Page:Germinal - Zola - 1925.djvu/148

GERMINAL But as they all three arrived at the Estaminet Piquette, sounds of a quarrel arrested them at the door; Zacharie with his fist was threatening a thick-set phlegmatic Walloon nail-maker, while Chaval, with his hands in his pockets, was looking on.

"Hullo! there's Chaval," said Maheu quietly; "he is with Catherine."

For five long hours the putter and her lover had been walking about the fair. It was along the Montsou road, that wide road with low bedaubed houses descending like a braid, a crowd of people disporting in the sun, like a trail of ants, lost in the flat, bare plain. The eternal black mud had dried, a black dust was rising and floating about like a storm-cloud.

On both sides the public houses were crowded; there were rows of tables to the street, where stood a double rank of hucksters at stalls in the open air, selling neck-handkerchiefs and looking-glasses for the girls, knives and caps for the lads; without counting sweetmeats, sugar-plums, and biscuits. In front of the church archery was going on. Opposite the Yards they were playing at bowls. At the corner of the Joiselle road, beside the AdmininstrationAdministration [sic] buildings, in a spot enclosed by fences, crowds were going to a cock-fight, two large red cocks, armed with steel spurs, and with open bleeding breasts. Farther on, at Maigrat's, aprons and trousers were being won at billiards. And there were long silences; the crowd drank and stuffed itself without a sound; a mute indigestion of beer and fried potatoes was expanding in the great heat, still further increased by the frying-pans bubbling in the open air.

Chaval bought a looking-glass for nineteen sous and a handkerchief for three francs, to give to Catherine. At every turn they met Mouque and Bonnemort, who had come to the fair, and who, with their stiff legs, went from side to side in a reflective manner. Another meeting made them angry; they caught sight of Jeanlin persuading Bébert and Lydie to steal bottles of gin from an extemporised bar installed at the edge of an open piece of ground. Catherine succeeded in boxing her brother's ears; the little girl had already run away with a bottle. These imps of Satan would certainly end in a prison. Then, as they arrived before another bar, the Tête-Coupée, it occurred to Chaval to take his sweetheart in to a competition [136]