Part 1

This eBook was produced by Carlo Traverso.

Author: Émile Zola

Title: Germinal

Remark: n. 13 of "Les Rougon-Macquart"

Language: French

Encoding: ISO-8859-1

We thank the Bibliotheque Nationale de France that has made available the image files at www://gallica.bnf.fr, authorizing the preparation of the etext through OCR.

Nous remercions la Bibliothèque Nationale de France qui a mis à disposition les images dans www://gallica.bnf.fr, et a donné l'autorisation de les utiliser pour préparer ce texte.

Émile Zola

Germinal

Première Partie

I

In the flat plain, beneath a starless night, of an ink-black darkness and density, a man was walking alone along the great road from Marchiennes to Montsou, ten kilometres of paving cutting straight through the fields of sugar beets. Before him he could not even see the black ground, and he had the sensation of the immense flat horizon only through the gusts of the March wind, broad squalls like those at sea, chilled from having swept over leagues of marsh and bare land. No shadow of a tree stained the sky, the pavement unrolled with the straightness of a jetty, amid the blinding spray of the shadows.

The man had left Marchiennes around two o'clock. He walked with a long stride, shivering beneath the thinned cotton of his jacket and velveteen trousers. A small bundle, tied in a checkered handkerchief, greatly inconvenienced him; and he pressed it against his sides, now with one elbow, now with the other, to slip both his numb hands at once into his pockets, hands flayed by the thongs of the east wind. A single idea occupied his empty head of an unemployed and homeless worker: the hope that the cold would be less sharp after daybreak. For an hour he had been advancing thus, when on the left, two kilometres from Montsou, he caught sight of red fires, three braziers burning in the open air, and as if suspended. At first he hesitated, seized with fear; then he could not resist the painful need to warm his hands for an instant.

A sunken lane plunged downward. All disappeared. The man had on his right a palisade, some wall of heavy planks closing a railway; while a grassy embankment rose on the left, crowned with confused gables, the vision of a village with low and uniform roofs. He went about two hundred paces. Suddenly, at a bend in the lane, the fires reappeared near him, without his understanding any better how they burned so high in the dead sky, like smoky moons. But, at ground level, another sight had just stopped him. It was a heavy mass, a crushed heap of buildings, from which rose the silhouette of a factory chimney; rare glimmers came from the grimy windows, five or six sad lanterns were hung outside, on timber frames whose blackened wood vaguely aligned the profiles of gigantic trestles; and, from this fantastic apparition, drowned in night and smoke, a single voice rose, the heavy and long breathing of a steam escape, which could not be seen.

Then the man recognized a pit. He was seized again with shame: what was the use? there would be no work. Instead of making for the buildings, he at last risked climbing the slag heap on which the three coal fires were burning, in cast-iron baskets, to light and warm the work. The surface-cutters must have worked late, they were still bringing out the useless debris. Now he heard the trammers push the trains along the trestles, he made out living shadows tipping the tubs, near each fire.

--Good day, he said, approaching one of the baskets.

With his back to the brazier, the carter was standing, an old man dressed in a violet woolen knit, capped with a rabbit-fur cap; while his horse, a big yellow horse, waited, in a stillness of stone, for the six tubs mounted by him to be emptied. The laborer employed at the tippler, a lanky red-haired fellow, was in no hurry, leaned on the lever with a sleeping hand. And, up above, the wind redoubled, an icy north-easter, whose regular great breaths passed like scythe strokes.

--Good day, replied the old man.

A silence fell. The man, who felt himself regarded with a mistrustful eye, gave his name at once.

--My name is Étienne Lantier, I am an engine-man... Is there no work here?

The flames lit him; he must have been twenty-one years old, very dark, a handsome fellow, looking strong despite his slender limbs.

Reassured, the carter nodded his head.

--Work for an engine-man, no, no... Two more turned up yesterday. There's nothing.

