Page:Germinal - Zola - 1925.djvu/450

GERMINAL "Let us go," said Madame Hennebeau, turning towards her carriage.

Lucie and Jeanne protested. What! so soon! and the drawing which was not finished! They wanted to remain; their father would bring them to dinner in the evening. M. Hennebeau alone took his place with his wife in the carriage, for he wished to question Négrel.

"Very well! go on before," said M. Grégoire. "We will follow you; we have a little visit of five minutes to make over there at the settlement. Go on, go on! we shall be at Réquillart as soon as you."

He got up behind Madame Grégoire and Cécile, and while the other carriage went along by the canal, theirs gently ascended the slope.

Their excursion was to be completed by a visit of charity. Zacharie's death had filled them with pity for this tragical Maheu family, about whom the whole country was talking. They had no pity for the father, that brigand, that slayer of soldiers, who had had to be struck down like a wolf. But the mother touched them, that poor woman who had just lost her son after having lost her husband, and whose daughter was perhaps a corpse beneath the earth; to say nothing of an invalid grandfather, a child who was lame as the result of a landslip, and a little girl who died of starvation during the strike. So that, though this family had in part deserved its misfortunes by the detestable spirit it had shown, they had resolved to assert the breadth of their charity, their desire for forgetfulness and conciliation, by themselves bringing an alms. Two parcels, carefully wrapped up, had been placed beneath a seat of the carriage.

An old woman pointed out to the coachman Maheude's house, No. 16 in the second block. But when the Grégoires alighted with the parcels, they knocked in vain and at last struck their fists against the door, still withotwithout [sic] reply; the house echoed mournfully, like a house emptied by grief, frozen and black, long since abandoned.

"There's no one there," said Cécile, disappointed. "What a nuisance! What shall we do with all this?"

Suddenly the door at the side opened, and the Levaque woman appeared. [438]