第 二十八 章 · 第28章

M. Hennebeau had placed himself in front of his study window to watch

the departure of the carriage which was taking away his wife to

lunch at Marchiennes. His eyes followed Négrel for a moment, as he

trotted beside the carriage door. Then he quietly returned and seated

himself at his desk. When neither his wife nor his nephew animated

the place with their presence the house seemed empty. On this day the

coachman was driving his wife; Rose, the new housemaid, had leave to

go out till five o'clock; there only remained Hippolyte, the valet de

chambre, trailing about the rooms in slippers, and the cook, who had

been occupied since dawn in struggling with her saucepans, entirely

absorbed in the dinner which was to be given in the evening. So M.

Hennebeau promised himself a day of serious work in this deep calm of

the deserted house.

Towards nine o'clock, although he had received orders to send every

one away, Hippolyte took the liberty of announcing Dansaert, who

was bringing news. The manager then heard, for the first time, of

the meeting in the forest the evening before; the details were very

precise, and he listened while thinking of the intrigue with Pierronne,

so well known that two or three anonymous letters every week denounced

the licentiousness of the head captain. Evidently the husband had

talked, and no doubt the wife had, too. He even took advantage of the

occasion; he let the head captain know that he was aware of everything,

contenting himself with recommending prudence for fear of a scandal.

Startled by these reproaches in the midst of his report, Dansaert

denied, stammered excuses, while his great nose confessed the crime

by its sudden redness. He did not insist, however, glad to get off so

easily; for, as a rule, the manager displayed the implacable severity

of the virtuous man whenever an employee allowed himself the indulgence

of a pretty girl in the pit. The conversation continued concerning the

strike; that meeting in the forest was only the swagger of blusterers;

nothing serious threatened. In any case, the settlements would surely

not stir for some days, beneath the impression of respectful fear which

must have been produced by the military promenade of the morning.

When M. Hennebeau was alone again he was, however, on the point of

sending a telegram to the prefect. Only the fear of uselessly showing

a sign of anxiety held him back. Already he could not forgive himself

his lack of insight in saying everywhere, and even writing to the

directors, that the strike would last at most a fortnight. It had

been going on and on for nearly two months, to his great surprise,

and he was in despair over it; he felt himself every day lowered and

compromised, and was forced to imagine some brilliant achievement

which would bring him back into favour with the directors. He had just

asked them for orders in the case of a skirmish. There was delay over

the reply, and he was expecting it by the afternoon post. He said to

himself that there would be time then to send out telegrams, and to

obtain the military occupation of the pits, if such was the desire of

those gentlemen. In his own opinion there would certainly be a battle

and an expenditure of blood. This responsibility troubled him in spite

of his habitual energy.

Up to eleven o'clock he worked peacefully; there was no sound in the

dead house except Hippolyte's waxing-stick, which was rubbing a floor

far away on the first floor. Then, one after the other, he received two

messages, the first announcing the attack on Jean-Bart by the Montsou

band, the second telling of the cut cables, the overturned fires, and

all the destruction. He could not understand. Why had the strikers gone

to Deneulin instead of attacking one of the Company's pits? Besides,

they were quite welcome to sack Vandame; that would merely ripen the

plan of conquest which he was meditating. And at midday he lunched

alone in the large dining-room, served so quietly by the servant

that he could not even hear his slippers. This solitude rendered his

preoccupations more gloomy; he was feeling cold at the heart when a

captain, who had arrived running, was shown in, and told him of the

mob's march on Mirou. Almost immediately, as he was finishing his

coffee, a telegram informed him that Madeleine and Crévecoeur were

in their turn threatened. Then his perplexity became extreme. He was

expecting the postman at two o'clock; ought he at once to ask for

troops? or would it be better to wait patiently, and not to act until

he had received the directors' orders? He went back into his study;

he wished to read a report which he had asked Négrel to prepare the

day before for the prefect. But he could not put his hand on it; he

reflected that perhaps the young man had left it in his room, where he

often wrote at night, and without taking any decision, pursued by the

idea of this report, he went upstairs to look for it in the room.

