The french masters, p.894
The French Masters, page 894
Then the priest stood and talked at length. He spoke of the strike, this terrible wretchedness, this exasperated rancour of famine, with the ardour of a missionary who is preaching to savages for the glory of religion. He said that the Church was with the poor, that she would one day cause justice to triumph by calling down the anger of God on the iniquities of the rich. And that day would come soon, for the rich had taken the place of God, and were governing without God, in their impious theft of power. But if the workers desired the fair division of the goods of the earth, they ought at once to put themselves in the hands of the priests, just as on the death of Jesus the poor and the humble grouped themselves around the apostles. What strength the pope would have, what an army the clergy would have under them, when they were able to command the numberless crowd of workers! In one week they would purge the world of the wicked, they would chase away the unworthy masters. Then, indeed, there would be a real kingdom of God, every one recompensed according to his merits, and the law of labour as the foundation for universal happiness.
Maheude, who was listening to him, seemed to hear Étienne, in those autumn evenings when he announced to them the end of their evils. Only she had always distrusted the cloth.
“That’s very well, what you say there, sir,” she replied, “but that’s because you no longer agree with the bourgeois. All our other curés dined at the manager’s, and threatened us with the devil as soon as we asked for bread.”
He began again, and spoke of the deplorable misunderstanding between the Church and the people. Now, in veiled phrases, he hit at the town curés, at the bishops, at the highly placed clergy, sated with enjoyment, gorged with domination, making pacts with the liberal middle class, in the imbecility of their blindness, not seeing that it was this middle class which had dispossessed them of the empire of the world. Deliverance would come from the country priests, who would all rise to re-establish the kingdom of Christ, with the help of the poor; and already he seemed to be at their head; he raised his bony form like the chief of a band, a revolutionary of the gospel, his eyes so filled with light that they illuminated the gloomy room. This enthusiastic sermon lifted him to mystic heights, and the poor people had long ceased to understand him.
“No need for so many words,” growled Maheu suddenly. “You’d best begin by bringing us a loaf.”
“Come on Sunday to mass,” cried the priest. “God will provide for everything.”
And he went off to catechize the Levaques in their turn, so carried away by his dream of the final triumph of the Church, and so contemptuous of facts, that he would thus go through the settlements without charities, with empty hands amid this army dying of hunger, being a poor devil himself who looked upon suffering as the spur to salvation.
Maheu continued his pacing, and nothing was heard but his regular tramp which made the floor tremble. There was the sound of a rust-eaten pulley; old Bonnemort was spitting into the cold grate. Then the rhythm of the feet began again. Alzire, weakened by fever, was rambling in a low voice, laughing, thinking that it was warm and that she was playing in the sun.
“Good gracious!” muttered Maheude, after having touched her cheeks, “how she burns! I don’t expect that damned beast now, the brigands must have stopped him from coming.”
She meant the doctor and the Company. She uttered a joyous exclamation, however, when the door once more opened. But her arms fell back and she remained standing still with gloomy face.
“Good evening,” whispered Étienne, when he had carefully closed the door.
He often came thus at night-time. The Maheus learnt his retreat after the second day. But they kept the secret and no one in the settlement knew exactly what had become of the young man. A legend had grown up around him. People still believed in him and mysterious rumours circulated: he would reappear with an army and chests full of gold; and there was always the religious expectation of a miracle, the realized ideal, a sudden entry into that city of justice which he had promised them. Some said they had seen him lying back in a carriage, with three other gentlemen, on the Marchiennes road; others affirmed that he was in England for a few days. At length, however, suspicions began to arise and jokers accused him of hiding in a cellar, where Mouquette kept him warm; for this relationship, when known, had done him harm. There was a growing disaffection in the midst of his popularity, a gradual increase of the despairing among the faithful, and their number was certain, little by little, to grow.
“What brutal weather!” he added. “And you — nothing new, always from bad to worse? They tell me that little Négrel has been to Belgium to get Borains. Good God! we are done for if that is true!”
