Complete Works of Emile Zola (1623 page)

In the inevitable war which day by day went on between the Pit and La Crêcherie, and which might end in the destruction of one or the other, Luc was not moved by any pity for the Delaveaus. If he felt esteem for the man when he saw him so assiduously at work, so courageous in defending his opinions, he despised the woman Fernande; he even regarded her with a sort of terror when he began to perceive the terrible strength for destruction born in her of corruption. The discreditable situation in which he had detected her at Guerdache, her imperious conquest of poor Boisgelin, a handsome man whose fortune was about to melt away in the hands of so greedy a coadjutrix, filled him with an ever-increasing solicitude as he looked forward to tragedies in the future. It was the good and gentle Suzanne who called forth his anxious tenderness, for she would be the victim, the only person whom he pitied in that rotten household, which before long was sure to crumble into ruin. He had given up visiting her; though his intercourse with her had been dear to his heart, he never went to Guerdache; he merely knew how things went on there by reports that were brought to him by chance. All seemed to be going from bad to worse; the foolish exactions of Fernande seemed to increase, while Suzanne seemed to find nothing to oppose to them but silence. She was forced to shut her eyes for fear of a public scandal. One day Luc met her in one of the streets of Beauclair, holding her little Paul by the hand. She gave him a long look, in which he read her sorrow and the regard she felt for him, notwithstanding the fatal struggle which necessarily separated their two lives.

Therefore, as soon as Luc recognized Fauchard, he stood on the defensive, for he was anxious to avoid any collision with the Pit. He was willing to accept any workmen who came to him of their own accord from the rival works, but was unwilling to hold out any inducements to attract them. The workmen made their own decision. And as Bonnaire had spoken to him about Fauchard several times, he imagined that the latter had come to seek employment with him.

“Ah! there you are, my friend,” he said. “Have you come to see if your old comrades can find a place for you?”

The man whose life-work it had been to draw crucibles out of the furnace was bewildered. He grew doubtful as to what he was there for. He was unable to make any decision, and began to stammer incoherently. Any new thing alarmed him; he was like a trained horse in a riding-school. The initiative in him had been so completely blunted that, aside from his usual gesture, he did not know how to act, filled as he was with childish terror. The new works and the great halls, clean and light, seemed to him something that he ought to fear, a place where he could not exist. And all he felt was eagerness to get back to his dark and dismal hell. Ragu had chaffed him. What was the use of changing his employers if nothing was certain? Then, perhaps, he vaguely felt that the time when he could have changed his life had passed away.

“No — no, monsieur; not yet. I should like to — but I don’t know.... I will see about it later. I will consult my wife...

Luc smiled.

“
That’s right, that’s right. A wife should always be consulted.... Good-bye, my friend.”

And Fauchard went off awkwardly, astonished at the way his visit had turned out, for he had undoubtedly come there with the intention of asking for work, and the place pleased him, and he saw that he could make more there than he did at the Pit. So why did he hurry away, bewildered by what he had seen, as if it were something too good for him, anxious only to take refuge in the work he was accustomed to, and to sink back into the deep apathy of the poverty he had been bred in?

Luc stayed talking to Bonnaire for a moment about an improvement that he wanted to make in the rolling-mills; but Ragu had something to ask of him.

“Monsieur Luc, a high wind has again broken three panes of glass in our bedroom window, and this time I give you warning that we will not pay to have them repaired.... It is because our house, is the first to feel a gale of wind when it blows from the plain. We are freezing.”

Ragu was always grumbling. He always found something to be dissatisfied about.

“It is all simple enough, Monsieur Luc. You only have to call at our house to see how it is. Josine will show you what’s the matter.”

Since Ragu had become one of the workmen at La Crêcherie, Sœurette had persuaded him to marry Josine, and the young couple occupied one of the little houses in the industrial town, between that of Bonnaire and that of Bourron. Up to that time, since Ragu seemed to have turned over a new leaf, thanks to his improved surroundings, the relations between husband and wife had not been greatly troubled. There had been a few quarrels, principally on account of Nanet, who lived with them. But when Josine had cause to weep she always shut the window that nobody might hear her sobs.

A shadow passed over Luc’s face, clouding the joy he always felt when he visited, his workshops in the morning.

“All right, Ragu,” he said, quietly, “I will come round to your house presently.”