A gust cut their words short. Then Étienne asked, pointing to the dark heap of buildings, at the foot of the slag heap:

--It's a pit, isn't it?

The old man, this time, could not answer. A violent fit of coughing choked him. At last he spat, and his spittle, on the purpled ground, left a black stain.

--Yes, a pit, the Voreux... Look! the settlement is quite near.

In his turn, with outstretched arm, he pointed into the night at the village whose roofs the young man had guessed. But the six tubs were empty, he followed them without a crack of the whip, his legs stiff with rheumatism; while the big yellow horse started off alone, hauling heavily between the rails, under a fresh squall that bristled its coat.

The Voreux, now, emerged from the dream. Étienne, who was forgetting himself before the brazier warming his poor bleeding hands, looked, rediscovered each part of the pit: the tarred screening-shed, the pit-head frame, the vast chamber of the winding engine, the square turret of the drainage pump. This pit, huddled at the bottom of a hollow, with its squat brick buildings, raising its chimney like a threatening horn, seemed to him to have the evil air of a greedy beast, crouched there to eat the world.

While examining it, he thought of himself, of his existence as a vagabond, for a week now that he had been seeking a job; he saw himself again in his railway workshop, slapping his foreman, driven from Lille, driven from everywhere; on Saturday he had arrived at Marchiennes, where it was said there was work, at the Forges; and nothing, neither at the Forges nor at Sonneville, he had had to spend Sunday hidden under the timber of a wheelwright's yard, whose supervisor had just evicted him, at two in the morning. Nothing, not a sou left, not even a crust: what was he to do thus along the roads, aimless, not even knowing where to shelter from the north-easter? Yes, it was indeed a pit, the rare lanterns lit the yard, a door abruptly opened had allowed him to glimpse the generator fires, in a vivid light. He explained even the pump's escape, that heavy and long breathing, ceaselessly blowing, which was like the congested breath of the monster.

The tippler laborer, hunching his back, had not even lifted his eyes to Étienne, and the latter was about to pick up his small bundle fallen to the ground, when a fit of coughing announced the carter's return. Slowly, he was seen to emerge from the shadow, followed by the yellow horse, which was hauling six new full tubs.

--Are there factories at Montsou? asked the young man.

The old man spat black, then answered into the wind:

--Oh! it isn't factories that are lacking. You should have seen it, three or four years ago! Everything roared, you couldn't find men, never had so much been earned... And now we're tightening our belts again. A real pity in the country, they're sending people away, the workshops are closing one after another... It's perhaps not the emperor's fault; but why does he go fighting in America? Not to mention that the beasts are dying of cholera, like the people.

Then, in short phrases, breath cut, the two continued to complain. Étienne told of his useless rounds for a week: were they then to starve to death? soon the roads would be full of beggars. Yes, said the old man, it would end badly, for it was not God-permitted to throw so many Christians into the street.

--One doesn't have meat every day.

--If only one had bread!

--True, if only one had bread!

Their voices were lost, squalls carried the words away in a melancholy howl.

--Look! resumed very loud the carter, turning toward the south, Montsou is there...

And, with his hand stretched out again, he pointed into the darkness at invisible points, as he named them. Over there, at Montsou, the Fauvelle sugar refinery was still running, but the Hoton refinery had just reduced its staff, there was hardly but the Dutilleul flour mill and the Bleuze ropewalk for mine cables that held on. Then, with a broad gesture, he indicated, to the north, a whole half of the horizon: the Sonneville construction workshops had not received two-thirds of their usual orders; of the three blast furnaces of the Marchiennes Forges, only two were lit; finally, at the Gagebois glassworks, a strike threatened, for talk was of a wage reduction.

--I know, I know, repeated the young man at each indication. I come from there.

--As for us, it's holding for now, added the carter. The pits have nevertheless diminished their output. And look, opposite, at the Victoire, there are also only two batteries of coke ovens flaming.

He spat, he set off again behind his drowsy horse, after hitching it to the empty tubs.

