Page:Germinal - Zola - 1925.djvu/478

GERMINAL of the cuttings, he stammered with surprise, trying to find words to explain that he was going away and that he wished to say good-bye to her.

She looked at him without listening and said at last, speaking familiarly:

"Eh? it surprises you to see me. It's true enough that I threatened to wring the neck of the first of my children who went down again; and now that I'm going down I ought to wring my own, ought I not? Ah, well! I should have done it by now if it hadn't been for the old man and the little ones at the house."

And she went on in her low, fatigued voice. She did not excuse herself, she simply narrated things—that they had been nearly starved, and that she had made up her mind to it, so that they might not be sent away from the settlement.

"How is the old man?" asked Étienne.

"He is always very gentle and very clean. But he is quite off his nut. He was not brought up for that affair, you know. There was talk of shutting him up with the madmen, but I, was not willing; they would have done for him in his soup. His story has, all the same, been very bad for us, for he'll never get his pension; one of those gentlemen told me that it would be immoral to give him one."

"Is Jeanlin working?"'

"Yes, those gentlemen found something for him to do at the top. He gets twenty sous. Oh! I don't complain; the bosses have been very good, as they told me themselves. The brat's twenty sous and my thirty, that makes fifty. If there were not six of us we should get enough to eat. Estelle devours now, and the worst is that it will be four or five years before Lénore and Henri are old enough to come to the pit."

Étienne could not restrain a movement of pain.

"They, too!"

Maheude's pale cheeks turned red, and her eyes flamed. But her shoulders sank as if beneath the weight of destiny.

"What would you have? They after the others. They have all been done for there; now it's their turn."

She was silent; some landers, who were rolling trams, disturbed them. Through the large dusty windows the early sun was entering, drowning the lanterns in grey light; and the [466]