Page:Eekhoud - The New Carthage.djvu/54

26 "A solid, healthy workman who draws only a quarter of what that old invalid used to cost us." And Saint-Fardier winked maliciously, noting a smile of intelligence on the face of his partner. But the other soothsayer did not unbend, and without disapproving of the discharge, called off the dogs with an indifferent air.

A strong dose of philosophy and of patience was required by the workers in order to endure without contempt the haughtiness, the scornful treatment, the rigor, the despotism of employers armed against them with an iniquitous legality.

And what accidents, infirmities, deaths did not aggravate the lot of these helots!

Laurent, who visited all parts of the factory, who followed the many complex processes necessary in the making of candles from the treatment of the fetid organic matter, beef and mutton fats, from which the white and glossy stearine was separated with great difficulty, to the packing, the casing, and the loading of the trucks—Laurent was not long in attributing an occult influence, fatal and perverse, to this place itself, to all this apparatus, to this stock of tools to which was applied all the perfection of mechanics and the most recent chemical discoveries.

He went down into the engine room, dodged about the machine room, passed the vats in which the raw matter was purified by being melted and remelted, and came to the presses where, refined of its impurities, it was compressed in skins and again solidified.

Of all the rooms in which the fats were triturated, the one in worst repute was that in which they were treated with acreoline, a colorless and volatile substance whose gases attacked the eyes of the workmen.