Now Étienne dominated the whole country. The darkness remained deep, but the old man's hand had as it were filled it with great miseries, which the young man, unconsciously, felt at this hour around him, everywhere, in the boundless expanse. Was it not a cry of famine that the March wind rolled, across this naked countryside? The gusts had grown enraged, they seemed to bring the death of work, a dearth that would kill many men. And, his eyes wandering, he strove to pierce the shadows, tormented by the desire and the fear of seeing. All was annihilated in the unknown depths of the dark nights, he perceived, very far off, only the blast furnaces and the coke ovens. The latter, batteries of a hundred chimneys, planted obliquely, aligned ramps of red flames; while the two towers, farther left, burned all blue in the full sky, like gigantic torches. It was of an arson's sadness, there were no other risings of stars, on the threatening horizon, than these nocturnal fires of the lands of coal and iron.

--You are perhaps from Belgium? resumed behind Étienne the carter, who had returned.

This time, he brought only three tubs. One could always tip those: an accident to the winding cage, a broken bolt, was going to stop work for a good quarter of an hour. At the foot of the slag heap, a silence had fallen, the trammers no longer shook the trestles with a prolonged rumbling. One heard only come from the pit the distant noise of a hammer, tapping on sheet iron.

--No, I am from the South, answered the young man.

The laborer, after emptying the tubs, had sat on the ground, happy at the accident; and he kept his mute wildness, he had simply lifted dull heavy eyes to the carter, as embarrassed by so many words. The latter, indeed, did not usually say so much. It must be that the stranger's face pleased him and that he was taken with one of those itchings for confidences, which sometimes make old people talk to themselves, aloud.

--Me, he said, I am from Montsou, my name is Bonnemort.

--It's a nickname? asked Étienne, surprised.

The old man gave a gleeful snicker, and showing the Voreux:

--Yes, yes... They pulled me out of there in pieces three times, once with all my hair singed, another with earth clear down to my gizzard, the third with my belly swollen with water like a frog... So, when they saw I didn't want to die, they called me Bonnemort, for a joke.

His gaiety redoubled, a creak of ill-greased pulley, which ended by degenerating into a terrible fit of coughing. The fire basket, now, lit fully his big head, with white and sparse hair, flat face, of a livid pallor, stained with bluish spots. He was small, the neck enormous, the calves and heels turned outward, with long arms whose square hands fell to his knees. Moreover, like his horse which remained immobile on its feet, without seeming to suffer from the wind, he seemed of stone, he did not appear to suspect either the cold or the squalls whistling at his ears. When he had coughed, his throat torn by a deep scraping, he spat at the foot of the basket, and the earth blackened.

Étienne looked at him, looked at the ground he thus stained.

--Has it been long, he resumed, that you work at the mine?

Bonnemort opened both arms wide.

--Long, ah yes!... I was not eight years old, when I went down, look! right in the Voreux, and I am fifty-eight now. Figure it out... I did everything in there, first boy, then putter, when I had the strength to haul, then hewer for eighteen years. Then, because of my damned legs, they put me on the surface cutting, backfiller, mender, until the moment they had to take me out of the bottom, because the doctor said I was going to stay there. So, five years ago, they made me carter... Eh? it's pretty, fifty years of mine, of which forty-five below!

While he spoke, bits of flaming coal, which, at moments, fell from the basket, lit his pale face with a bloody reflection.

--They tell me to rest, he continued. Me, I won't, they think me too stupid!... I'll go two years yet, to my sixtieth, to get the pension of a hundred eighty francs. If I wished them good evening today, they'd grant me at once the one of a hundred fifty. They're sly, the rascals!... Besides, I'm solid, apart from the legs. It's, you see, water that got under my skin, from being showered so much in the seams. There are days I can't move a paw without crying.

A coughing crisis interrupted him again.

--And that makes you cough too? said Étienne.

