Page:Germinal - Zola - 1925.djvu/213

GERMINAL piece lent by Bouteloup. As to the Pierrons, they always had money; but in order to appear as needy as the others, for fear of loans, they got their supplies on credit from Maigrat, who would have thrown his shop at Pierronne if she had held out her petticoat to him. Since Saturday many families had gone to bed without supper, and in face of the terrible days that were beginning not a complaint was heard, all obeyed the word of command with quiet courage. There was an absolute confidence in spite of everything, a religious faith, the blind gift of a population of believers. Since an era of justice had been promised to them they were willing to suffer for the conquest of universal happiness. Hunger exalted their heads; never had the low horizon opened a larger Beyond to these people in the hallucination of their misery. They saw again over there, when their eyes were dimmed by weakness, the ideal city of their dream, but now growing near and seeming to be real, with its population of brothers, its golden age of labour and meals in common. Nothing overcame their conviction that they were at last entering it. The Fund was exhausted; the Company would not yield; every day must aggravate the situation; and they preserved their hope and showing a smiling contempt for facts. If the earth opened beneath them a miracle would save them. This faith replaced bread and warmed their stomachs. When the Maheus and the others had too quickly digested their soup, made with clear water, they thus rose into a state of semi-giddiness, the ecstasy of a better life which has flung martyrs to the beasts.

Étienne was henceforth the unquestioned leader. In the evening conversations he gave forth oracles, in the degree to which study had refined him and made him able to enter into various matters. He spent the nights reading, and received a large number of letters; he even subscribed to the Vengeur, a Belgian socialistic paper, and this journal, the first to enter the settlement, gained for him extraordinary consideration among his mates. His growing popularity excited him more every day. To hold an extended correspondence, to discuss the fate of the workers in the four corners of the province, to give advice to the Voreux miners, to become a centre and to feel the world rolling round himself, was continually swelling the vanity of the former engine-man, the pikeman with greasy [201]