Page:Germinal - Zola - 1925.djvu/20

GERMINAL at the seam. The family had worked for the Montsou Mining Company since it started, and that was long ago, a hundred and six years already. His grandfather, Guillaume Maheu, an urchin of fifteen then, had found the rich coal at Réquillart, the Company’s first pit, an old abandoned pit today down below near the Fauvelle sugar works. All the country knew it, and as a proof, the discovered seam was called the “Guillaume,” after his grandfather. He had not known him—a big fellow, it was said, very strong, who died of old age at sixty. Then his father, Nicolas Maheu, called the Rouge, when hardly forty years of age had died in the pit, which was being excavated at that time: a land-slip, a complete downfall, and the rocks drank his blood and swallowed his bones. Two of his uncles and his three brothers; later on, also left their skins there. He, Vincent Maheu, who had come out almost whole, except that his legs were rather shaky, was looked upon as a knowing fellow. But what could one do? One must work; one worked here from father to son, as one would work at anything else. His son, Toussaint Maheu, was being worked to death there now, and his grandsons, and all his people, who lived opposite in the settlement. A hundred and six years of mining, the youngsters after the old ones, for the same master. Eh? there were many bourgeois that could not give their history so well!

“Anyhow, when one has got enough to eat!” murmured Étienne again.

“That is what I say. As long as one has bread to eat one can live.”

Bonnemort was silent; and his eyes turned towards the settlement, where lights were appearing one by one. Four o’clock struck in the Montsou tower, and the cold became keener.

“And is your company rich?” asked Étienne.

The old man shrugged his shoulders, and then let them fall as if overwhelmed beneath an avalanche of gold.

“Ah! yes. Ah! yes. Not perhaps so rich as its neighbour the Anzin Company. But millions and millions all the same. They can’t count it. Nineteen pits, thirteen at work, the Voreux, the Victoire, Crèvecœur, Mirou, St. Thomas, Madeleine, Feutry-Cantel, and still. more, and six for pumping or [8]