Here their conversation ended, for the rolling-mills were again started and their noise made it impossible for the human voice to be heard. Again the dazzling ingots passed, repassed, becoming elongated at every travel, and finally becoming rails. Rails were incessantly added to rails, until it seemed as if the whole earth was soon to be furrowed with them, in order to carry victorious life, increased tenfold, to infinity.

Luc looked on a little longer at the good work, smiling at Bonnaire and encouraging Ragu and Bourron, as if he had been one of themselves, trying to sow the seeds of kindly feeling between employer and employed, as he spoke to each gang of workmen; for he was convinced that nothing can be satisfactorily accomplished without mutual kind feeling and personal regard. Then he left the workshops and went to the club-house, as he did every morning, in order to look in at the schools. Although in the workshops he delighted to dream of future peace, he had still more satisfaction in the pleasures of hope as he stood among the children, the future men and women of his world.

Of course, the club-house was thus far only a vast building, clean and bright, the great object having been to afford as much accommodation at as little expense as possible. The schools occupied one wing, in another was the library, the hall for games, and the bath-rooms, while the great hall for meetings and exhibitions, together with certain offices, occupied the centre of the building. The schools were divided into three distinct sections — a
crèche
for the infants, where working mothers might leave their little ones — even those in swaddling clothes; a school, properly so-called, comprising five divisions, which gave complete instruction; and a series of apprentice workshops, open to the pupils of the five classes, as well as to those who were learning various trades, so that as they acquired general knowledge they also learned handicrafts. The two sexes were not kept apart; boys and girls grew up together from the time they lay side by side in their cradles until they ended their term of instruction in the workshops, which they left only to be married. They passed through the same classes, just as they would in real life, and sat on the same benches. To separate the sexes, to give them different instruction, to bring them up ignorant of each other — is not that the way to make them enemies; to pervert and to debase their natural attraction for each other; to make men too bold, and women too coy, because they perpetually misunderstood each other? Peace between them will never be made until they find a common interest as comrades, knowing each other, as those who have imbibed life from the same springs, working together, as those who are to confront life logically, healthfully, and as it ought to be.

Sœurette had been of great assistance to Luc in organizing the schools. While Jordan shut himself up in his laboratory, after having given Luc the money that he had promised him, he refused to look over the accounts, or even to be consulted on what was to be done, but his sister was passionately interested in this new town, which she had seen begun, and which was now growing under her eyes. There had always been in her a maternal instinct for the care of children, for teaching them, and for nursing the suffering; and her charity, which up to that time had been able to succour only a few among the poor pointed out to her by Abbé Merle, Dr. Novarre, or Hermeline the schoolmaster, suddenly seemed to have its sphere enlarged. She had a large family on her hands; laboring people to instruct, guide, and love — a present from Luc, as it were.

Therefore, from the first moment she had chosen her work, not declining to take an interest in the organization of the classes and workshops for training in manual labor, but principally occupying herself with the
crèche,
where she would pass her mornings delighting in the love borne her by the little children. When any one suggested to her to get married, she would answer, with a little embarrassment, but with the pleasant laugh of a woman who knows she is not beautiful: “Have I not plenty of other people’s children?” She had found an assistant in Josine, who, though she had married Ragu, was still childless. Every morning she found employment for her at the
crèche
, among the cradles. They had become friends, notwithstanding their different natures, being drawn together by the care both took of the charming little dears.

But this morning, when Luc went into the bright white room, he found Sœurette alone.

“Josine has not come to-day,” said she. “She sent word that she was indisposed — nothing very serious, apparently.”

Luc felt a vague suspicion, and his brow was again clouded. He said, simply:

“I have to pass by her house, and will see whether she has need of anything.”

Before he left, however, he had the pleasure of seeing all the babies in their cradles. In the great white room they lay all in white, their cradles standing in a row along the white walls. Their little pink faces were smiling as they slept. There were kind - hearted women there, with long white aprons, tender eyes, and maternal hands, who watched with gentle words over all this infancy, over these germs of humanity, still so frail, and yet upon whom the future was to depend. But there were other and larger children, already beginning to be little men and women, three and four years old, and these were left at liberty, the weaker in rolling-chairs, the others tottering on their chubby legs, not without many falls. The hall opened on a veranda decked with flowers, leading to a garden. A troop of little darlings was basking in the sunshine and warm air. Playthings, such as jumping-jacks, were hung from strings to amuse the little ones, while the bigger children had dolls, horses, and carts which they dragged about with considerable noise, like heroes in whom was awakened the necessity for action. It was delightful to see all these little people growing up in this way, so merry, and in such welfare for the work of the morrow.