He shuddered as he entered this dark icy room, where it was some time before his eyes were able to see the unfortunate people whose presence he guessed by the deepening of the shade. He was experiencing the repugnance and discomfort of the workman who has risen above his class, refined by study and stimulated by ambition. What wretchedness! and odours! and the bodies in a heap! And a terrible pity caught him by the throat. The spectacle of this agony so overcame him that he tried to find words to advise submission.
But Maheu came violently up to him, shouting:
“Borains! They won’t dare, the bloody fools! Let the Borains go down, then, if they want us to destroy the pits!”
With an air of constraint, Étienne explained that it was not possible to move, that the soldiers who guarded the pits would protect the descent of the Belgian workmen. And Maheu clenched his fists, irritated especially, as he said, by having bayonets in his back. Then the colliers were no longer masters in their own place? They were treated, then, like convicts, forced to work by a loaded musket! He loved his pit, it was a great grief to him not to have been down for two months. He was driven wild, therefore, at the idea of this insult, these strangers whom they threatened to introduce. Then the recollection that his certificate had been given back to him struck him to the heart.
“I don’t know why I’m angry,” he muttered. “I don’t belong to their shop any longer. When they have hunted me away from here, I may as well die on the road.”
“As to that,” said Étienne, “if you like, they’ll take your certificate back to-morrow. People don’t send away good workmen.”
He interrupted himself, surprised to hear Alzire, who was laughing softly in the delirium of her fever. So far he had only made out Father Bonnemort’s stiff shadow, and this gaiety of the sick child frightened him. It was indeed too much if the little ones were going to die of it. With trembling voice he made up his mind.
“Look here! this can’t go on, we are done for. We must give it up.”
Maheude, who had been motionless and silent up to now, suddenly broke out, and treating him familiarly and swearing like a man, she shouted in his face:
“What’s that you say? It’s you who say that, by God!” He was about to give reasons, but she would not let him speak.
“Don’t repeat that, by God! or, woman as I am, I’ll put my fist into your face. Then we have been dying for two months, and I have sold my household, and my little ones have fallen ill of it, and there is to be nothing done, and the injustice is to begin again! Ah! do you know! when I think of that my blood stands still. No, no, I would burn everything, I would kill everything, rather than give up.”
She pointed at Maheu in the darkness, with a vague, threatening gesture.
“Listen to this! If any man goes back to the pit, he’ll find me waiting for him on the road to spit in his face and cry coward!
Étienne could not see her, but he felt a heat like the breath of a barking animal. He had drawn back, astonished at this fury which was his work. She was so changed that he could no longer recognize the woman who was once so sensible, reproving his violent schemes, saying that we ought not to wish any one dead, and who was now refusing to listen to reason and talking of killing people. It was not he now, it was she, who talked politics, who dreamed of sweeping away the bourgeois at a stroke, who demanded the republic and the guillotine to free the earth of these rich robbers who fattened on the labour of starvelings.
“Yes, I could flay them with my fingers. We’ve had enough of them! Our turn is come now; you used to say so yourself. When I think of the father, the grandfather, the grandfather’s father, what all of them who went before have suffered, what we are suffering, and that our sons and our sons’ sons will suffer it over again, it makes me mad — I could take a knife. The other day we didn’t do enough at Montsou; we ought to have pulled the bloody place to the ground, down to the last brick. And do you know I’ve only one regret, that we didn’t let the old man strangle the Piolaine girl. Hunger may strangle my little ones for all they care!”
Her words fell like the blows of an axe in the night. The closed horizon would not open, and the impossible ideal was turning to poison in the depths of this skull which had been crushed by grief.
“You have misunderstood,” Étienne was able to say at last, beating a retreat. “We ought to come to an understanding with the Company. I know that the pits are suffering much, so that it would probably consent to an arrangement.”
“No, never!” she shouted.
