Page:Germinal - Zola - 1925.djvu/330

GERMINAL dreamers might demolish society and re-build another society; they would not add one joy to humanity, they would not take away one pain, by cutting bread-and-butter for everybody. They would even enlarge the unhappiness of the earth; they would one day make the very dogs howl with despair when they had taken them out of the tranquil satisfaction of instinct, to raise them to the unappeasable suffering of passion. No, the one good thing was not to exist, and if one existed to be a tree, a stone, less still, a grain of sand, which cannot bleed beneath the heels of the passer-by.

And in this exasperation of his torment, tears swelled in M. Hennebeau's eyes, and broke in burning drops on his cheeks. The twilight was drowning the road when stones began to riddle the front of the villa. With no anger now against these starving people, only enraged by the burning wound at his heart, he continued to stammer in the midst of his tears:

"Idiots! idiots!"

But the cry of the belly dominated, and a roar blew like a tempest, sweeping everything before it.

"Bread! bread! bread!" [318]