Complete Works of Emile Zola (1615 page)

“There, Monsieur Jordan,” he said; “it is that
tuyère
there that was choked, and, unfortunately, it happened after I had gone to bed, so that I did not find it out until the next day.... As the air ceased to come, a chill was the result, and a complete block must have taken place, with an accumulation of material resulting in total destruction. Nothing would pass down, and when I was notified, which was only at the moment of tapping, the slag came out in a thick mass, already perfectly black.... And you will understand my apprehension, for I remembered our misfortune ten years ago, when it was necessary to demolish one entire corner of the blast-furnace after a similar experience.”

Never before had he spoken so much at one time. His voice trembled at the remembrance of the old disaster, for there is no occurrence more to be dreaded in a black furnace than these sudden chills during which the coal becomes extinguished, and the ore hardens into a compact, stony mass. Unless the fire can be started again, the case is hopeless. By degrees everything cools off, and the whole mass finally consolidates with the furnace itself; after which nothing can be done but to demolish that portion, and destroy it as though it were an old turret crumbling into ruins, and henceforward useless.

“What did you do?” asked Jordan.

Morfain did not answer at once. He had learned to love this monster, whose streams of lava had burned his face for thirty years. This giant was his master, a fire-god whom he adored; he had worshipped at its shrine, and submitted to its tyranny ever since he had come to man’s estate, in order that he might earn his daily bread. He could read only with difficulty, he was untouched by the spirit of the times, and he accepted his hard servitude without revolt, feeling an actual pride in his strong arms, his daily warfare with the flames, and his fidelity to this sullen monster, in whose service he labored without ever thinking of such things as strikes. He had gradually come to feel a real passion for his barbarous and terrible god; his faith in him was tempered by a secret tenderness, and he shuddered at the recollection of the dangerous calamity from which the object of his devotion had just been saved by his own extraordinary effort.

“What did I do?” said he, at last. “I began by increasing the coal supplies threefold; then I tried to clear the
tuyère
by means of a manœuvre with the blast-engine that Monsieur Laroche sometimes employed. But the case was too grave; I found it was necessary to dismount the
tuyère,
and tried to dislodge the impediment by means of a poker. Ah, that was very hard work; we used up all our strength. Still, the air did at last come through, and I have been relieved, because in the slag of this morning I found fragments of ore, and therefore I knew the obstacle must be breaking up and working down. The fires have been relighted, and everything is going on again. We shall soon be able to tell where we are now from the tapping.”

Then he added, in a low voice, as though exhausted by so long a speech:

“Monsieur Jordan, I believe that if I had not had better news to give you this evening, I should have gone up and thrown myself into the throat of the furnace.... I am only a common workman, a master-founder, in whom you have reposed confidence, since you have put me in the place of an engineer who was a gentleman. How could I meet you on your return, if I had to tell you that the furnace was dead because I had let the fire go out?... No; I would rather die, too! For the last two nights I have not gone to bed at all; I have watched by the furnace, as I remember watching by my poor wife when I lost her. And I can tell you that the soup which you saw me eating this evening is the first thing that I have swallowed for forty-eight hours, because I myself was choked like the furnace. I am not saying this to make excuses; I only wish that you should know how great my joy is at not having betrayed your confidence.”

He almost wept, this strong, sturdy man, hardened by the furnace fires, whose limbs were like steel; and Jordan pressed both his hands affectionately, saying:

“My good Morfain, I know you for a courageous, trustworthy man, and if any disaster had occurred, I am well assured that you would have fought it to the end.” Petit-Da, standing erect in the shadow, had listened, without interrupting by word or gesture. He did not move until his father gave orders for the tapping. In the course of the last twenty-four hours there had been five tappings, about five hours apart. The output, which was ordinarily about eighty tons a day, was now reduced to fifty tons, each tapping yielding about ten tons. The preparations for this one were completed in silence; by the feeble light of the lanterns, the channels and moulds were formed in the fine sand of the casting-pit. There was now nothing to be done but to draw off the slag, and nothing was to be seen but the slowly moving shadows of the founders passing back and forth and leisurely urging forward work that the onlooker did not understand; while in the deep silence of the squat god, whose burnt belly uttered not even a murmur, there was all the time heard the meagre flow of the drops of water that fell from its sides.

