Page:Germinal - Zola - 1925.djvu/354

GERMINAL "Eh! mate! damned weather," said Étienne, at last. "I think we shall have snow."

He was a small soldier, very fair, with a pale, gentle face covered with red patches. In his great cloak he showed the embarrassment of the recruit.

"Yes, perhaps we shall, I think," he murmured.

And with his blue eyes he gazed at the livid sky, the smoky dawn, with soot weighing like lead afar over the plain.

"What idiots they are to put you here to freeze!" Étienne went on. "One would think the Cossacks were coming! And then there's always wind here."

The little soldier shivered without complaining. There was certainly a little cabin of dry stones there, where old Bonnemort used to take shelter when it blew a hurricane, but the order being not to leave the summit of the pit-bank, the soldier did not stir from it, his hands so stiffened by cold that he could no longer feel his weapon. He belonged to the guard of sixty men who were protecting the Voreux, and as this cruel sentry-duty frequently came round, he had before nearly stayed there for good with his dead feet. His work demanded it; a passive obedience finished the benumbing process, and he replied to these questions by the stammered words of a sleepy child.

Étienne in vain endeavoured during a quarter of an hour to make him talk about politics. He replied "yes" or "no" without seeming to understand. Some of his comrades said that the captain was a republican; as to him, he had no idea—it was all the same to him. If he was ordered to fire, he would fire, so as not to be punished. The workman listened, seized by the popular hatred against the army—against these brothers whose hearts were changed by sticking a pair of red pantaloons on to their buttocks.

"Then what's your name?"

"Jules."

"And where do you come from?"

"From Plogof, over there."

He stretched out his arm at random. It was in Brittany, he knew no more. His small pale face grew animated. He began to laugh, and felt warmer.

"I have a mother and a sister. They are waiting for me, sure enough. Ah! it won't be for to-morrow. When I left, they [342]