As he entered, M. Hennebeau was surprised: the room had not been done,

no doubt through Hippolyte's forgetfulness or laziness. There was a

moist heat there, the close heat of the past night, made heavier from

the mouth of the hot-air stove being left open; and he was suffocated,

too, with a penetrating perfume, which he thought must be the odour

of the toilet waters with which the basin was full. There was great

disorder in the room--garments scattered about, damp towels thrown

on the backs of chairs, the bed yawning, with a sheet drawn back and

draggling on the carpet. But at first he only glanced round with an

abstracted look as he went towards a table covered with papers to look

for the missing report. Twice he examined the papers one by one, but it

was certainly not there. Where the devil could that madcap Paul have

stuffed it?

And as M. Hennebeau went back into the middle of the room, giving a

glance at each article of furniture, he noticed in the open bed a

bright point which shone like a star. He approached mechanically and

put out his hand. It was a little gold scent-bottle lying between two

folds of the sheet. He at once recognized a scent-bottle belonging to

Madame Hennebeau, the little ether bottle which was always with her.

But he could not understand its presence here: how could it have got

into Paul's bed? And suddenly he grew terribly pale. His wife had slept

there.

"Beg your pardon, sir," murmured Hippolyte's voice through the door. "I

saw you going up."

The servant entered and was thrown into consternation by the disorder.

"Lord! Why, the room is not done! So Rose has gone out, leaving all the

house on my shoulders!"

M. Hennebeau had hidden the bottle in his hand and was pressing it

almost to breaking.

"What do you want?"

"It's another man, sir; he has come from Crévecoeur with a letter."

"Good! Leave me alone; tell him to wait."

His wife had slept there! When he had bolted the door he opened his

hand again and looked at the little bottle which had left its image in

red on his flesh. Suddenly he saw and understood; this filthiness had

been going on in his house for months. He recalled his old suspicion,

the rustling against the doors, the naked feet at night through the

silent house. Yes, it was his wife who went up to sleep there!

Falling into a chair opposite the bed, which he gazed at fixedly,

he remained some minutes as though crushed. A noise aroused him;

someone was knocking at the door, trying to open it. He recognized the

servant's voice.

"Sir--Ah! you are shut in, sir."

"What is it now?"

"There seems to be a hurry; the men are breaking everything. There are

two more messengers below. There are also some telegrams."

"You just leave me alone! I am coming directly."

The idea that Hippolyte would himself have discovered the scent-bottle,

had he done the room in the morning, had just frozen him. And besides,

this man must know; he must have found the bed still hot with adultery

twenty times over, with madame's hairs trailing on the pillow, and

abominable traces staining the linen. The man kept interrupting him,

and it could only be out of inquisitiveness. Perhaps he had stayed with

his ear stuck to the door, excited by the debauchery of his masters.

M. Hennebeau did not move. He still gazed at the bed. His long past

of suffering unrolled before him: his marriage with this woman, their

immediate misunderstanding of the heart and of the flesh, the lovers

whom she had had unknown to him, and the lover whom he had tolerated

for ten years, as one tolerates an impure taste in a sick woman. Then

came their arrival at Montsou, the mad hope of curing her, months

of languor, of sleepy exile, the approach of old age which would,

perhaps, at last give her back to him. Then their nephew arrived, this

Paul to whom she became a mother, and to whom she spoke of her dead

heart buried for ever beneath the ashes. And he, the imbecile husband,

foresaw nothing; he adored this woman who was his wife, whom other men

had possessed, but whom he alone could not possess! He adored her with

shameful passion, so that he would have fallen on his knees if she

would but have given him the leavings of other men! The leavings of the

others she gave to this child.

The sound of a distant gong at this moment made M. Hennebeau start. He

recognized it; it was struck, by his orders, when the postman arrived.

He rose and spoke aloud, breaking into the flood of coarseness with

which his parched throat was bursting in spite of himself.

"Ah! I don't care a bloody hang for their telegrams and their letters!

not a bloody hang!"

Now he was carried away by rage, the need of some sewer in which to

stamp down all this filthiness with his heels. This woman was a vulgar

drab; he sought for crude words and buffeted her image with them. The

sudden idea of the marriage between Cécile and Paul, which she was

arranging with so quiet a smile, completed his exasperation. There

was, then, not even passion, not even jealousy at the bottom of this

persistent sensuality? It was now a perverse plaything, the habit of

the woman, a recreation taken like an accustomed dessert. And he put

all the responsibility on her, he regarded as almost innocent the lad

at whom she had bitten in this reawakening of appetite, just as one

bites at an early green fruit, stolen by the wayside. Whom would she

devour, on whom would she fall, when she no longer had complaisant

nephews, sufficiently practical to accept in their own family the

table, the bed, and the wife?

