Page:Germinal - Zola - 1925.djvu/299

GERMINAL nised Mother Brûlé and the Levaque woman; as they walked they were eating chestnuts which Mouquette had brought; they swallowed the skins so as to feel more in their stomachs. But in the forest he found no one; the men were already at Jean-Bart. He took the same course, and arrived at the pit at the moment when Levaque and some hundred others were penetrating into the square. Miners were coming up from every direction—the men by the main road, the women by the fields, all at random, without leaders, without weapons, flowing naturally there like water which runs down a slope. Étienne perceived Jeanlin, who had climbed up the foot-bridge, installed as though at a theatre. He ran faster, and entered among the first. There were scarcely three hundred of them.

There was some hesitation when Deneulin showed himself at the top of the staircase which led to the receiving-room.

"What do you want?" he asked in a loud voice.

After having watched the disappearance of the carriage from which his daughters were still laughing towards him, he had returned to the pit overtaken by a vague anxiety. Everything, however, was found in good order. The men had gone down; the cage was working, and he became reassured again, and was talking to the head captain when the approach of the strikers was announced to him. He had placed himself at a window of the screening-shed; and in the face of this increasing flood which filled the square, he at once felt his impotence. How could he defend these buildings, open on every side? he could scarcely group some twenty of his workmen round himself. He was lost.

"What do you want?" he repeated, pale with repressed anger, making an effort to accept his disaster courageously.

There were pushes and growls amid the crowd. Étienne at last came forward, saying:

"We do not come to injure you, sir, but work must cease everywhere."

Deneulin frankly treated him as an idiot.

"Do you think you will benefit me if you stop work at my place? You might just as well fire a gun off into my back. Yes, my men are below, and they shall not come up, unless you mean to murder me first!"

These rough words raised a clamour. Maheu had to hold back Levaque, who was pushing forward in a threatening man- [287]