But he answered no with his head, violently. Then, when he could speak:

--No, no, I caught cold, last month. Never used to cough, now I can't get rid of it... And the queer thing is, I spit, I spit...

A scraping rose from his throat, he spat black.

--Is it blood? asked Étienne, daring at last to question him.

Slowly, Bonnemort wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

--It's coal... I have enough in my carcass to keep me warm to the end of my days. And it's five years since I've set foot below. I had that in stock, it seems, without even suspecting it. Bah! it preserves!

There was a silence, the distant hammer beat at regular strokes in the pit, the wind passed with its plaint, like a cry of hunger and weariness come from the depths of the night. Before the startled flames, the old man continued lower, chewing over memories. Ah! sure enough, it was not yesterday that he and his own tapped the seam! The family had worked for the Montsou Mining Company, since its creation; and that dated far back, it was already a hundred six years. His forefather, Guillaume Maheu, a lad of fifteen then, had found the fat coal at Réquillart, the Company's first pit, an old pit now abandoned, over there, near the Fauvelle refinery. All the country knew it, proof that the seam discovered was called the Guillaume seam, from his grandfather's first name. He had not known him, a big fellow by what they told, very strong, dead of old age at sixty. Then, his father, Nicolas Maheu called the Red, aged scarcely forty, had remained in the Voreux, which they were sinking at that time: a fall, a complete flattening, the blood drunk and the bones swallowed by the rocks. Two of his uncles and his three brothers, later, had also left their hides there. He, Vincent Maheu, who had come out of it nearly whole, only the legs unsteady, passed for a sly one. What else to do, besides? One had to work. They did that from father to son, as they would have done something else. His son, Toussaint Maheu, was now rotting there, and his grandchildren, and all his folk, who lodged opposite, in the settlement. A hundred six years of getting, the kids after the old ones, for the same master: eh? many bourgeois couldn't tell their story so well!

--Still, when one eats! murmured again Étienne.

--That's what I say, as long as one has bread to eat, one can live.

Bonnemort fell silent, his eyes turned toward the settlement, where glimmers were lighting one by one. Four o'clock was striking at the Montsou steeple, the cold was growing sharper.

--And it is rich, your Company? resumed Étienne.

The old man shrugged his shoulders, then let them fall, as crushed under an avalanche of crowns.

--Ah! yes, ah! yes... Not perhaps as rich as its neighbor, the Anzin Company. But millions and millions all the same. One loses count... Nineteen pits, of which thirteen for exploitation, the Voreux, the Victoire, Crèvecoeur, Mirou, Saint-Thomas, Madeleine, Feutry-Cantel, others still, and six for drainage or ventilation, like Réquillart... Ten thousand workers, concessions extending over sixty-seven communes, an output of five thousand tonnes a day, a railway linking all the pits, and workshops, and factories!... Ah! yes, ah! yes, there is money!

A rumbling of tubs, on the trestles, made the big yellow horse's ears prick up. Below, the cage must be repaired, the trammers had resumed their work. While he hitched his beast, to go back down, the carter added softly, addressing it:

--Mustn't get used to chatting, damned lazybones!... If Monsieur Hennebeau knew what you lose time at!

Étienne, pensive, looked at the night. He asked:

--Then, is the mine Monsieur Hennebeau's?

--No, explained the old man, Monsieur Hennebeau is only the general manager. He is paid like us.

With a gesture, the young man showed the immensity of the shadows.

--Whose then is all that?

But Bonnemort remained a moment suffocated by a new crisis, of such violence that he could not catch breath. At last, when he had spat and wiped the black foam from his lips, he said, into the redoubling wind:

--Eh? whose is all that?... One doesn't know. Folks'.

And, with his hand, he pointed into the shadow at a vague spot, an unknown and remote place, peopled with those folks, for whom the Maheus had tapped the seam for over a century. His voice had taken a sort of religious fear, it was as if he spoke of an inaccessible tabernacle, where hid the replete and crouching god, to whom they all gave their flesh, and whom they had never seen.