There was a timid scratch at the door, and Hippolyte allowed himself to

whisper through the keyhole:

"The postman, sir. And Monsieur Dansaert, too, has come back, saying

that they are killing one another."

"I'm coming down, good God!"

What should he do to them? Chase them away on their return from

Marchiennes, like stinking animals whom he would no longer have

beneath his roof? He would take a cudgel, and would tell them to carry

elsewhere their poisonous coupling. It was with their sighs, with their

mixed breaths, that the damp warmth of this room had grown heavy;

the penetrating odour which had suffocated him was the odour of musk

which his wife's skin exhaled, another perverse taste, a fleshly need

of violent perfumes; and he seemed to feel also the heat and odour of

fornication, of living adultery, in the pots which lay about, in the

basins still full, in the disorder of the linen, of the furniture,

of the entire room tainted with vice. The fury of impotence threw

him on to the bed, which he struck with his fists, belabouring the

places where he saw the imprint of their two bodies, enraged with the

disordered coverlets and the crumpled sheets, soft and inert beneath

his blows, as though exhausted themselves by the embraces of the whole

night.

But suddenly he thought he heard Hippolyte coming up again. He was

arrested by shame. For a moment he stood panting, wiping his forehead,

calming the bounds of his heart. Standing before a mirror he looked at

his face, so changed that he did not recognize himself. Then, when he

had watched it gradually grow calmer by an effort of supreme will, he

went downstairs.

Five messengers were standing below, not counting Dansaert. All brought

him news of increasing gravity concerning the march of the strikers

among the pits: and the chief captain told him at length what had gone

on at Mirou and the fine behaviour of Father Quandieu. He listened,

nodding his head, but he did not hear; his thoughts were in the room

upstairs. At last he sent them away, saying that he would take due

measures. When he was alone again, seated before his desk, he seemed

to grow drowsy, with his head between his hands, covering his eyes.

His mail was there, and he decided to look for the expected letter,

the directors' reply. The lines at first danced before him, but he

understood at last that these gentlemen desired a skirmish; certainly

they did not order him to make things worse, but they allowed it to be

seen that disturbances would hasten the conclusion of the strike by

provoking energetic repression. After this, he no longer hesitated, but

sent off telegrams on all sides--to the prefect of Lille, to the corps

of soldiery at Douai, to the police at Marchiennes. It was a relief; he

had nothing to do but shut himself in; he even spread the report that

he was suffering from gout. And all the afternoon he hid himself in his

study, receiving no one, contenting himself with reading the telegrams

and letters which continued to rain in. He thus followed the mob from

afar, from Madeleine to Crévecoeur, from Crévecoeur to the Victoire,

from the Victoire to Gaston-Marie. Information also reached him of the

bewilderment of the police and the troops, wandering along the roads,

and always with their backs to the pit attacked. They might kill one

another, and destroy everything! He put his head between his hands

again, with his fingers over his eyes, and buried himself in the deep

silence of the empty house, where he only heard now and then the noise

of the cook's saucepans as she bustled about preparing the evening's

dinner.

The twilight was already darkening the room; it was five o'clock when a

disturbance made M. Hennebeau jump, as he sat dazed and inert with his

elbows in his papers. He thought that it was the two wretches coming

back. But the tumult increased, and a terrible cry broke out just as he

was going to the window:

"Bread! bread! bread!"

It was the strikers, now invading Montsou, while the police, expecting

an attack on the Voreux, were galloping off in the opposite direction

to occupy that pit.

Just then, two kilometres away from the first houses, a little beyond

the crossways where the main road cut the Vandame road, Madame

Hennebeau and the young ladies had witnessed the passing of the mob.

The day had been spent pleasantly at Marchiennes; there had been a

delightful lunch with the manager of the Forges, then an interesting

visit to the workshops and to the neighbouring glass works to occupy

the afternoon; and as they were now going home in the limpid decline

of the beautiful winter day, Cécile had had the whim to drink a glass

of milk, as she noticed a little farm near the edge of the road. They

all then got down from the carriage, and Négrel gallantly leapt off

his horse; while the peasant-woman, alarmed by all these fine people,

rushed about, and spoke of laying a cloth before serving the milk. But

Lucie and Jeanne wanted to see the cow milked, and they went into the

cattle-shed with their cups, making a little rural party, and laughing

greatly at the litter in which one sank.