“Monsieur Jordan,” said Morfain, “do you wish to see the slag run off?”

Jordan and Luc followed him for a few steps, and stood on the top of a little mound formed of heaped-up debris. The tap-hole had been placed in the right side of the blastfurnace, and the slag was already escaping from it in a fiery stream of sparkling scoriae, as if the whole crucible of metal in a state of fusion had suddenly been skimmed there. The mass was very thick, and moved slowly until it fell into small iron plate wagons. At first the lava was rose-colored, and then it gradually darkened.

“The color is good, you see, Monsieur Jordan,” cried Morfain, rejoiced. “Oh, we are out of trouble now, there can be no doubt.... You will see, you will see!”

He led them in front of the blast-furnace, under the casting-pit, among the vague shadows that the lanterns only dimly illuminated. Petit-Da had just driven a tapping-bar into the plug of clay which closed the tap-hole with one blow of his mighty arm; and now the eight men who composed the night shift struck the bar at regular intervals with a sledge in order to drive it in. Their dark faces were barely distinguishable, but the heavy strokes of the sledge were plainly to be heard. Then suddenly there was a flash of blinding light, as if from a narrow opening into a fiery interior. But nothing as yet made its appearance, except a thin thread of burning liquid. Petit-Da was obliged to take another bar, drive it in, and then turn it with a herculean effort in order to enlarge the opening. Then with an outburst the whole flood streamed out in a tumultuous rush, poured its stream of molten metal into the channels in the fine sand, spread itself out on all sides to fill the moulds, and, finally, widening still more, expanded into fiery seas, which scorched the eyes with their light and heat. And from these paths and fields of fire arose an incessant crop of sparks — blue sparks of delicate lightness, and golden flashes of exquisite fineness, a perfect efflorescence of little blue flowers set on stems of gold. Whenever an obstacle in the shape of sand presented itself, the sparks and flashes redoubled and rose in a splendid bouquet to an immense height. Suddenly, like a miraculous sunrise, a brilliant light appeared all around, illuminating the blast-furnace with a glow of intense brightness, lighting up the lower part of the casting-pit, with its iron frame-work and rafters, and bringing out its darkest corners. The surrounding blackness disappeared with extraordinary rapidity; all the different buildings and machines attached to the monster, as well as the workmen of the night shift, who up to this moment had seemed like phantoms, now became suddenly real, outlined with incredible sharpness, so that these heroes of labor seemed to enter all at once into glory. But the illumination did not end there; the splendor of this aurora extended to all the vicinity; it dissipated the shadows that hung over the slopes of the Monts Bleuses; its reflection reached even to the sleeping roofs of Beauclair, and was finally lost in the distance on the immense plains of Roumagne.

“That tapping is superb,” said Jordan, when he had noted the quality of the molten metal, its color, and its consistency.

Morfain enjoyed a modest triumph.

“Yes, yes, Monsieur Jordan,” he said; “it is as good work as we could expect. All the same, I am very much relieved that you came back this evening. You will have no more uneasiness.”

Luc watched the whole operation with the greatest interest. The heat from it was intense, and he felt it through all his clothes. Little by little all the moulds were filled, and the fine sand covering the floor of the casting-pit was changed into an incandescent sea. And when the ten tons of metal had been run off, there came forth from the tap-hole a final tempest in the shape of an immense blast of sparks and flames, caused by the blast-engine, which completed the evacuation of the crucible, a free passage of air that burst forth with an infernal roar. But the molten metal was already cooling off; the blinding white light changed to pink, to red, and then to brown. The sparks had ceased, and the field of azure flowers with their golden stems was now no more. The darkness descended again with rapidity, the shadows once more enveloped the casting-pit and the blast-furnace with its adjacent buildings, while the lanterns seemed to relight their feeble rays. Only one indistinct group of workmen could now be distinguished. Petit-Da, assisted by his comrades, closed the tap-hole with a new plug of clay, while the blast-engine for the moment was silent, having just been stopped to permit this work.

