第 七 章 · 第7章

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.