Page:Germinal - Zola - 1925.djvu/253

GERMINAL hands when they stopped, all three, at a bend in the road near Réquillart.

Bébert protested.

"I want some, you know. I took it."

"Eh! what!" he cried. "You'll have some if I give you some. Not to-night, sure enough; to-morrow, if there's any left."

He pushed Lydie, and placed both of them in line like soldiers shouldering arms. Then, passing behind them:

"Now, you must stay there five minutes without turning. By God! if you do turn, there will be beasts that will eat you up. And then you will go straight back, and if Bébert touches Lydie on the way, I shall know it and I shall hit you."

Then he disappeared in the shadow, so lightly that the sound of his naked feet could not be heard. The two children remained motionless for the five minutes without looking round, for fear of receiving a blow from the invisible. Slowly a great affection had grown up between them in their common terror. He was always thinking of taking her and pressing her very tight between his arms, as he had seen others do; and she, too, would have liked it, for it would have changed her to be so nicely caressed. But neither of them would have allowed themselves to disobey. When they went away, although the night was very dark, they did not even kiss each other; they walked side by side, tenderly and despairingly, certain that if they touched one another the captain would strike them from behind.

Étienne, at the same hour, had entered Réquillart. The evening before Mouquette had begged him to return, and he returned, ashamed, feeling an inclination which he refused to acknowledge, for this girl who adored him like a Christ. It was, besides, with the intention of breaking it off. He would see her; he would explain to her that she ought no longer to pursue him, on account of the mates. It was not a time for pleasure; it was dishonest to thus amuse oneself when people were dying of hunger. And not having found her at home, he had decided to wait and watch the shadows of the passers-by.

Beneath the ruined steeple the old shaft opened, half blocked up above the black hole. A beam stood erect, and with a fragment of roof at the top it had the profile of a gallows; in the broken walling of the kerbs stood two trees—a mountain ash and a plane—which seemed to grow from the depths of [241]