Page:Germinal - Zola - 1925.djvu/343

GERMINAL on it, they thrust out their jaws, saying over and over again, with furious bursts of contempt:

"He can do no more! he can do no more!—It's no longer a man that they'll put away in the earth. Go and rot then, good-for-nothing!"

Mother Brûlé then planted the whole lump on the end of her stick, and holding it in the air, bore it about like a banner, rushing along the road, followed, helter-skelter, by the yelling troop of women. Drops of blood rained down, and that pitiful flesh hung like a waste piece of meat on a butcher's stall. Up above, at the window, Madame Maigrat still stood motionless; but beneath the last gleams of the setting sun, the confused faults of the window-panes deformed her white face which looked as though it were laughing. Beaten and deceived at every hour, with shoulders bent from morning to night over a ledger, perhaps she was laughing, while the band of women rushed along with that evil beast, that crushed beast, at the end of the stick.

This frightful mutilation was accomplished in frozen horror. Neither Étienne nor Maheu nor the others had had time to interfere; they stood motionless before this gallop of Furies. At the door of the Estaminet Tison a few heads were grouped—Rasseneur pale with disgust, Zacharie and Philomène stupefied at what they had seen. The two old men, Bonnemort and Mouque, were gravely shaking their heads. Only Jeanlin was making fun, pushing Bébert with his elbow, and forcing Lydie to look up. But the women were already coming back, turning round and passing beneath the manager's windows. Behind the blinds the ladies were stretching out their necks. They had not been able to observe the scene, which was hidden from them by the wall, and they could not distinguish well in the growing darkness.

"What is it they have at the end of that stick?" asked Cécile, who had grown bold enough to look out.

Lucie and Jeanne declared that it must be a rabbit-skin.

"No, no," murmured Madame HennebaauHennebeau [sic], "they must have been pillaging a pork butcher's, it seems to be a remnant of a pig."

At this moment she shuddered and was silent. Madame Grégoire had nudged her with her knee. They both remained [331]