Part 28

And, as M. Hennebeau came back to the middle of the room, glancing at each piece of furniture, he noticed, in the open bed, a bright point that shone like a spark. He approached mechanically and put out his hand. It was, between two folds of the sheet, a small gold flask. At once he recognized a flask of Madame Hennebeau's, the ether flask she never parted with. But he could not account for the presence of this object: how could it be in Paul's bed? And suddenly he turned frightfully pale. His wife had slept there.

—Pardon, murmured Hippolyte's voice through the door, I saw Monsieur coming up...

The servant had entered, and the disorder of the room dismayed him.

—My God! it's true, the room not made up! And Rose went out and left all the housework on my hands!

M. Hennebeau had hidden the flask in his hand, and he was squeezing it to break it.

—What do you want?

—Monsieur, it is another man... He comes from Crèvecoeur, he has a letter.

—Very well! leave me, tell him to wait.

His wife had slept there! When he had shot the bolt, he opened his hand again, he looked at the flask, which had marked itself red in his flesh. Suddenly, he saw, he heard, this filth had been going on in his house for months. He remembered his old suspicion, the brushings against doors, the bare feet going away at night through the silent house. Yes, it was his wife who came up to sleep there!

Fallen on a chair, facing the bed he stared at fixedly, he remained for long minutes as if stunned. A noise woke him, someone was knocking at the door, trying to open it. He recognized the servant's voice.

—Monsieur... Ah! Monsieur has locked himself in...

—What now?

—It seems it's urgent, the workers are breaking everything. Two other men are downstairs. There are also telegrams.

—Leave me alone! in a moment!

The thought that Hippolyte would have discovered the flask himself, if he had made the room up in the morning, had just chilled him. And besides, this servant must know, he had found twenty times the bed still warm from the adultery, Madame's hairs trailing on the pillow, abominable traces soiling the linen. If he persisted in disturbing him, it was out of spite. Perhaps he had stayed with his ear glued to the door, excited by his masters' debauchery.

Then M. Hennebeau did not move again. He still looked at the bed. The long past of suffering unrolled, his marriage to this woman, their immediate misunderstanding of heart and flesh, the lovers she had had without his suspecting it, the one he had tolerated for ten years, as one tolerates a loathsome taste in a sick woman. Then, it was their arrival at Montsou, a mad hope of curing her, months of languor, of drowsy exile, the approach of old age which was at last to give her back to him. Then, their nephew landed, this Paul of whom she became the mother, to whom she spoke of her dead heart, buried forever under the ashes. And, imbecile husband, he foresaw nothing, he adored this woman who was his, whom men had had, whom he alone could not have! He adored her with a shameful passion, to the point of falling on his knees, if she had but kindly given him the leavings of the others! The leavings of the others, she gave to this child.

A distant bell, at that moment, made M. Hennebeau start. He recognized it, it was the ring struck, by his orders, when the postman arrived. He rose, he spoke aloud, in a flood of coarseness, his painful throat bursting in spite of himself.

—Ah! I don't give a damn! ah! I don't give a damn, for their telegrams and their letters!

Now, a rage was invading him, the need of a cesspool, to sink such filth into it with the heel. This woman was a slut, he sought crude words, he slapped her image with them. The sudden idea of the marriage she pursued with so tranquil a smile between Cécile and Paul, finished exasperating him. Was there then no longer any passion, no jealousy, at the bottom of this lively sensuality? At this hour it was but a perverse plaything, the habit of man, a recreation taken like an accustomed dessert. And he accused her of everything, he almost exonerated the child, whom she had bitten, in this awakening of appetite, as one bites the first green fruit, stolen on the road. Who would she eat, how far would she fall, when she no longer had complaisant nephews, practical enough to accept, in their family, the table, the bed and the wife?

Someone scratched timidly at the door, Hippolyte's voice ventured to breathe through the keyhole:

—Monsieur, the mail... And there is also Monsieur Dansaert who has come back, saying they are cutting throats...