Madame Hennebeau, with her complacent maternal air, was drinking

with the edge of her lips, when a strange roaring noise from without

disturbed her.

"What is that, then?"

The cattle-shed, built at the edge of the road, had a large door for

carts, for it was also used as a barn for hay. The young girls, who had

put out their heads, were astonished to see on the left a black flood,

a shouting band which was moving along the Vandame road.

"The deuce!" muttered Négrel, who had also gone out. "Are our brawlers

getting angry at last?"

"It is perhaps the colliers again," said the peasant-woman. "This is

twice they've passed. Seems things are not going well; they're masters

of the country."

She uttered every word prudently, watching the effect on their faces;

and when she noticed the fright of all of them, and their deep anxiety

at this encounter, she hastened to conclude:

"Oh, the rascals! the rascals!"

Négrel, seeing that it was too late to get into their carriage and

reach Montsou, ordered the coachman to bring the vehicle into the

farmyard, where it would remain hidden behind a shed. He himself

fastened his horse, which a lad had been holding, beneath the shed.

When he came back he found his aunt and the young girls distracted, and

ready to follow the peasant-woman, who proposed that they should take

refuge in her house. But he was of opinion that they would be safer

where they were, for certainly no one would come and look for them in

the hay. The door, however, shut very badly, and had such large chinks

in it, that the road could be seen between the worm-eaten planks.

"Come, courage!" he said. "We will sell our lives dearly."

This joke increased their fear. The noise grew louder, but nothing

could yet be seen; along the vacant road the wind of a tempest seemed

to be blowing, like those sudden gusts which precede great storms.

"No, no! I don't want to look," said Cécile, going to hide herself in

the hay.

Madame Hennebeau, who was very pale and felt angry with these people

who had spoilt her pleasure, stood in the background with a sidelong

look of repugnance; while Lucie and Jeanne, though trembling, had

placed their eyes at a crack, anxious to lose nothing of the spectacle.

A sound of thunder came near, the earth was shaken, and Jeanlin

galloped up first, blowing into his horn.

"Take out your scent-bottles, the sweat of the people is passing by!"

murmured Négrel, who, in spite of his republican convictions, liked to

make fun of the populace when he was with ladies.

But this witticism was carried away in the hurricane of gestures

and cries. The women had appeared, nearly a thousand of them, with

outspread hair dishevelled by running, the naked skin appearing through

their rags, the nakedness of females weary with giving birth to

starvelings. A few held their little ones in their arms, raising them

and shaking them like banners of mourning and vengeance. Others, who

were younger with the swollen breasts of amazons, brandished sticks;

while frightful old women were yelling so loudly that the cords of

their fleshless necks seemed to be breaking. And then the men came up,

two thousand madmen--trammers, pikemen, menders--a compact mass which

rolled along like a single block in confused serried rank so that it

was impossible to distinguish their faded trousers or ragged woollen

jackets, all effaced in the same earthy uniformity. Their eyes were

burning, and one only distinguished the holes of black mouths singing

the _Marseillaise_; the stanzas were lost in a confused roar,

accompanied by the clang of sabots over the hard earth. Above their

heads, amid the bristling iron bars, an axe passed by, carried erect;

and this single axe, which seemed to be the standard of the band,

showed in the clear air the sharp profile of a guillotine-blade.

"What atrocious faces!" stammered Madame Hennebeau.

Négrel said between his teeth:

"Devil take me if I can recognize one of them! Where do the bandits

spring from?"

And in fact anger, hunger, these two months of suffering and this

enraged helter-skelter through the pits had lengthened the placid

faces of the Montsou colliers into the muzzles of wild beasts. At

this moment the sun was setting; its last rays of sombre purple cast

a gleam of blood over the plain. The road seemed to be full of blood;

men and women continued to rush by, bloody as butchers in the midst of

slaughter.

"Oh! superb!" whispered Lucie and Jeanne, stirred in their artistic

tastes by the beautiful horror of it.