“Are none of them sick?” asked Luc, delightedly, lingering in this bright place.

“Oh no! They are all merry this morning,” answered Sœurette. “There were two children attacked with measles the day before yesterday, and I would not receive them. They had to be isolated.”

Luc and Sœurette had gone out together on the veranda, which led them towards the next school. The glass doors of the five classes succeeded one another, and all looked out upon the verdure of the garden. As the weather was warm they were wide open, and so Luc and Sœurette could look in from the outside, without entering the halls.

The masters, since the schools had been established, had elaborated a new programme. In the first school they took only children who did not know how to read. When a pupil had passed through the fifth school they gave him up, having imparted to him such elements of general knowledge as would be of use to him in life. They tried especially to familiarize him with facts and things, that he might understand what was real in the world. They also endeavored to awaken in him a sense of order, and, by daily experience, to make him learn the value of method. Without method there can be no useful work. It is method which classifies, which enables us to accumulate knowledge without losing what we have already acquired. And learning from books was, if not exactly set aside, relegated to a place of less importance than in most schools, for a child learns thoroughly only what he can see, what he can touch, and what he can understand. They did not oblige him to bend slavishly over incomprehensible dogmas, they did not make him dread the person and tyranny of his teacher. He was encouraged to discover truth for himself, to understand it, and to make it his own. There is no other way in which we can train boys into men; the individual energy of each child was awakened and employed in the work of his own instruction. They had also given up the system of rewards and punishments; they did not have recourse to threats or caresses to make the lazy work, since none were lazy. There were occasionally sick children, and children who did not understand what had been badly explained to them, or children into whose brains it had been the custom to pound knowledge with a ferule, for which they were not prepared. It was enough, since these schools desired to have only good pupils, to utilize the great desire to know which glows in every human heart, the inextinguishable curiosity a child feels about everything around him, so that he is always tiring grown people with his questions. Instruction ceased to be a torture, and became a constantly renewed pleasure as soon as it was made attractive. The teachers tried to stimulate the intelligence of the children, and to direct them to make fresh discoveries, for every one has the duty and the right to inform himself. They thought that the child ought to do this, that he ought to be left unobstructed in the midst of the vast world, in which he would some day take his place as a man. Thus trained he would have energy for action, and a power of will by which he would be directed how to act and to decide.

This was how the five classes, one after the other, went on. They gave notions to begin with, then scientific truths were acquired by a logical and gradual emancipation of the intellectual faculties. In the garden a gymnasium had been established, games and all physical exercises were encouraged, that the bodies of the children might be strengthened, and grow healthy and robust, while the brain was left to develop itself, and to be enriched without being conscious of how it acquired its riches. A good mental balance is never to be found except in a healthy body. In the lower classes especially the time for recreation was long. A beginning was made by requiring no tasks of the children but such as were short, varied, and in proportion to their endurance. The rule was to confine them as little as possible. Lessons were very often given in the open air. Walks were planned, which instructed the children when they saw things about which it was well that they should know; they were taken to manufactories; they were shown the marvellous works of nature; they saw animals, plants, mountains, and rivers; their best instruction came from life itself, for their teachers were persuaded that the ultimate purpose of all science ought to be to teach how life should be lived; so they tried to give their pupils, besides general notions of things, the idea of human brotherhood — the common brotherhood of men. The children grew up together and they all lived together. Love was the bond of their union, of justice, and of happiness. It was the indispensable bond among them. If they loved one another, it was thought that peace would reign among them. This love, beginning in family affection, would extend to the fatherland, and thence to all mankind, and it would be the sole law in the happy city of the future. It was cultivated in the children by interesting them in one another. The strong watched over the weak. All had their games in common, their studies, and their nascent passions. There was to be a future harvest, men strong by reason of bodily exercise, educated to understand the processes of nature, drawn closely to one another by heart and intelligence — because they were brothers! There was laughter and loud shouting, and Luc felt some anxiety, since things did not always go on quite smoothly among the children. In the middle of one of the classes he had just seen Nanet on his feet, and judged that he was the cause of the commotion.