—I'm coming down, for God's sake!

What was he going to do to them? turn them out on their return from Marchiennes, like stinking beasts he no longer wanted under his roof. He would take a cudgel, he would shout to them to carry elsewhere the poison of their coupling. It was with their sighs, with their mingled breaths, that the moist warmth of this room grew heavy; the penetrating odor that had suffocated him, was the musk odor exhaled by his wife's skin, another perverse taste, a carnal need of violent perfumes; and thus he found again the heat, the odor of fornication, the living adultery, in the pots littering the still full basins, in the disorder of the linen, the furniture, the whole room, reeking of vice. A fury of impotence threw him on the bed with his fists, and he massacred it, and he plowed the places where he saw the imprint of their two bodies, enraged at the torn covers, the crumpled sheets, soft and inert under his blows, as if themselves exhausted by the loves of the whole night.

But, suddenly, he thought he heard Hippolyte coming up again. A shame stopped him. He remained a moment longer, panting, wiping his brow, calming the leaps of his heart. Standing before a mirror, he contemplated his face, so decomposed, that he did not recognize it. Then, when he had watched it gradually calm, by a supreme effort of will, he went down.

Below, five messengers were standing, not counting Dansaert. All brought him news of growing gravity on the march of the strikers through the pits; and the head-putter told him at length what had happened at Mirou, saved by the fine conduct of father Quandieu. He listened, nodded; but he did not hear, his mind had stayed up there, in the room. At last, he dismissed them, he said he was going to take measures. When he found himself alone, seated before his desk, he seemed to doze there, head between his hands, eyes covered. His mail was there, he decided to look in it for the expected letter, the reply of the Board, whose lines at first danced. Yet, he ended by understanding that these gentlemen wished for some brawl: certainly, they did not order him to worsen things; but they let it appear that troubles would hasten the outcome of the strike, by provoking an energetic repression. Thereupon, he hesitated no longer, he launched telegrams in all directions, to the prefect of Lille, to the troop corps of Douai, to the gendarmerie of Marchiennes. It was a relief, he had only to shut himself in, he even had the rumor spread that he suffered from the gout. And, all the afternoon, he hid at the bottom of his study, receiving no one, contenting himself with reading the telegrams and letters that continued to rain down. Thus he followed from afar the band, from Madeleine to Crèvecoeur, from Crèvecoeur to la Victoire, from la Victoire to Gaston-Marie. On the other hand, information reached him on the bewilderment of the gendarmes and dragoons, lost on the road, constantly turning their backs on the attacked pits. They could cut throats and destroy all, he had put his head back between his hands, fingers on his eyes, and he sank into the great silence of the empty house, where he surprised, at moments, only the noise of the cook's saucepans, in full heat, for his evening dinner.

Twilight was already darkening the room, it was five o'clock, when a clamor made M. Hennebeau start, dizzy, inert, elbows still in his papers. He thought the two wretches were coming home. But the tumult increased, a cry broke out, terrible, at the instant he approached the window.

—Bread! bread! bread!

It was the strikers who were invading Montsou, while the gendarmes, believing in an attack on the Voreux, galloped, backs turned, to occupy that pit.

Just then, two kilometers from the first houses, a little below the crossroads, where the high road and the Vandame path crossed, Madame Hennebeau and the young ladies had just witnessed the passing of the band. The day at Marchiennes had passed gaily, an amiable luncheon at the director of the Forges', then an interesting visit to the workshops and a glassworks in the neighborhood, to occupy the afternoon; and, as they were at last returning, by this limpid decline of a fine winter's day, Cécile had had the fancy to drink a cup of milk, on seeing a small farm bordering the road. Then all had got down from the carriage, Négrel had gallantly jumped from his horse; while the peasant woman, bewildered at such fine company, hurried, spoke of putting a cloth, before serving. But Lucie and Jeanne wanted to see the milk drawn, they had gone into the stable itself with the cups, they had made a country party of it, laughing much at the litter they sank into.

