Page:Germinal - Zola - 1925.djvu/168

GERMINAL Company did not dare to rest in this way, terrified at the ruinous inaction, they were meditating a middle course, perhaps a strike, from which the miners would come out crushed and worse paid. Then the new Provident Fund was disturbing them, as it was a threat for the future, while a strike would relieve them of it, by exhausting it when it was still small.

Rasseneur had seated himself beside Étienne, and both of them were listening in consternation. They could talk in a loud voice, because there was no one there but Madame Rasseneur, seated at the counter.

"What an idea!" murmured the innkeeper; "What's the good of it? The Company has no interest in a strike, nor the men either. It would be best to come to an understanding."

This was very sensible. He was always on the side of reasonable demands. Since the rapid popularity of his old lodger, he had even exaggerated this system of reasonable progress, saying they would obtain nothing if they wished to have everything at once. In his fat, good-humoured nature, nourished on beer, a secret jealousy was forming, increased by the desertion of his bar, into which the workmen from the Voreux now came more rarely to drink and to listen; and he thus sometimes even began to defend the Company, forgetting the rancour of an old miner who had been turned off.

"Then you are against the strike?" cried Madame Rasseneur, without leaving the counter.

And as he energetically replied, "Yes!" she made him hold his tongue.

"Bah! you have no courage; let these gentlemen speak."

Étienne was meditating, with his eyes fixed on the glass which she had served to him. At last he raised his head.

"I daresay it's all true what our mate tells us, and we must get resigned to this strike if they force it on us. Pluchart has just written me some very sensible things on this matter. He's against the strike too, for the men would suffer as much as the masters, and it wouldn't come to anything decisive. Only it seems to him a capital chance to get our men to make up their minds to go into his big machine. Here's his letter."

In fact, Pluchart, in despair at the suspicion which the International aroused among the miners at Montsou, was hoping to see them enter in a mass if they were forced to fight against [156]