They were frightened, however, and drew back close to Madame Hennebeau,

who was leaning on a trough. She was frozen at the thought that a

glance between the planks of that disjointed door might suffice to

murder them. Négrel also, who was usually very brave, felt himself grow

pale, seized by a terror that was superior to his will, the terror

which comes from the unknown. Cécile, in the hay, no longer stirred;

and the others, in spite of the wish to turn away their eyes, could not

do so: they were compelled to gaze.

It was the red vision of the revolution, which would one day inevitably

carry them all away, on some bloody evening at the end of the century.

Yes, some evening the people, unbridled at last, would thus gallop

along the roads, making the blood of the middle class flow, parading

severed heads and sprinkling gold from disembowelled coffers. The women

would yell, the men would have those wolf-like jaws open to bite. Yes,

the same rags, the same thunder of great sabots, the same terrible

troop, with dirty skins and tainted breath, sweeping away the old world

beneath an overflowing flood of barbarians. Fires would flame; they

would not leave standing one stone of the towns; they would return to

the savage life of the woods, after the great rut, the great feast-day,

when the poor in one night would emaciate the wives and empty the

cellars of the rich. There would be nothing left, not a sou of the

great fortunes, not a title-deed of properties acquired; until the day

dawned when a new earth would perhaps spring up once more. Yes, it

was these things which were passing along the road; it was the force

of nature herself, and they were receiving the terrible wind of it in

their faces.

A great cry arose, dominating the _Marseillaise_:

"Bread! bread! bread!"

Lucie and Jeanne pressed themselves against Madame Hennebeau, who was

almost fainting; while Négrel placed himself before them as though

to protect them by his body. Was the old social order cracking this

very evening? And what they saw immediately after completed their

stupefaction. The band had nearly passed by, there were only a few

stragglers left, when Mouquette came up. She was delaying, watching

the bourgeois at their garden gates or the windows of their houses;

and whenever she saw them, as she was not able to spit in their faces,

she showed them what for her was the climax of contempt. Doubtless she

perceived someone now, for suddenly she raised her skirts, bent her

back, and showed her enormous buttocks, naked beneath the last rays of

the sun. There was nothing obscene in those fierce buttocks, and nobody

laughed.

Everything disappeared: the flood rolled on to Montsou along the turns

of the road, between the low houses streaked with bright colours. The

carriage was drawn out of the yard, but the coachman would not take it

upon him to convey back madame and the young ladies without delay; the

strikers occupied the street. And the worst was, there was no other

road.

"We must go back, however, for dinner will be ready," said Madame

Hennebeau, exasperated by annoyance and fear. "These dirty workpeople

have again chosen a day when I have visitors. How can you do good to

such creatures?"

Lucie and Jeanne were occupied in pulling Cécile out of the hay. She

was struggling, believing that those savages were still passing by,

and repeating that she did not want to see them. At last they all took

their places in the carriage again. It then occurred to Négrel, who had

remounted, that they might go through the Réquillart lanes.

"Go gently," he said to the coachman, "for the road is atrocious. If

any groups prevent you from returning to the road over there, you can

stop behind the old pit, and we will return on foot through the little

garden door, while you can put up the carriage and horses anywhere, in

some inn outhouse."

They set out. The band, far away, was streaming into Montsou. As they

had twice seen police and military, the inhabitants were agitated and

seized by panic. Abominable stories were circulating; it was said that

written placards had been set up threatening to rip open the bellies of

the bourgeois. Nobody had read them, but all the same they were able

to quote the exact words. At the lawyer's especially the terror was

at its height, for he had just received by post an anonymous letter

warning him that a barrel of powder was buried in his cellar, and that

it would be blown up if he did not declare himself on the side of the

people. Just then the Grégoires, prolonging their visit on the arrival

of this letter, were discussing it, and decided that it must be the

work of a joker, when the invasion of the mob completed the terror of

the house. They, however, smiled, drawing back a corner of the curtain

to look out, and refused to admit that there was any danger, certain,

they said, that all would finish up well. Five o'clock struck, and they

had time to wait until the street was free for them to cross the road

to dine with the Hennebeaus, where Cécile, who had surely returned,

must be waiting for them. But no one in Montsou seemed to share their

confidence. People were wildly running about; doors and windows were

banged to. They saw Maigrat, on the other side of the road, barricading

his shop with a large supply of iron bars, and looking so pale and

trembling that his feeble little wife was obliged to fasten the screws.

