young ladies, who

were very pale, asked no more questions, but with large eyes followed

this red vision through the darkness.

Étienne once more brandished the axe. But the feeling of anxiety did

not disappear; this corpse now barred the road and protected the shop.

Many had drawn back. Satiety seemed to have appeased them all. Maheu

was standing by gloomily, when he heard a voice whisper in his ear to

escape. He turned round and recognized Catherine, still in her old

overcoat, black and panting. With a movement he repelled her. He would

not listen to her, he threatened to strike her. With a gesture of

despair she hesitated, and then ran towards Étienne.

"Save yourself! save yourself! the gendarmes are coming!"

He also pushed her away and abused her, feeling the blood of the

blows she had given him mounting to his cheeks. But she would not be

repelled; she forced him to throw down the axe, and drew him away by

both arms, with irresistible strength.

"Don't I tell you the gendarmes are coming! Listen to me. It's Chaval

who has gone for them and is bringing them, if you want to know. It's

too much for me, and I've come. Save yourself, I don't want them to

take you."

And Catherine drew him away, while, at the same instant, a heavy gallop

shook the street from afar. Immediately a voice arose: "The gendarmes!

the gendarmes!" There was a general breaking up, so mad a rush for life

that in two minutes the road was free, absolutely clear, as though

swept by a hurricane. Maigrat's corpse alone made a patch of shadow on

the white earth. Before the Estaminet Tison, Rasseneur only remained,

feeling relieved, and with open face applauding the easy victory of the

sabres; while in dim and deserted Montsou, in the silence of the closed

houses, the bourgeois remained with perspiring skins and chattering

teeth, not daring to look out. The plain was drowned beneath the thick

night, only the blast furnaces and the coke furnaces were burning

against the tragic sky. The gallop of the gendarmes heavily approached;

they came up in an indistinguishable sombre mass. And behind them the

Marchiennes pastrycook's vehicle, a little covered cart which had been

confided to their care, at last arrived, and a small drudge of a boy

jumped down and quietly unpacked the crusts for the _vol-au-vent_.

PART SIX