Page:Germinal - Zola - 1925.djvu/84

GERMINAL But seeing the Grégoires’ disturbed faces he regretted having gone so far; he put off his idea of a loan, reserving it until the case was desperate.

“Oh! I have not got there! it is a joke. Good heavens! Perhaps you are right; the money that other people earn for you is the best to fatten on.”

They changed the conversation. Cécile spoke again of her cousins, whose tastes interested, while at the same time they shocked her. Madame Grégoire promised to take her daughter to see those dear Iittle ones on the first fine day. M. Grégoire, however, with a distracted air, did not follow the conversation. He added aloud:

“If I were in your place I wouldn’t persist any more; I would treat with Montsou. They want to, and you will get your money back.”

He alluded to an old hatred which existed between the concession of Montsou and that of Vandame. In spite of the latter’s slight importance, its powerful neighbour was enraged at seeing, enclosed within 1ts own sixty-seven communes, this square league which did not belong to it, and after having vainly tried to kill it had plotted to buy it at a low price when in a failing condition. The war continued without truce. Each party stopped its galleries at two hundred métres from the other; it was a duel to the last drop of blood, although the managers and engineers maintained polite relations with each other.

Deneulin’s eyes had flamed up.

“Never!” he cried, in his turn. ‘“Montsou shall never have Vandame as long as I am alive. I dined on Thursday at Hennebeau’s, and I saw him fluttering around me. Last autumn, when the big men came to the administration building, they made me all sorts of advances. Yes, yes, I know them—those marquises, and dukes, and generals, and ministers! Brigands who would take away even your shirt at the corner of a wood.”

He could not cease. Besides, M. Grégoire did not defend the administration of Montsou—the six stewards established by the treaty of 1760, who governed the Company despotically, and the five survivors of whom on every death chose the new member among the powerful and rich shareholders. The [72]