Page:Germinal - Zola - 1925.djvu/270

GERMINAL lips for hours at a time. There was deep silence, and they listened to this old man, who was like a pale spectre beneath the moon, and as he narrated things without any immediate relation with the discussion—long histories which no one could understand—the impression was increased. He was talking of his youth; he described the death of his two uncles who were crushed at the Voreux; then he turned to the inflammation of the lungs which had carried off his wife. He kept to a main idea, however: things had never gone well and never would go well. Thus in the forest five hundred of them had come together because the king would not lessen the hours of work; but he stopped short, and began to tell of another strike—he had seen so many! They all broke out under these trees, here at the Place-des-Dames, lower down at the Charbonnerie, still further towards the Saut-du-Loup. Sometimes it froze, sometimes it was hot. One evening it had rained so much that they had gone back again without being able to say anything, and the king's soldiers came up and it finished with volleys of musketry.

"We raised our hands like this, and we swore not to go back again. Ah! I have sworn; yes, I have sworn!"

The crowd listened gapingly, feeling disturbed, when Étienne, who had watched the scene, jumped onto the fallen tree, keeping the old man at his side. He had just recognised Chaval among their friends in the first row. The idea that Catherine must be there had roused a new ardour within him, the desire to be applauded in her presence.

"Mates, you have heard; this is one of our old men, and this is what he has suffered, and what our children will suffer if we don't have done with the robbers and butchers."

He was terrible; never had he spoken so violently. With one arm he supported old Bonnemort, exhibiting him as a banner of misery and mourning, and crying for vengeance. In a few rapid phrases he went back to the first Maheu. He showed the whole family used-up at the mine, devoured by the Company, hungrier than ever after a hundred years of work; and contrasting with the Maheus he pointed to the big bellies of the directors sweating with gold, a whole band of kept shareholders, going on for a century like kept women, doing nothing but enjoy with their bodies. Was it not fearful? [258]