Page:Eekhoud - The New Carthage.djvu/74

46 least pleasing and the most rough and corroded aspects of the factory that haunted him as he studied, or when he could not sleep. Out of aversion for the hyacinths that to him symbolized his beautiful cousin's harshness toward the poor and the downtrodden, he would have collected withered bouquets and rustic flowers. To the expensive nectarines reserved for Cousin Lydia, he preferred a hard apple that would crunch between his teeth.

In the same way, he retained in his nostrils the anything but soft odour of the factory, especially the smell of the drain which bordered the immense inclosure and into which was discharged the refuse of the various chemical processes, pestilential acids, the waste arising from the refining of the tallow. The musty, oily odour exhaled by these filthy excrescences pursued him, when he was at school, with the obstinacy of a vulgar refrain. This reek was associated in his mind with the working classes, with the poor wretches blinded by acreoline, mangled by the machines, discharged by Saint-Fardier; it spoke to Laurent of the packing room and its girls, with their breasts bare, of Tilbak and the episode of "The Swiss Family Robinson"; it suggested the peculiar suburb, the glutted, wanton night about the Stone Mill.

When he set foot in his natal city it was by this drain that the realm of Gina announced its presence to him. Of all that belonged to the factory, this drain alone came to meet him at a distance, took him when he got out of the train, welcomed him with a certain cheerfulness long before he had seen, through its curtain of trees, the first roofs and mills of the suburb, the high, red, rigid chimneys shaking their fulginous plumes in derisive welcome. It was also the last to say farewell