Just then Lénore and Henri came back with their hands empty. A gentleman had certainly given them two sous, but the girl kept kicking her little brother, and the two sous fell into the snow, and as Jeanlin had joined in the search they had not been able to find them.
“Where is Jeanlin?”
“He’s gone away, mother; he said he had business.”
Étienne was listening with an aching heart. Once she had threatened to kill them if they ever held out their hands to beg. Now she sent them herself on to the roads, and proposed that all of them — the ten thousand colliers of Montsou — should take stick and wallet, like beggars of old, and scour the terrified country.
The anguish continued to increase in the black room. The little urchins came back hungry, they wanted to eat; why could they not have something to eat? And they grumbled, flung themselves about, and at last trod on the feet of their dying sister, who groaned. The mother furiously boxed their ears in the darkness at random. Then, as they cried still louder, asking for bread, she burst into tears, and dropped on to the floor, seizing them in one embrace with the little invalid; then, for a long time, her tears fell in a nervous outbreak which left her limp and worn out, stammering over and over again the same phrase, calling for death:
“O God! why do You not take us? O God! in pity take us, to have done with it!”
The grandfather preserved his immobility, like an old tree twisted by the rain and wind; while the father continued walking between the fireplace and the cupboard, without turning his head.
But the door opened, and this time it was Doctor Vanderhaghen.
“The devil!” he said. “This light won’t spoil your eyes. Look sharp! I’m in a hurry.”
As usual, he scolded, knocked up by work. Fortunately, he had matches with him, and the father had to strike six, one by one, and to hold them while he examined the invalid. Unwound from her coverlet, she shivered beneath this flickering light, as lean as a bird dying in the snow, so small that one only saw her hump. But she smiled with the wandering smile of the dying, and her eyes were very large; while her poor hands contracted over her hollow breast. And as the half-choked mother asked if it was right to take away from her the only child who helped in the household, so intelligent and gentle, the doctor grew vexed.
“Ah! she is going. Dead of hunger, your blessed child. And not the only one, either; I’ve just seen another one over there. You all send for me, but I can’t do anything; it’s meat that you want to cure you.”
Maheu, with burnt fingers, had dropped the match, and the darkness closed over the little corpse, which was still warm. The doctor had gone away in a hurry. Étienne heard nothing more in the black room but Maheude’s sobs, repeating her cry for death, that melancholy and endless lamentation:
“O God! it is my turn, take me! O God! take my man, take the others, out of pity, to have done with it!”
CHAPTER 3
ON that Sunday, ever since eight o’clock, Souvarine had been sitting alone in the parlour of the Avantage, at his accustomed place, with his head against the wall. Not a single collier knew where to get two sous for a drink, and never had the bars had fewer customers. So Madame Rasseneur, motionless at the counter, preserved an irritated silence; while Rasseneur, standing before the iron fireplace, seemed to be gazing with a reflective air at the brown smoke from the coal.
Suddenly, in this heavy silence of an over-heated room, three light quick blows struck against one of the windowpanes made Souvarine turn his head. He rose, for he recognized the signal which Étienne had already used several times before, in order to call him, when he saw him from without, smoking his cigarette at an empty table. But before the engine-man could reach the door, Rasseneur had opened it, and, recognizing the man who stood there in the light from the window, he said to him:
“Are you afraid that I shall sell you? You can talk better here than on the road.”
Étienne entered. Madame Rasseneur politely offered him a glass, which he refused, with a gesture. The innkeeper added:
“I guessed long ago where you hide yourself. If I was a spy, as your friends say, I should have sent the police after you a week ago.”
“There is no need for you to defend yourself,” replied the young man. “I know that you have never eaten that sort of bread. People may have different ideas and esteem each other all the same.”
And there was silence once more. Souvarine had gone back to his chair, with his back to the wall and his eyes fixed on the smoke from his cigarette, but his feverish fingers were moving restlessly, and he ran them over his knees, seeking the warm fur of Poland, who was absent this evening; it was an unconscious discomfort, something that was lacking, he could not exactly say what.
