Complete Works of Emile Zola (1597 page)

As Luc continued his stroll and joined company with some of these groups, he stopped, listened, and endeavored to understand. At last he halted before a great butcher-shop, thrown open to the street, its gas-jets flaming among the ruddy viands. Dacheux, the master - butcher, a big, apoplectic - looking man, was standing in the doorway watching his goods, very eager to serve servants who came from respectable houses, very suspicious when some poor woman came in. He had just been watching from his door a tall, thin, fair-haired woman, who looked very poor, very pale, and very sad. She must have been rosy in her youth, but she had lost her freshness; she held a handsome boy of from four to six years of age with one hand, while on the other arm she carried a heavy basket, out of which stuck the necks of four quart wine-bottles. The butcher recognized her as Fauchard’s wife. He had got tired of refusing her continual requests for credit on small purchases, and, when he saw she was going to enter his shop, he stood in her way at the door.

“What are you wanting here now?”

“Monsieur Dacheux,” faltered Natalie, “if you would be so good — You know that my husband has gone back to the works; tomorrow he will have some money. So Monsieur Caffiaux has been so kind as to let me have these four quarts of wine, and if you would be so very good, Monsieur Dacheux, as to let me have on credit a little bit of meat — only a little bit—”

The butcher grew angry; he stormed at her, and the blood mounted to his face.

“Have I not already told you, no? Your strike has very nearly ruined me. How can you suppose I shall take part in helping you who made it? There are always enough idle workpeople who injure honest folks’ business. Those who don’t work enough to buy meat, don’t deserve to eat any.”

He was thinking of politics. He took part with the rich, with the strong. He overawed his neighbors; he was ignorant and sanguinary, and that word “meat” had, when he uttered it, considerable importance, it became aristocratic. It was holy meat to him, a luxury only to be eaten by the better classes — when it ought to have been for all.

“You have owed me four francs ever since last summer,” he went on. “I have to pay what I owe — and I do.”

Natalie fidgeted, persisted, and implored him in pitiful, low tones. But something happened which completed her discomfiture. Madame Dacheux, a little, ugly, dark, insignificant woman, who, nevertheless, it was said, succeeded in being notoriously unfaithful to her husband, had come forward with her little daughter Julienne, a child four years of age, healthy, fat, and fair, and always merry. When the two children saw each other, Louis Fauchard began to laugh, notwithstanding his poverty, while the opulent Julienne, much amused, and doubtless having no precocious conception of social inequality, went up to him and took him by the hand, so that for a brief moment he felt as if he had found a playmate, and he welcomed her with the frank joyousness of his age.

“Damn that girl!” cried Dacheux, beside himself at seeing this. “She is forever running between my legs.... Go and sit down there, right away — do!”

Then he turned his wrath against his wife, and sent her back at once to her desk, where she received and paid out money, telling her that she would do much better to look after her cash-box, so that she might not be robbed as she had been two days before, and he went on addressing himself to the people in the shop concerning the theft, which he had not ceased to fume about for the last two days.

“This was how it happened,” he said. “A kind of poor-looking woman got in, and took a five-franc piece out of the cash-box while Madame Dacheux was looking after the flies.... The thief could not deny it. She had the money in her hand. And, I tell you, I did for her! She is in prison.... It is frightful, frightful! Everybody will rob and pillage us, before long, if we do not restore order.”

And his suspicious eyes wandered over his meats to make sure that the hand of no starving creature, no workwoman out of employment, had stolen a morsel from his stand, as they might have filched precious gold from the round pot that stands on the table of a French moneychanger.

Luc saw Fauchard’s wife draw back, alarmed lest the butcher might call up a gendarme. One moment she stood motionless with her little Louis in the middle of the street, among the crowd gathered before a brilliant bakery, adorned with mirrors and a profusion of lights. It was opposite the butcher-shop, and one of its windows being partly open, gave those who passed by the smell of cakes and of great golden loaves. The mother and child stood lost in contemplation, gazing at the cakes and bread, while Luc, forgetting them, was growing interested in what was passing inside the bakery.

A vehicle had stopped before the door; out of it got a peasant, with a little boy of eight and a little girl two years younger. At the counter stood the baker’s wife, handsome Madame Mitaine, a stout blonde, who, at thirty-five, was still a superb woman; all the men in the country round had been in love with her, but she had never faltered in her fidelity to her husband, a spare, colorless, silent man, very seldom to be seen, for he was always at work at his kneading-trough or attending to his oven. Near her on a bench sat her son, Evariste, a little fellow ten years old, fat and fair, like his mother, with a kindly look in his face and with tender eyes.

“Ah! Monsieur Lenfant! And how are you? And here are your Arsène and Olympe, too? One has no need to ask if they are well.”

The peasant, a man a little over thirty, had a broad, calm face. He was in no hurry to answer, but at length said, in a reflective tone:

“Yes, yes, their health is good; we are all right at Combettes.... It’s the land that is sick. I cannot send you the brown flour I promised you, Madame Mitaine. Everything has gone wrong. And as I was coming to Beauclair this evening with the cart, I thought I had better step in and tell you.”

He went on relating his troubles, of land which would not support the man who cultivated it, and which did not even repay him for his seed and fertilizers. The baker’s handsome wife sympathetically nodded her head. It was very true; it took, nowadays, a lot of work for only a little gain. Nobody had as much to eat as he wanted. She had nothing to do with politics, but she could see that things were going to the bad! And all through this strike it had given her a sore heart to know that there were poor creatures who lay down at night without having eaten a crust all day, while her own shop was full of loaves. But business is business — is it not? One cannot give away one’s things, all the more because, you know, that would be encouraging the strikers.

Lenfant assented.

“Yes, yes, every one must look after himself. That’s right Things come right when one takes pains to make them so. But, all the same, there are people who want to get too much.”

 Evariste, who was interested in Arsène and Olympe, had left the counter to do the honors of the shop for them; and, like a big boy of ten, he smiled complaisantly at the little girl of six, whose big round head and merry face attracted him.

“Give each of them a cake, Evariste,” said handsome Madame Mitaine, who spoiled her son and brought him up lovingly.

And as Evariste began by giving a cake to Arsène, she cried, with a laugh:

“Oh! but that is not gallant, my darling; you should serve a lady first.”

Then Evariste and Olympe, who had felt shy at first, quickly became friends. Ah! those dear little children — is there anything more lovely in this world? If they were wise, they would never grow up, as men do, to devour each other. And Lenfant went away, saying he hoped, all the same, to bring the brown flour later. Madame Mitaine, who had gone to the door, stood looking after them as they got into their vehicle and drove down the Rue de Brias. It was at that moment that Luc observed Madame Fauchard, still leading her little boy, go up to the baker’s wife. She murmured a few words that he could not hear; probably she was asking for more credit, for suddenly Madame Mitaine, with a gesture that meant “yes,” went back into the shop and gave her a large loaf of bread, which the poor thing carried off in haste, pressed close to her bosom.

Dacheux, exasperated and full of suspicion, had been looking on from the sidewalk opposite, and he cried out: “You will get robbed if you do like that! There have been some boxes of sardines stolen at Caffiaux’s. They are stealing from everybody.”

“Bah!” said Madame Mitaine, who had gone back to the entrance of her shop, “it is only rich people who are robbed.”

Luc slowly went down the Rue de Brias, walking along in the crowd, which continued to increase. It seemed to him that there was terror in the air, as if a breath might suddenly stir to violence this sad and silent crowd of people. Then, as he reached the Mairie, he found Lenfant’s cart there, standing at the street corner, before a hardware-store, a sort of bazaar kept by Laboque and his wife. The door being open he heard vehement bargaining going on between the peasant and the proprietor.

“Ah! blood and thunder! You want to sell everything at enormous prices.... Your spades, now; they have gone up two francs!”

“Hang it, Monsieur Lenfant, it is all because of this cursed strike; it is not our fault if the factories have stopped work, and if everything has been growing dear!.... I am paying much more for iron, and I must make something, you know.”

“Make something! — yes, but you need not double your prices.... You will break up your trade. One won’t be able, before long, to buy a tool.”

Laboque was a little, lean, dried-up man, with the eyes and the nose of a ferret, always in motion. He had a wife as tall as himself, sharp, dark, and with a prodigious turn for making money. Both had begun life by attending fairs, carrying round in a cart pitchforks, rakes, and saws. Ten years later they opened a little shop, and had managed to enlarge their business from year to year, until they found themselves at the head of a large establishment, carrying on a retail business between the neighboring factories and their smaller customers, to whom they sold, at a great profit, the products of the iron-works in the Pit, nails from the factory of Chodorge, sickles and scythes made by Hausser, tools and agricultural machines from the factory of the Mirandas. A gradual wastage of human strength and hard-earned money found its way into their hands, for they were honest tradespeople, who only appropriated what was considered proper in their line of business; and every night when they made up their accounts they rejoiced over the money they had amassed out of the wants of people who, as they said, were rusting for want of work, who were wasting their energies, like the wheels of an engine, whirling round and round without advancing when it is just going off the track.

So, while the peasant and the hardware-man were furiously quarrelling over a reduction of twenty sous, Luc again observed the children. There were two in the shop, a big boy of twelve, Auguste by name, who had a serious look on his face and was studying a lesson, and Eulalie, a little girl of five, sitting very quiet on a little chair, with a grave, kind look, as if she were forming her own opinion of the people who came in. From the moment the children entered, she seemed to take an interest in Arsène Lenfant, and probably liking his appearance, she addressed him with her little air of condescension. The two children were getting acquainted when a woman entered, bringing with her a fifth child. She was Babette, the wife of the puddler, Bourron; she was rosy and rotund, with a fund of gayety that nothing ever exhausted; she was holding by the hand her little daughter Marthe, a child of about four, as fat and merry as herself. At once she let go her mother’s hand and ran up to Arsène Lenfant, whom she appeared to have known previously.  Babette’s appearance cut short the bargaining between the hardware-man and the peasant; they came at once to an agreement, saying they would split the twenty sous. Babette brought back a saucepan she had bought the night before.

“It leaks, Monsieur Laboque. I found that out the moment I put it on the fire. I cannot keep a saucepan that leaks.”

And while Laboque was examining it, grumbling, but at last deciding to exchange it, Madame Laboque was speaking of her children. She said they were as still as two earthen pots, neither moved all day, one sitting in her little chair, the other over his books. It was clear that she and Laboque must make money for them, for they did not take after their father and mother; they would never make much for themselves. Without listening to all this, Auguste Laboque was smiling to Marthe, and Eulalie Laboque was holding out her little hand to Arsène Lenfant, while the other child, Olympe, was quietly finishing the cake that Madame Mitaine’s little boy had given her. All that was very pretty, very sweet; it seemed to breathe a fragrant hope for the future into the midst of the atmosphere of hatred and of strife that prevailed in the streets.

“I suppose you don’t expect us to make money if we listen to the stories like that!” resumed Laboque, handing another saucepan to Babette. “There are no more good workmen; all slight their work — and you cannot imagine what losses there are in a business like ours. Anybody can come in here; it is like a country fair, with things exposed outside on the street. This very afternoon we had something stolen.”

Lenfant, who was paying for his spade, turned round. “Then it is really true, what I have heard about everybody’s stealing?”

“What? — is it true?
We
don’t steal, it is other people who rob us.... They have been two months on strike, and, having no money to buy with, they steal what they can get.... There — see — in this very house, not two hours ago, I had some knives and other things stolen. It is not pleasant to think of.”

And he made a sudden gesture of disquiet, growing pale and shuddering as he pointed to the street, now filled with a menacing and dangerous crowd. It seemed as if he feared a sudden attack, an attack that would have bereft him of everything.

“Knives and things of that sort, you say?” repeated Babette, with her habitual laugh; “they can’t eat knives and such things. What do you expect them to do with them?... You are like Caffiaux, just opposite, who is complaining that some one has carried off from his place a box of sardines. What street-boy would so much as taste them?”