“My good Morfain,” said Jordan, “you will go to bed now, will you not?”

“Oh no; I am going to stay here another night.”

“What! Stay here? This will be your third sleepless night.”

“No; there is a camp-bed in the watchman’s room, where one can sleep very well. My son and I will relieve each other, and we will make rounds every two hours.”

“But that is not necessary, since everything is going on well.... Come, Morfain, be reasonable; go back home and sleep in your bed.”

“No, no, Monsieur Jordan; let me have my way...  There is no more danger, but I prefer to render account to you myself up to to-morrow. It is my own wish.” Jordan and Luc left him there, after having shaken hands with him. Luc carried away with him a touching impression of that tall figure, bending under the past of sad and humble labor, and yet endowed with the nobleness that attends long-continued effort in the service of humanity as it toils towards happiness and repose. He seemed to reproduce the ancient Vulcans, who had mastered fire in the heroic times which Jordan had just alluded to, when the first smelters had reduced ore by burning wood in a hole formed in the earth. On the day when man achieved the victory over fire, and made it his servant, he became master of the world, and the era of civilization began. Morfain, living in his cave in the rocks, with all his efforts and his pride in them, appeared to Luc like the direct descendant of those primitive toilers, whose nature had been reproduced in him by atavism, making him silent and resigned to using his muscles without a murmur, as in the dawn of human organization. In those thousands of years how much sweat had been expended, how much strength had been exhausted and used up! Yet nothing was changed; the conquered fire still had its victims and its slaves who labored for it, who spent their lives in keeping it under subjection, while the privileged of the world lived in idleness in healthy and luxurious dwellings. Morfain, with his air of a legend-hero, did not appear to suspect the monstrous iniquity of all this; he was in ignorance of the storms and revolts that raged around him, remaining impassive at his self-destroying post, in which his father and grandfather had died, and where he himself would die, a sacrifice to existing conditions of society, unknown and unappreciated. The figure of Bonnaire then rose before Luc, that other hero of labor, who spent his life in the struggle against oppression and those who were engaged in it, exerting himself to bring about the reign of justice for the happiness of his comrades, even to the extent of sacrificing his own daily bread. Had not suffering humanity already endured enough under these burdens, and was not the hour come for the slave’s deliverance, and for him who had been so admirable in his endurance to become the free citizen of a society founded on good feeling, where the just division, of labor and of wealth would result in a perpetual peace?

As they descended the steps cut in the rock, Jordan stopped at the hut of a night-watchman to give an order, and then Luc was witness of an incident which completed the disturbance in his soul. Among some loose rocks behind the bushes he distinctly perceived the shadows of two persons whose lips met in a kiss while they stood clasped in each other’s arms. He recognized the girl; it was Ma Bleue, tall, fair, and stately, with those blue eyes which seemed to illuminate her entire face. The other figure, he was sure, was that of Achille Gourier, the son of the mayor, that handsome, high-spirited boy whom he had seen at Guerdache, and whose attitude of revolt and contempt for the decaying
bourgeoisie
to whom he belonged had attracted his attention. The latter spent all his holidays in hunting and fishing among the rocky paths, the torrents, and the fir-trees of the Monts Bleuses. He had no doubt conceived a passion for this beautiful, untutored girl, whom so many lovers courted in vain; and she, in her turn, must have yielded at the coming of this Prince Charming, who transported her out of the roughness of her desert into a delicious dream of the future. The future, the future! Was it not the future which could be read in Ma Bleue’s large eyes when she stood dreaming on the threshold of her home, with her gaze lost in the distance? Her father and brother were keeping watch up above, while she had made her escape to those rocky solitudes, and the future was for her this splendid, lover-like boy, this
bourgeoise’s
son, who spoke to her with deference, as though she were a lady, and swore to love her always. Luc’s first feeling was that of heartsickness at the idea of her father’s grief were he to learn of this adventure. Then this unauthorized affection, which, after all, was so sweet, conveyed to him a feeling of tenderness, a caressing whisper of hope; was not this an earnest of a more happy future in store for these children of all classes who, playing together, embracing each other, would at length create the righteous city of the future?