The band had come to a halt before the manager's villa, and the cry

echoed:

"Bread! bread! bread!"

M. Hennebeau was standing at the window when Hippolyte came in to close

the shutters, for fear the windows should be broken by stones. He

closed all on the ground floor, and then went up to the first floor;

the creak of the window-fasteners was heard and the clack of the

shutters one by one. Unfortunately, it was not possible to shut the

kitchen window in the area in the same way, a window made disquietingly

ruddy by the gleams from the saucepans and the spit.

Mechanically, M. Hennebeau, who wished to look out, went up to Paul's

room on the second floor: it was on the left, the best situated, for it

commanded the road as far as the Company's Yards. And he stood behind

the blinds overlooking the crowd. But this room had again overcome

him, the toilet table sponged and in order, the cold bed with neat and

well-drawn sheets. All his rage of the afternoon, that furious battle

in the depths of his silent solitude, had now turned to an immense

fatigue. His whole being was now like this room, grown cold, swept of

the filth of the morning, returned to its habitual correctness. What

was the good of a scandal? had anything really changed in his house?

His wife had simply taken another lover; that she had chosen him in the

family scarcely aggravated the fact; perhaps even it was an advantage,

for she thus preserved appearances. He pitied himself when he thought

of his mad jealousy. How ridiculous to have struck that bed with his

fists! Since he had tolerated another man, he could certainly tolerate

this one. It was only a matter of a little more contempt. A terrible

bitterness was poisoning his mouth, the uselessness of everything, the

eternal pain of existence, shame for himself who always adored and

desired this woman in the dirt in which he had abandoned her.

Beneath the window the yells broke out with increased violence:

"Bread! bread! bread!"

"Idiots!" said M. Hennebeau between his clenched teeth.

He heard them abusing him for his large salary, calling him a bloated

idler, a bloody beast who stuffed himself to indigestion with good

things, while the worker was dying of hunger. The women had noticed the

kitchen, and there was a tempest of imprecations against the pheasant

roasting there, against the sauces that with fat odours irritated their

empty stomachs. Ah! the stinking bourgeois, they should be stuffed with

champagne and truffles till their guts burst.

"Bread! bread! bread!"

"Idiots!" repeated M. Hennebeau; "am I happy?"

Anger arose in him against these people who could not understand. He

would willingly have made them a present of his large salary to possess

their hard skin and their facility of coupling without regret. Why

could he not seat them at his table and stuff them with his pheasant,

while he went to fornicate behind the hedges, to tumble the girls over,

making fun of those who had tumbled them over before him! He would have

given everything, his education, his comfort, his luxury, his power

as manager, if he could be for one day the vilest of the wretches who

obeyed him, free of his flesh, enough of a blackguard to beat his wife

and to take his pleasure with his neighbours' wives. And he longed also

to be dying of hunger, to have an empty belly, a stomach twisted by

cramps that would make his head turn with giddiness: perhaps that would

have killed the eternal pain. Ah! to live like a brute, to possess

nothing, to scour the fields with the ugliest and dirtiest putter, and

to be able to be happy!

"Bread! bread! bread!"

Then he grew angry and shouted furiously in the tumult:

"Bread! is that enough, idiots!"

He could eat, and all the same he was groaning with torment. His

desolate household, his whole wounded life, choked him at the throat

like a death agony. Things were not all for the best because one had

bread. Who was the fool who placed earthly happiness in the partition

of wealth? These revolutionary dreamers might demolish society and

rebuilt another society; they would not add one joy to humanity,

they would not take away one pain, by cutting bread-and-butter for

everybody. They would even enlarge the unhappiness of the earth; they

would one day make the very dogs howl with despair when they had taken

them out of the tranquil satisfaction of instinct, to raise them to the

unappeasable suffering of passion. No, the one good thing was not to

exist, and if one existed, to be a tree, a stone, less still, a grain

of sand, which cannot bleed beneath the heels of the passer-by.

And in this exasperation of his torment, tears swelled in M.

Hennebeau's eyes, and broke in burning drops on his cheeks. The

twilight was drowning the road when stones began to riddle the front

of the villa. With no anger now against these starving people, only

enraged by the burning wound at his heart he continued to stammer in

the midst of his tears:

"Idiots! idiots!"

But the cry of the belly dominated, and a roar blew like a tempest,

sweeping everything before it:

"Bread! bread! bread!"