Madame Hennebeau, with her air of complaisant maternity, was drinking from the tip of her lips, when a strange noise, rumbling outside, worried her.

—What is that?

The stable, built at the edge of the road, had a large cart door, for it served also as a hayloft. Already, the young girls, stretching their heads, were astonished at what they distinguished to the left, a black flood, a mob that debouched howling from the Vandame path.

—The devil! murmured Négrel, also come out, would our bawlers end by getting angry?

—It may be the colliers again, said the peasant woman. That's twice they've passed. Seems things aren't going well, they're the masters of the country.

She let fall each word with caution, she watched for its effect on the faces; and, when she noticed the fright of all, the deep anxiety into which the meeting threw them, she hastened to conclude:

—Oh! the rascals, oh! the rascals!

Négrel, seeing it was too late to get back into the carriage and reach Montsou, gave the coachman the order to quickly bring the carriage into the farmyard, where the team remained hidden behind a shed. He himself tied his horse under this shed, whose bridle a lad had held. When he came back, he found his aunt and the young girls distraught, ready to follow the peasant woman, who proposed they take refuge at her house. But he was of the opinion that they were safer there, certainly no one would come looking for them in this hay. The cart door, however, closed very badly, and it had such cracks, that one saw the road between its worm-eaten boards.

—Come, courage! said he. We'll sell our lives dearly.

This jest increased the fear. The noise was growing, one saw nothing yet, and on the empty road a storm wind seemed to blow, like those sudden gusts that precede great thunderstorms.

—No, no, I don't want to look, said Cécile, going to curl up in the hay.

Madame Hennebeau, very pale, taken with an anger against these people who spoiled one of her pleasures, kept herself in the rear, with an oblique and repelled glance; while Lucie and Jeanne, despite their trembling, had put an eye to a crack, desirous of losing nothing of the spectacle.

The roll of thunder approached, the earth was shaken, and Jeanlin galloped first, blowing his horn.

—Take your smelling salts, the sweat of the passing people! murmured Négrel, who, despite his republican convictions, liked to jest at the canaille with the ladies.

But his witty word was carried off in the hurricane of gestures and cries. The women had appeared, near a thousand women, with scattered hair, uncombed by the run, in rags showing the naked skin, nudities of females weary of bearing starvelings. Some held their little one between their arms, lifted it, shook it, as a flag of mourning and vengeance. Others, younger, with breasts swollen like warriors, brandished sticks; while the old women, frightful, howled so loud, that the cords of their fleshless necks seemed to break. And the men rolled out afterwards, two thousand furious, pikemen, hewers, menders, a compact mass that rolled in one block, tight, confounded, to the point that one distinguished neither the faded breeches, nor the woolen jerseys in rags, effaced in the same earthy uniformity. The eyes burned, one saw only the holes of the black mouths, singing the Marseillaise, whose strophes were lost in a confused bellowing, accompanied by the clatter of sabots on the hard earth. Above the heads, among the bristling iron bars, an axe passed, carried straight up; and this single axe, which was like the standard of the band, had, in the clear sky, the sharp profile of a guillotine blade.

—What atrocious faces! stammered Madame Hennebeau.

Négrel said between his teeth:

—The devil take me if I recognize a single one! Where do these bandits come from then?

And, in fact, anger, hunger, these two months of suffering and this enraged rout across the pits, had lengthened into jaws of wild beasts the placid faces of the Montsou colliers. At this moment, the sun was setting, the last rays, of a dark purple, bloodied the plain. Then, the road seemed to carry blood, the women, the men continued to gallop, bleeding like butchers in full slaughter.

—Oh! superb! said half-voice Lucie and Jeanne, moved in their artist taste by this fine horror.