Seated on the other side of the table, Étienne at last said:
“To-morrow work begins again at the Voreux. The Belgians have come with little Négrel.”
“Yes, they landed them at nightfall,” muttered Rasseneur, who remained standing. “As long as they don’t kill each other after all!”
Then raising his voice:
“No, you know, I don’t want to begin our disputes over again, but this will end badly if you hold out any longer. Why, your story is just like that of your International. I met Pluchart the day before yesterday, at Lille, where I went on business. It’s going wrong, that machine of his.”
He gave details. The association, after having conquered the workers of the whole world, in an outburst of propaganda which had left the middle class still shuddering, was now being devoured and slowly destroyed by an internal struggle between vanities and ambitions. Since the anarchists had triumphed in it, chasing out the earlier evolutionists, everything was breaking up; the original aim, the reform of the wage-system, was lost in the midst of the squabbling of sects; the scientific framework was disorganized by the hatred of discipline. And already it was possible to foresee the final miscarriage of this general revolt which for a moment had threatened to carry away in a breath the old rotten society.
“Pluchart is ill over it,” Rasseneur went on. “And he has no voice at all now. All the same, he talks on in spite of everything and wants to go to Paris. And he told me three times over that our strike was done for.”
Étienne with his eyes on the ground let him talk on without interruption. The evening before he had chatted with some mates, and he felt that breaths of spite and suspicion were passing over him, those first breaths of unpopularity which forerun defeat. And he remained gloomy, he would not confess dejection in the presence of a man who had foretold to him that the crowd would hoot him in his turn on the day when they had to avenge themselves for a miscalculation.
“No doubt the strike is done for, I know that as well as Pluchart,” he said. “But we foresaw that. We accepted this strike against our wishes, we didn’t count on finishing up with the Company. Only one gets carried away, one begins to expect things, and when it turns out badly one forgets that one ought to have expected that, instead of lamenting and quarrelling as if it were a catastrophe tumbled down from heaven.”
“Then if you think the game’s lost,” asked Rasseneur, “why don’t you make the mates listen to reason?”
The young man looked at him fixedly.
“Listen! enough of this. You have your ideas, I have mine. I came in here to show you that I feel esteem for you in spite of everything. But I still think that if we come to grief over this trouble, our starved carcasses will do more for the people’s cause than all your common-sense politics. Ah! if one of those bloody soldiers would just put a bullet in my heart, that would be a fine way of ending!”
His eyes were moist, as in this cry there broke out the secret desire of the vanquished, the refuge in which he desired to lose his torment for ever.
“Well said!” declared Madame Rasseneur, casting on her husband a look which was full of all the contempt of her radical opinions.
Souvarine, with a vague gaze, feeling about with his nervous hands, did not appear to hear. His fair girlish face, with the thin nose and small pointed teeth, seemed to be growing savage in some mystic dream full of bloody visions. And he began to dream aloud, replying to a remark of Rasseneur’s about the International which had been let fall in the course of the conversation.
“They are all cowards; there is only one man who can make their machine into a terrible instrument of destruction. It requires will, and none of them have will; and that’s why the revolution will miscarry once more.”
He went on in a voice of disgust, lamenting the imbecility of men, while the other two were disturbed by these somnambulistic confidences made in the darkness. In Russia there was nothing going on well, and he was in despair over the news he had received. His old companions were all turning to the politicians; the famous Nihilists who made Europe tremble — sons of village priests, of the lower middle class, of tradesmen — could not rise above the idea of national liberation, and seemed to believe that the world would be delivered — when they had killed their despot. As soon as he spoke to them of razing society to the ground like a ripe harvest — as soon as he even pronounced the infantile word “republic” — he felt that he was misunderstood and a disturber, henceforth unclassed, enrolled among the lost leaders of cosmopolitan revolution. His patriotic heart struggled, however, and it was with painful bitterness that he repeated his favourite expression:
