Complete Works of Emile Zola (1596 page)

“Monsieur Jérôme is not disquieting himself as to how
he
shall get his wine to-night,” said Bourron, with a low laugh, lowering his voice at the same time.

Ragu shrugged his shoulders.

“You know,” he said, “that my great-grandfather was the fellow-workman of Monsieur Jerome’s father. They were just two workmen who together tended the fires in this place, and luck might just as well have come to Ragu as to Qurignon. It’s all luck — when it’s not dishonesty.”

“Hush!” whispered Bourron again. “You’ll get yourself into trouble.”

The self-importance of Ragu subsided suddenly, and as Monsieur Jérôme, passing the group, looked full at the four men with his clear blue eyes, Ragu bowed again, with the timid respect of a workman who may, indeed, speak disrespectfully of his employer, but who has the results of a long slavery in his blood, and trembles before his sovereign, who can give him or withhold from him everything he most desires. The servant slowly pushed the little carriage past the group, and Monsieur Jérôme disappeared along the black road leading into Beauclair.

“Bah!” said Fauchard, philosophically. “He isn’t so happy, after all, in his wheeled chair; and, besides, if one comes to think of it, he can’t have had much fun lately the way things have been going. Every man has his own troubles.... Ah! thunder and lightning! if Natalie would only bring me my wine!”

And he went into the factory, taking along with him little Fortuné, who had looked stupid and had said nothing. Their shoulders, which already had an air of weariness, were lost to view in the increasing darkness which overspread the buildings, while Ragu and Bourron walked on, and, each stimulating the other to a debauch, they went towards a
cabaret
in the town. It was all right, they thought, to drink and laugh a little after the privation they had been going through.

Then Luc, who had remained leaning against the parapet of the bridge, moved by pity and curiosity, saw Josine come forward with trembling steps to bar the road that Ragu was taking. For one moment she had hoped that he would cross the bridge and take the way to his own home, for that was the direct road to old Beauclair, a wretched group of sordid houses where most of the workmen in the Pit lived. But when she perceived that he was making for the better part of the town, she knew too well what was going to happen. She saw him in the
cabaret
, the money in his pocket spent for drink, she foresaw the long evening she must pass in waiting for him, she and her little brother, faint for want of food, shelterless in the street in the sharp wind. And suffering, as well as sudden anger, gave her such courage that she planted herself before him — she, so frail and pitiful, confronted the rough man.

“Auguste,” she said, “just think — you cannot leave me out-doors!”

He made no answer, and tried to pass on.

“If you are not coming back soon, at least give me the key. We have been all day in the streets. We have not eaten one mouthful.”

He burst out with a laugh.

“Leave me alone! Ha! have you done stopping me?”

“Why did you carry off the key this morning? All I ask is that you should give me the key. You can come back when you like.... But it is dark night now. You can’t wish we should pass it in the streets.”

“The key! — the key! I have not got the key; and if I had I would not give it you.... Just please to understand that I have had enough of you. I won’t have anything more to do with you. It is too much to have starved together for two months, and you may go and look for me somewhere else.”

He yelled this in her face, furiously, savagely, and the poor soul trembled at his violence and at his savage words. Yet she persisted, with the gentle, resigned insistence of those who feel the earth opening beneath their feet:

“Oh! you are cruel — cruel! To-night, when you come home, we shall talk it over. I will go away to-morrow, if I must. But to-night — to-night — you must give me the key.”

With that the man fell into a fury. He pushed her, he flung her on one side with a brutal gesture.

“Damn you! Can’t a man have a free path along the road? Be off with you! Go wherever you choose! I tell you I have done with you!”

And then, as little Nanet, when his big sister burst into tears, came forward with his air of decision, his pink cheeks and his beruffled hair, Ragu continued:

“Ah! there’s that brat, now — the whole family for me to look after! Just stop, you rascal, till I give you a good kick!”

Josine had quickly drawn Nanet back to her side. And both stood silent in the black mud, shivering at their forlorn situation, while the two men walked on and disappeared in the gathering darkness, going in the direction of Beauclair, where lamps began to be lighted one by one. Bourron, not a bad man, had had an impulse at first to interfere, but being from cowardice under the influence of his jolly, handsome comrade, he let things alone. And Josine, after a moment’s hesitation, asked herself if there could be any use in following them, and decided, when they disappeared, to give up in despair. Slowly she walked after them, holding her little brother by the hand. They kept close to the walls, taking all kinds of precautions, as if they feared they might be seen and beaten, in order to keep them from hanging onto their tyrant’s steps.

