Page:Germinal - Zola - 1925.djvu/88

GERMINAL When Alzire and the children were there she divided the vermicelli in three small portions. She herself was not hungry, she said. Although Catherine had already poured water on the coffee-dregs of the day before, she did so over again, and swallowed two large glasses of coffee so clear that it looked like rusty water. That would keep her up all the same.

“Listen!” she repeated to Alzire. “You must let your grandfather sleep; you must watch that Estelle does not knock her head; and if she wakes, or if she howls too much, here! take this bit of sugar and melt it and give it her in spoonfuls. I know that you are sensible and won’t eat it yourself.”

“And school, mother?”

“School! well, that must be left for another day: I want you.”

“And the soup? would you like me to make it if you come back late?”

“Soup, soup: no, wait till I come.”

Alzire, with the precocious intelligence of a little invalid girl, could make soup very well. She must have understood, for she did not insist. Now the whole settlement was awake, bands of children were going to school, and one heard the trailing noise of their clogs. Eight o’clock struck, and a growing murmur of chatter arose on the left, among the Levaque people. The women were commencing their day around the coffee-pots, with their fists on their hips, their tongues turning without ceasing, like millstones. A faded head, with thick lips and flattened nose, was pressed against a window-pane, calling out:

“Anything new? Stop a bit.”

“No, no! later on,” replied Maheude. “I have to go out.”

And for fear of giving way to the offer of a glass of warm coffee she pushed Lénore and Henri, and set out with them. Up above, Father Bonnemort was still snoring with a snore which rocked the house.

Outside Maheude was surprised to find that the wind was no longer blowing. There had been a sudden thaw; the sky was earth-coloured, the walls were sticky with greenish moisture, and the roads were covered with pitch-like mud, a special kind of mud peculiar to the coal country, as black as [76]