They were frightened nevertheless, they drew back near Madame Hennebeau, who had leaned on a trough. The idea that a single glance, between the boards of this disjointed door, sufficed for them to be massacred, chilled her. Négrel felt himself turn pale, too, very brave ordinarily, seized there by a dread superior to his will, one of those dreads that blow from the unknown. In the hay, Cécile no longer moved. And the others, despite their desire to turn away their eyes, could not, looked still.

It was the red vision of the revolution that would carry them all away, fatally, by a bloody evening of this end of century. Yes, one evening, the people loosed, unbridled, would gallop thus on the roads; and it would stream with the blood of the bourgeois, it would parade heads, it would sow the gold of burst strongboxes. The women would howl, the men would have these wolf jaws, opened to bite. Yes, it would be the same rags, the same thunder of heavy sabots, the same frightful mob, of dirty skin, of pestilent breath, sweeping the old world, under their overflowing push of barbarians. Fires would flame, not a stone of the cities would be left standing, one would return to savage life in the woods, after the great rut, the great feast, where the poor, in a single night, would flay the women and empty the cellars of the rich. There would be nothing more, not a sou of fortunes, not a title of acquired situations, until the day when perhaps a new earth would grow again. Yes, it was these things that passed on the road, like a force of nature, and they received the terrible wind of it in the face.

A great cry rose, dominated the Marseillaise:

—Bread! bread! bread!

Lucie and Jeanne pressed against Madame Hennebeau, fainting; while Négrel placed himself before them, as if to protect them with his body. Was it then this very evening that ancient society cracked? And what they saw then, finished stupefying them. The band was flowing off, there were only the tail of the stragglers left, when the Mouquette debouched. She lingered, she watched for the bourgeois, on the gates of their gardens, at the windows of their houses; and, when she discovered any, unable to spit in their face, she showed them what was for her the height of her contempt. No doubt she caught sight of one, for suddenly she lifted her skirts, thrust out her buttocks, showed her enormous rear, naked in a last flamboyance of the sun. It had nothing obscene, this rear, and did not make one laugh, fierce.

All disappeared, the flood rolled on Montsou, along the windings of the road, between the low houses, striped with bright colors. They had the carriage brought out of the yard, but the coachman dared not take it upon himself to bring Madame and the young ladies back unharmed, if the strikers held the pavement. And the worst was that there was no other road.

—We must nevertheless get back, dinner awaits us, said Madame Hennebeau, beside herself, exasperated by fear. These dirty workers have again chosen a day when I have company. Go do good to that!

Lucie and Jeanne were busy pulling Cécile out of the hay, who was struggling, believing these savages defiled endlessly, and repeating that she did not want to see. At last, all took their places again in the carriage. Négrel, remounted on horseback, then had the idea of passing by the little streets of Réquillart.

—Walk slowly, said he to the coachman, for the road is atrocious. If groups prevent you from returning to the road, over there, you will stop behind the old pit, and we will come back on foot by the small garden door, while you put the carriage and horses anywhere, under the shed of an inn.

They set off. The band, afar, was streaming into Montsou. Since they had seen, twice, gendarmes and dragoons, the inhabitants were agitated, crazed with panic. Abominable stories were circulating, they spoke of handwritten posters, threatening the bourgeois with bursting their bellies; no one had read them, yet they cited textual phrases. At the notary's especially, terror was at its height, for he had just received by post an anonymous letter, where he was warned that a powder barrel was buried in his cellar, ready to blow him up, if he did not declare himself in favor of the people.

Just then, the Grégoire, delayed in their visit by the arrival of this letter, were discussing it, guessing it the work of a joker, when the invasion of the band finished frightening the house. They, smiled. They looked, parting the corner of a curtain, and refused to admit any danger whatever, certain, they said, that all would end amicably. Five o'clock was striking, they had time to wait until the pavement was free to go, opposite, dine at the Hennebeau's, where Cécile, surely returned, must be waiting for them. But, in Montsou, no one seemed to share their confidence: distracted people ran, doors and windows closed violently. They caught sight of Maigrat, on the other side of the road, barricading his shop, with great store of iron bars, so pale and so trembling, that his frail little wife was forced to tighten the nuts.