Luc, in his indignation, came very near flinging himself on Ragu, and pommelling him soundly. Ah! what misery may be produced by labor, men changed into wolves by overwork, by injustice, by bread so hard to earn, and that must be shared by other starving creatures! During the two months’ strike men had snatched crusts from each other in hungry exasperation; daily quarrels had taken place, and now, on the first pay-day, they rushed to alcohol, their recovered consolation, leaving uncared for the women who had been their companions in their days of suffering — the lawful wife or the girl they had seduced. And Luc thought over the four years he had just passed in a Paris faubourg, in one of those great, pestiferous tenement buildings where the poverty of the working-man may be encountered on every story. What tragedies he had seen there, what sorrows had he not vainly tried to alleviate! The frightful problem of the sufferings and degradation of wage-earners had often come before him, he had sounded to its depths atrocious wickedness, he had watched the frightful ulcer which eats into society at the present day, he had passed hours of generous anxiety trying to find out a remedy, but had always knocked his head against a wall of brass — the barrier of existing realities. And now, the very first evening that he came to Beauclair, induced to return to it by something that had happened unexpectedly, he was the spectator of this savage scene, he had beheld this sad, pale creature flung into the street, to die of hunger, and it was the fault of that all-devouring monster whose intestinal fires he heard roaring in the Pit and escaping in black smoke under a gloomy sky.

A sharp wind blew past him; drops of rain began to fall, and the wind howled. Luc still stood on the bridge, his face turned towards Beauclair, trying to recognize the country by the faint light that came from the smokeladen clouds. On his right was the Pit, whose buildings bordered the road to Brias, beneath him rolled the Mionne, while higher up on an embankment to his left ran the railroad from Brias to Magnolles. The whole bottom of the glen was occupied by the works, from the cliffs of the Monts Bleuses to the place where the gorge grew wide and opened out on the immense plain of Roumagne. It was in a sort of estuary, at the spot where the ravine debouched upon the plain, that Beauclair had erected its houses, at first a miserable collection of dwellings for working-men, then, stretching out as the ground became flat, it became a little second-class town, which had its Prefecture, its Mairie, its court-house, and its prison, while the old church, whose ancient walls were beginning to decay, was placed right across the road between the old and the new town. The place was the chief city of the district, but it had a population of barely six thousand souls, five thousand of whom were poor, dark souls, confined in suffering bodies, deformed and degraded by the cruel labor of the Pit. Luc managed, however, to recognize, as soon as he caught sight of it beyond the Pit, the blastfurnace of La Crêcherie standing on the edge of a promontory of the Monts Bleuses. He could make out its dark outline. Labor! labor! — who was to elevate it? who would regenerate labor? — who would reorganize it according to the natural laws of truth and justice? who would give it its all-powerful, noble place, that it might control the world? who would cause the riches of the earth to be justly distributed, and thus realize among men the happiness that is due to all of them?

When the rain once more ceased, Luc began to descend the hill towards Beauclair. Workmen were still coming away from the Pit; he walked among them. All of them felt a raging desire to resume work after the misfortunes and miseries caused by the strike. Such sadness, such a sense of revolt and of powerlessness to mend anything took possession of him, that he would have quitted Beauclair that very evening but that he feared to vex Jordan. Jordan was the owner of La Crêcherie; he was in great distress because of the sudden death of the old engineer who had superintended his chief furnace. He had written to Luc, begging him to come at once and look into things for him, saying he would give him good advice if he would come. And then, when the young man, from affection for the old one, hastened to obey the summons, he found on his arrival another letter in which Jordan informed him of another catastrophe, the tragic death of a cousin at Cannes, which obliged him to go there immediately. He would be away, he said, for three days; he begged Luc to wait for him till Monday evening, and to take up his quarters in a small house in his garden, where he might live as if at home. Luc, therefore, had two days more to wait in that little town, with nothing to do. He had gone out that evening to look about him; he had told the servant who had been charged to wait on him that he would not be back to dinner, meaning to dine in some
cabaret
, for he was always passionately desirous of observing the manners of the people. He liked to see things for himself, to comprehend, and to receive instruction.