--At least if one ate one's fill of bread! repeated for the third time Étienne, without apparent transition.

--Lord, yes! if one always ate bread, it would be too fine!

The horse had gone, the carter disappeared in his turn, with the dragging step of an invalid. Near the tippler, the laborer had not moved, curled in a ball, sinking his chin between his knees, fixing on the void his dull heavy eyes.

When he had taken up his bundle, Étienne did not yet move away. He felt the gusts freeze his back, while his chest burned, before the great fire. Perhaps, all the same, he would do well to apply to the pit: the old man might not know; then, he resigned himself, he would accept any job. Where to go and what to become, across this country starved by unemployment? leave his dog-lost carcass behind a wall? However, a hesitation troubled him, a fear of the Voreux, in the midst of this flat plain, drowned under so thick a night. At each squall, the wind seemed to grow, as if it blew from an ever-widening horizon. No dawn whitened in the dead sky, the blast furnaces alone flamed, as did the coke ovens, blooding the shadows, without lighting their unknown. And the Voreux, at the bottom of its hole, with its huddle of wicked beast, crushed more heavily, breathed with a heavier and longer breath, the air hampered by its painful digestion of human flesh.

II

Amid the fields of wheat and sugar beets, the Two-Hundred-and-Forty settlement slept beneath the black night. One vaguely distinguished the four immense blocks of small houses leaning back to back, barrack or hospital blocks, geometrical, parallel, separated by the three broad avenues, divided into equal gardens. And, on the deserted plateau, one heard only the plaint of the gusts, in the torn trellises of the fences.

At the Maheus', number 16 of the second block, nothing stirred. Thick shadows drowned the single room on the first floor, as if crushing with their weight the sleep of the beings one felt there, in a heap, mouths open, stunned with fatigue. Despite the sharp cold outside, the heavy air had a living warmth, that warm stifling of the best-kept barracks, which smell of human cattle.

Four o'clock struck at the cuckoo of the ground-floor room, still nothing moved, thin breaths whistled, accompanied by two sonorous snorings. And, suddenly, it was Catherine who got up. In her fatigue, she had, by habit, counted the four strokes of the bell, through the floor, without finding the strength to wake fully. Then, her legs thrown out of the covers, she groped, finally rubbed a match and lit the candle. But she remained seated, her head so heavy that she fell back between her two shoulders, yielding to the invincible need to drop again on the pillow.

Now, the candle lit the room, square, with two windows, which three beds filled. There was a wardrobe, a table, two chairs of old walnut, whose smoky tone hardly stained the walls, painted light yellow. And nothing else, some clothes hung on nails, a jug set on the tile, near a red bowl serving as washbasin. In the left bed, Zacharie, the eldest, a lad of twenty-one, was lying with his brother Jeanlin, who was finishing his eleventh year; in the right bed, two little ones, Lénore and Henri, the first six, the second four, slept in each other's arms; while Catherine shared the third bed with her sister Alzire, so frail for her nine years, that she would not even have felt her near, without the hump of the little cripple digging into her ribs. The glazed door was open, one glimpsed the landing corridor, the sort of passage where the father and mother occupied a fourth bed, against which they had had to install the cradle of the last arrival, Estelle, barely three months old.

Meanwhile, Catherine made a desperate effort. She stretched, she clenched her two hands in her red hair, which tousled her brow and nape. Puny for her fifteen years, she showed of her limbs, out of the narrow sheath of her shift, only bluish feet, as if tattooed with coal, and delicate arms, whose milk whiteness contrasted with the pale complexion of her face, already spoiled by the continual washings with black soap. A last yawn opened her rather large mouth, with superb teeth in the chlorotic pallor of the gums; while her gray eyes wept with fought-off sleep, with a painful and broken expression, which seemed to swell with fatigue her entire nakedness.

But a grunt came from the landing, Maheu's voice stammered, thick:

“Stories of the world, in your language.”