Page:Germinal - Zola - 1925.djvu/161

GERMINAL the ambition to take a neighbour's place, why should they not hit out with their fists and try for the mastery?

Maheu was shaken but remained full of doubts.

"As soon as you move they give you back your certificate," he said. "The old man is right; it will always be the miner who gets all the trouble, without chance of a leg of mutton now and then as a reward."

Maheude, who had been silent for a while, awoke as from a dream.

"But if what the priests tell is true, if the poor people in this world become the rich ones in the next!"

A burst of laughter interrupted her; even the children shrugged their shoulders, being incredulous in the open air, keeping a secret fear of ghosts in the pit, but glad of the empty sky.

"Ah! bosh! the priests!" exclaimed Maheu. "If they believed that, they'd eat less and work more, so as to reserve a better place for themselves up there. No, when one's dead, one's dead."

Maheude sighed deeply.

"Oh! Lord, Lord!"

Then her hands fell on to her knees with a gesture of immense dejection:

"Then if that's true, we are done for, we are."

They all looked at one another. Father Bonnemort spat into his handkerchief, while Maheu sat with his extinguished pipe, which he had forgotten, in his mouth. Alzire listened between Lénore and Henri, who were sleeping on the edge of the table. But Catherine, with her chin in her hand, never took her large clear eyes off Étienne while he was protesting, declaring his faith, and opening out the enchanting future of his social dream. Around them the settlement was asleep; one only heard the stray cries of a child or the complaints of a belated drunkard. In the parlour the clock ticked slowly, and a damp freshness arose from the sanded floor in spite of the stuffy air.

"Fine ideas!" said the young man, "why do you need a good God and his Paradise to make you happy? Haven't you got it in your own power to make yourselves happy on the earth?"

With his enthusiastic voice he spoke on and on. The closed horizon was bursting out; a gap of light was opening in the [149]