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HE shots fired at Montsou had reached as far as Paris with a formidable echo. For four days all the opposition journals had been indignant, displaying atrocious narratives on their front pages: twenty-five wounded, fourteen dead, including three women and two children, and prisoners taken as well. Levaque had become a sort of hero, and was credited with a reply of antique sublimity to the examining magistrate. The Empire, hit in mid-career by these few balls, affected the calm of omnipotence, without itself realising the gravity of its wound. It was simply an unfortunate collision, something lost over there in the black country, very far from the Parisian boulevard which formed public opinion; it would soon be forgotten. The Company had received an official intimation to hush up the affair, and to put an end to a strike which from its irritating duration was becoming a social danger.

So on Wednesday morning three of the directors appeared at Montsou. The little town, sick at heart, which had not dared hitherto to rejoice over the massacre, now breathed again, and tasted the joy of being saved. The weather, too, had become fine; there was a bright sun—one of those first February days which, with their moist warmth, bring out the green points of the lilacs. All the shutters had been flung back at the adminstration [sic] building, the vast structure seemed alive again. And the best rumours were circulating; it was said that these gentlemen, deeply affected by the catastrophe, had rushed down to open their paternal arms to the wanderers from the settlements. Now that the blow had fallen—a more vigorous one doubtless than they had wished for—they were prodigal in their task of relief, and decreed measures that were excellent though tardy. First of all they sent away the Borains, and made much of this extreme concession to their workmen. Then they put an end to the military occupation of the pits, which were no longer threatened by the crushed strikers. They also [391]