Page:Germinal - Zola - 1925.djvu/395

GERMINAL us. Yes, you can kill us; there are ten thousand more of us to kill yet."

The position of the soldiers was becoming critical, for they had received strict orders not to make use of their weapons until the last extremity. And how were they to prevent these furious people from spitting themselves? Besides, the space was getting less; they were now pushed back against the wall, and it was impossible to draw farther back. Their little troop—a mere handful of men—opposed to the rising flood of miners, still held its own, however, and calmly executed the brief orders given by the captain. The latter, with keen eyes and nervously compressed lips, only feared lest they should be carried away by this abuse. Already a young sergeant, a tall lean fellow whose thin moustache was bristling up, was moving his eyelids in a disquieting manner. Near him an old soldier, with tanned skin and stripes won in twenty campaigns, had grown pale when he saw his bayonet twisted like a straw. Another, doubtless a recruit still smelling of field-work, became very red every time he heard himself called "scum" and "riff-raff." And the violence did not cease, the stretched-out fists, the abominable words, the shovelfuls of accusations and threats which buffeted their faces. It required all the force of order to keep them thus, with mute faces, in the proud, gloomy silence of military discipline.

A collision seemed inevitable, when Captain Richomme appeared from behind the troop with his good-natured white head, overwhelmed by emotion. He spoke out loudly:

"By God! this is idiotic! such tomfoolery can't go on!"

And he threw himself between the bayonets and the miners.

"Mates, listen to me. You know that I am an old workman, and that I have always been one of you. Well, by God! I promise you, that if they're not just with you, I'm the man to go and say to the bosses how things lie. But this is too much, it does no good at all to howl bad names at these good fellows, and try and get your bellies ripped up."

They listened, hesitating. But up above, unfortunately, little Négrel's short profile reappeared. He feared, no doubt, that he would be accused of sending a captain in place of venturing out himself; and he tried to speak. But his voice was lost in the midst of so frightful a tumult that he had to leave [383]