New reflections came over him as through frightful wind and rain he walked along in the black mud, in company with heavy-footed workmen, all silent and self-absorbed.  He felt ashamed, at length, of his sentimental weakness. Why should he want to get out of this place when here he might find the problem, sharp and bitter, a desire for whose solution seemed to haunt him? He ought not to decline the combat; he would amass facts; perhaps he might here, at last, discover the right way, which thus far he had been looking for in darkness and confusion.

Son of Pierre and Marie Froment, he had, like his three brothers, Matthieu, Marc, and Jean, learned a trade — a handicraft — in addition to his especial studies as an engineer. He could dress stones, he could act as an architect, he could build houses, and, loving any work in his own line, he had taken pleasure in Parisian shipyards. He knew nothing of the sorrows of the laborers; he dreamed only of fraternally aiding to secure the future triumph of labor. But what was he to do? Where should he make a beginning? How bring about the uncertain solution of the labor problem that he had at heart? Taller and stronger than his brother Matthieu, with an open countenance like a man of action, with his high forehead, and his quick brain always at work, he had thus far in his life clasped only emptiness in his two strong arms, while ho had felt so impatient to reform, to reconstruct the world. A sudden blast of wind staggered him, a sort of hurricane which made him shiver. Could he have been sent to this place as a sort of Messiah, led by circumstances over which he had no control into this unhappy corner of the earth, with a mission to bring it happiness and deliverance?

When, raising his head, Luc shook off these vague reflections, he found himself in the town of Beauclair. Four wide streets came out on an open space, the centre of the town, where was the Mairie, and these streets cut the town into four almost equal parts. Each bore the name of some neighboring city, towards which it was the direct way; on the north, the street of Brias; west, that of Saint Grou; east, that of Magnolles; and south, that of Formerie. The most populous of these streets, and that in which at the present moment there was a great assemblage of people, with many open shops, was the Rue de Brias, and in this he found himself. All the shops were in this street, close to each other, and they were disgorging that evening a dark stream of working-people. Just as he reached the great door of the shoemaking establishment of Gourier, the mayor of the town, it was thrown open, letting out a crowd of five hundred workpeople, among whom were two hundred women and children. Besides this establishment there were in the side-streets the Chodorge factory, where they made nothing but nails; the Hausser factory, which turned out every year more than a hundred thousand scythes and sickles; and the Miranda factory, a place which was exclusively for agricultural implements and machines. All these manufactories had suffered from the strike in the Pit, whence they supplied themselves, at wholesale prices, with steel and iron. Hunger and distress had fallen upon them, and the lean, haggard population streaming out upon the muddy pavement looked at the men from the steel and iron works with angry eyes; they said nothing; they walked on with apparent resignation, quietly and in close order. The street was black with them, for there were only a few gas-lamps in the street, whose yellow flames flickered in the wind. And what made it more difficult to circulate was that mothers of families, having at last obtained a few sous, were hastening to the shops where provisions were sold, that they might give themselves the luxury of a big loaf and, possibly, a little piece of meat besides.

Luc had the sensation of being in a besieged city on the evening when the siege was raised. Gendarmes were going and coming among the crowd, quite a number of armed men were in the streets, watching the inhabitants, as if they were afraid that some one might recommence hostilities; that some sudden fury, roused by the remembrance of past suffering, might lead to pillage, and complete the town’s destruction. The authorities and the tradespeople had triumphed, they had got the better of the wage-earners, but the slaves they had put down maintained so menacing a passive silence that bitterness seemed to poison the very air; the blasts of wind roared of terror and of vengeance, and possibly even a frightful massacre might occur. An indistinct hum came from the passing crowd, crushed indeed and powerless, and the glint of a weapon, the stripes upon a uniform here and there among the groups, told of the unavowed fears of the employers, who sat, lazily, satisfied with their victory, behind the thick curtains of their houses. The black crowd of workmen, who had suffered hunger, continued to flow on, crowding each other, silent and with bowed heads.