The band had halted before the director's hotel, the cry rang out:

—Bread! bread! bread!

M. Hennebeau was standing at the window, when Hippolyte came in to close the shutters, for fear the panes be broken with stones. He closed likewise all those of the ground floor; then, he passed to the first floor, one heard the creaking of the casements, the clapping of the blinds, one by one. By misfortune, one could not close in the same way the bay of the kitchen, in the basement, a worrying bay where glowed the fires of the saucepans and the spit.

Mechanically, M. Hennebeau, who wanted to see, went up to the second floor, into Paul's room: it was the best placed, to the left, for it allowed one to follow the road, as far as the Company's Yards. And he stood behind the blind, dominating the crowd. But this room had seized him again, the toilet table sponged and in order, the cold bed, with clean sheets well drawn. All his rage of the afternoon, this furious battle in the depth of the great silence of his solitude, ended now in an immense fatigue. His being was already like this room, cooled, swept of the morning's filth, returned to the customary correctness. What was the use of a scandal? was anything changed at his house? His wife simply had one more lover, that hardly aggravated the fact, that she had chosen him in the family; and perhaps even there was advantage, for she thus safeguarded appearances. He pitied himself, at the memory of his jealous folly. What ridicule, to have smashed this bed with his fists! Since he had tolerated another man, he would well tolerate that one. It would be but the affair of a little more contempt. A frightful bitterness poisoned his mouth, the uselessness of all, the eternal sorrow of existence, the shame of himself, who adored and still desired this woman, in the dirt where he abandoned her.

Below the window, the howlings burst with a redoubled violence.

—Bread! bread! bread!

—Imbeciles! said M. Hennebeau between his clenched teeth.

He heard them insult him about his big salary, call him lazy and pot-bellied, dirty pig who didn't care about indigestions of good things, when the worker was dying of hunger. The women had caught sight of the kitchen, and it was a tempest of imprecations against the pheasant roasting, against the sauces whose greasy odor ravaged their empty stomachs. Ah! these bastard bourgeois, they'd slap them with champagne and truffles, to make their guts burst.

—Bread! bread! bread!

—Imbeciles! repeated M. Hennebeau, am I happy then?

An anger rose in him against these people who did not understand. He would gladly have made them a gift of his big salary, to have, like them, the hard hide, the easy and regretless coupling. If only he could seat them at his table, stuff them with his pheasant, while he went to fornicate behind the hedges, tumble girls, mocking those who had tumbled them before him! He would have given all, his education, his well-being, his luxury, his power as director, if he could have been, for one day, the last of the wretches who obeyed him, free of his flesh, boor enough to slap his wife and take pleasure on the neighbors. And he also wished to die of hunger, to have the empty belly, the stomach twisted with cramps shaking the brain with a vertigo: perhaps that would have killed the eternal sorrow. Ah! to live as a brute, to possess nothing of one's own, to beat the wheat with the ugliest, dirtiest harrow-woman, and be capable of being content with her!

—Bread! bread! bread!

Then, he grew angry, he cried furiously in the clamor:

—Bread! is that enough, imbeciles?

He ate, he, and he did not rattle less with suffering. His ravaged household, his entire aching life, rose to his throat, in a death hiccup. All did not go for the best because one had bread. What idiot put the happiness of this world in the sharing of wealth? These dreamer revolutionaries could well demolish society and rebuild another, they would add no joy to humanity, they would withdraw no pain, in cutting everyone his slice. Even they would widen the unhappiness of the earth, they would one day make even the dogs howl with despair, when they had drawn them from the tranquil satisfaction of instincts, to raise them to the unassuaged suffering of passions. No, the only good was not to be, and, if one was, to be the tree, to be the stone, less still, the grain of sand, which cannot bleed under the heel of passers-by.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”