Page:Germinal - Zola - 1925.djvu/326

GERMINAL disjointed door might suffice to murder them. Négrel also, who was usually very brave, felt himself grow pale, seized by a terror that was superior to his will, the terror which comes from the unknown. Cécile, in the hay, no longer stirred; and the others, in spite of the wish to turn away their eyes, could not do so: they were compelled to gaze.

It was the red vision of the revolution, which would one day inevitably carry them all away, on some bloody evening at the end of the century. Yes, some evening the people, unbridled at last, would thus gallop along the roads, making the blood of the middle-class flow. They would hang up heads and sprinkle about gold from disembowelled coffers. The women would yell, the men would have these wolf-like jaws open to bite. Yes, there would be the same rags, the same thunder of great boots, the same terrible troop, with dirty skins and tainted breath, sweeping away the old world beneath an overflowing flood of barbarians. Fires would flame; they would not leave standing one stone of the towns; they would return to the savage life of the woods, after the great rut, the great feast-day, when the poor in one night would reduce women to leanness and rich men's cellars to emptiness. There would be nothing left, not a sou of the great fortunes, not a title-deed of acquired properties; until the day dawned and a new earth would perhaps spring up once more. Yes, it was these things which were passing along the road; it was the force of Nature herself, and they were receiving the terrible wind of it in their faces.

A great cry rose, dominating the Marseillaise:

"Bread! bread! bread!"

Lucie and Jeanne pressed themselves against Madame Hennebeau, who was almost fainting; while Négrel placed himself before them as though to protect them by his body. Was the old social order cracking this very evening? And what they saw immediately after completed their stupefaction. The band had nearly passed by, there were only a few stragglers left, when Mouquette came up. She was delaying, watching the bourgeois at their garden gates or the windows of their houses; and whenever she saw them, as she was not able to spit in their faces, she showed them what for her was the climax of contempt. Doubtless she perceived someone now, for suddenly she raised her skirts, bent her back, and showed her enormous buttocks, [314]