Page:Eekhoud - The New Carthage.djvu/57

Rh upon the drunken minotaur. If he did recover, it was with one member the less, an arm reduced to pulp, a leg broken in twenty places. Dead forever to work, he was a living mockery.

Fall upon the murderer? Shut off the power? The man is either mangled or killed before one has time to see the unequal struggle.

Laurent absorbed from the worst instruments of torture and the most malignant elixirs of the inquisitors the highly vaunted marvels of physics and industrial chemistry; he could see only the reverse of that prosperous industrialism of which Gina, from her side, saw only the radiant and brilliant aspect. He discovered the lie innate in the word Progress so constantly upon the lips of the middle classes, he saw the illusion of a society, claiming to be fraternal and democratic, founded upon a third estate more rapacious and more inhuman than the feudal lords. And, from that moment, a profound pity, an instinctive and absorbing affection, a sympathy partly maternal, partly that of a lover, seized him, a fundamental pity for these pariahs, beginning with those of his own environment, the brave daily laborers of the Dobouziez factory, who belonged to the eccentric and interloping suburban proletariat that swarmed about the Stone Mill. He took forever the side of these wide-awake, husky, well-built chaps, who worked with such energy, who braved each day sickness, poisoning, mutilation, formidable tools that turned against them, without losing for an instant their rude, free manner, their familiarity, whose relish excused its indecency.

With them the boy became communicative. When he met them, black, sweaty, panting, and they doffed their caps to him, he summoned enough courage to